Content Marketing is the process of creating and sharing valuable content to attract, engage, and delight your target market. It’s an effective way to grow your business, increase revenue, boost brand awareness, establish yourself as an industry leader, and more.
In order to create a successful content marketing strategy, you must first understand your audience. To do this, research your competition, look for trends in your current customers, and keep up with popular news events. By understanding your customer, you can create content that will resonate with them and make them take action.
Next, you must define your goals. By setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based) goals, you can create a content marketing plan that will help achieve those goals. This may include content for a blog, social media posts, ebooks, videos, or podcasts. It should also include a strategy for how you will measure your success, including the use of tools like Google Analytics.
Once you know your goal, it’s time to start brainstorming ideas for your content. This can be done by researching your competitor’s websites, keeping a list of articles you find interesting for reference, and using a spreadsheet to track article ideas (these shouldn’t be used as direct copies, but rather as inspiration). When you have a few good ideas in mind, it’s time to get started.
To write effective articles, you must be able to think outside of the box and be creative. While this might not be easy, it is possible with practice. To begin with, focus on writing content that answers questions your customers might have. This will help to build trust and engagement with your audience, as well as drive traffic to your website.
Another important aspect of writing effective articles is to include a call to action at the end of each article. This will help to convert readers into leads and ultimately customers. To do this, include a link to your company’s website, an email signup form, or some other call-to-action that will encourage your audience to engage with your business.
B2B content is very different from B2C content. While consumers might be swayed by celebrity endorsements and emotive product launch campaigns, businesses are looking for authoritative information that will help them solve real commercial challenges and grow their organizations. By following a clear, methodical marketing strategy, you can create the kind of content that will impress this audience.
A great example of B2B content is a video series. Blendtec launched their Will It Blend video series with this type of content, which went on to have over 850,000 YouTube subscribers. Other examples of B2B content marketing are Charmin’s ad campaign for their Sit or Squat app, which encouraged people to find a clean bathroom, and Hootsuite’s ad based on the hit TV show Game of Thrones, which helped them reach over 1.3 million Facebook views. With the cost of online video equipment dropping, it has never been easier to create and distribute high-quality branded content.