Introduction
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique that focuses on developing and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent information to attract and maintain a specific audience and, eventually, drive profitable consumer action.
A content strategy framework is a plan that includes your content objectives, target audience, and techniques for developing and distributing information.
Table of Contents
1. What is Strategic Content Marketing?
The goal of strategic content marketing is to create and distribute valuable, timely, and consistent content to draw in and keep the attention of a target audience and, ultimately, to encourage profitable customer action.
Whatever marketing strategies you employ, content marketing should be an integral part of your workflow rather than a stand-alone strategy. Quality content is a component of all marketing strategies. Let's see how it benefits some key approaches.
SEO: Search engines praise companies that consistently produce high-quality content.
PPC: Strong content is required for PPC to be effective.
Inbound Marketing: Content is essential for generating inbound traffic and leads in inbound marketing.
Social media marketing: Your content marketing strategy should come first.
Public Relations: Effective PR strategies should focus on topics that readers care about, not their company.
2. Why is Content Marketing Important for Your Business?
Search engines are based on algorithms, and in recent years those algorithms have become more sophisticated and clever.
They have one goal, and that is to reward good content creation and strategy of content marketing by placing these websites at the top of the search results page.
Creating valuable content for the user leads to more clicks and higher conversion rates, which is exactly what Google wants.
It is not surprising why content marketing consulting has become a must in every strategy of content marketing in almost every organization.
The reason why its popularity has risen is that it generates a win-win situation for both the consumer and the company along with the content marketing consulting agency.
The goal of strategies of content marketing is to provide value to the target audience through the development of different content marketing types that are aimed at addressing the target’s needs.
Among the format options lie texts in the form of articles, images, videos, and infographics, to name a few.
Currently, 91% of B2B marketers say they use content marketing for their digital marketing strategies.
3. Storytelling: Valuable Content Marketing comes in Many Flavors
The act of telling or writing stories, or narratives, is known as storytelling. Usually, people tell stories for fun, for information, or instructional purposes.
Storytelling has the power to make readers identify and empathize with the content, which as a result could lead to an increase in the number of shares.
a. Educational Content: New knowledge is being introduced to explain a topic and answer key questions to the readers.
b. Entertaining Content: Connecting with readers on an emotional level makes the content more engaging and attractive than other types of approaches. This type of content is very prone to get shared.
c. Inspirational Content: Relatable stories about personal challenges or successes are the most effective form of inspirational content.
4. Content Marketing in the 21st century
In the early days, the strategy of content marketing focused on creating the best viable product or service and advertising the characteristics of a determined offering by highlighting its quality and practical uses.
Nowadays, the communication approach must be based on the customer and the value that they will receive with the offering.
This content marketing scheme demands companies educate their target audience with clever and catchy content marketing messages that will position them as the best option to address a specific need.
Instead of communicating the products from a production/quality perspective, companies must now earn the hearts of their consumers through a valuable strategy of content marketing, including clear explanations, flexible delivery and returns policies, and responsive customer service.
Companies should address all these elements in their content marketing strategy as they encompass the key aspects that will make their target audience trust, buy, and recommend (rate) them.
5. How to Attract Customers and Win them over along the Way?
Just like at the beginning of every relationship, each party aims to see if their partner fulfills their checklist. In the business world, the same happens between companies and customers.
Due to the high convenience and easy-to-access information on the internet, users have a higher standard regarding what valuable content is.
Therefore, users expect to find the best answers and smartly invest their time.
To capture the attention of your target audience, you have to identify their needs and provide them value in the form of answers to their questions.
This is why content marketing agencies are spending massive resources to gain experience in content marketing consulting.
Besides giving them answers to their questions, there are other ways to attract their attention and keep them coming back to you.
We explain those tips in our guide about Content marketing strategy: How to stand out from the crowd.
a. Why Content Marketing Should be Everyone’s Priority
Between 70-80% of people ignore advertisements on Google, clicking only on websites that pop-up within the organic search results.
This is the reason why great content marketing types attract so many visitors to websites throughout time.
This way, you will keep them engaged with your website's content and as a result, they will likely become your customers.
47% of consumers view between 3-5 pieces of content created by a company before deciding to contact the organization.
This emphasizes the importance of a corporation demonstrating its competence in its sector, which will help it position itself as an authority.
This will keep your customers coming back to you as you provide them with content they can trust.
That will result in more people advocating your brand, which leads to an increase in sign-ups, sales, and the number of new customers.
6. Top 5 Reasons To Develop Your Content Marketing
a. Increases your Ranking on Google
The primary focus of Google’s algorithm is to match the search intent of users with the content that best answers their specific questions.
That’s where content marketing consulting comes in by providing answers to people’s needs.
Companies that can provide valuable information are the ones that will be rewarded by Google's algorithm and pop-up on the first page of the search results.
b. Generates Quality Traffic
By providing relevant content marketing types for a specific market segment, you will be able to engage with a type of audience that is particularly seeking to expand its knowledge about it.
This way only the people interested in these content marketing types will find the way to you.
Being aware of the needs of your audience gives you a better indication of their interest in your brand.
By deeply understanding this, you would be able to develop the content marketing types that match their wants and make them engage with your brand through different actions, like signing up for your newsletter or requesting more information.
Lastly, the best kind of traffic is the one that engages with your strategy of content marketing and shares your content, for example on social media.
This will further increase your traffic from different sources and spread awareness.
c. Drives Sales
From the two previous points, it is easy to conclude that driving more people to your website will bring in more sales.
Creating useful content marketing types for your target audience gives them the opportunity to know your company.
As more people position your brand name as an authority or trustworthy provider, they will be more likely to buy your offering and recommend it to their network.
We have seen that on average people review 3 to 5 pieces of content from a specific company before engaging in a transaction.
A great way to boost sales is to combine content marketing with paid advertisements within your strategy of content marketing.
By doing this the number of people in contact with your communications will be broader and as a result, sales will tend to increase.
If you want to know how your content marketing strategy can drive sales or increase your web traffic, continue reading How to succeed with content marketing: 8 useful tips to include in your strategy.
d. Gain a Loyal Customer Base
Sharing your knowledge for free is one of the best ways to grab people’s attention and keep them coming to you when having similar needs.
In the early days, companies used to focus on creating catchy headlines aimed at selling instead of focusing on providing real value through their communications.
Providing content marketing types with a purpose for the user is one of the safest ways to build a loyal customer base.
e. Build Authority for Your Niche
After you have gained the trust of a good number of people (lots of clicks on Google), your brand will become a reputable source of knowledge.
Gaining widespread recognition in your industry is one of the best strategies for content marketing to stay relevant in the long-term.
Ideally, you would want your organization to be on top of people’s minds when they think about your industry.
Becoming a recognized and trustworthy figure is the key to bringing in more potential customers to your company and driving sales.
Conclusion
To stand out from the crowd and create awareness among your target audience, you need to develop clear and valuable communication so your target can identify you as an authority in your niche.
As we saw in the article, several platforms need content marketing to deliver the expected results and also position the company or professional as a top voice in the industry.
As a result, content marketing will drive the right people through your selected channels, thus increasing the chances of boosting your sales and converting them into clients.