Content marketing is a success story in the media industry. It comes in second place only after internet advertising which is the most popular form of advertising and has seen accelerated growth in the last 10 years.
It has great scope and adaptability since it targets a personalized audience by sending unique content. Content marketing is considered the heart of digital marketing, it connects well with customers and behind every successful digital business, there is content marketing. It has helped a lot of businesses in getting their brand reputation and helps in retention of customers.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing can be defined as the form of marketing that is focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a target audience. The target audience may be chosen based on age, demographics, a particular region, and profession. It can also be called a strategic marketing technique to attract an audience. Content marketing includes aspects such as informational articles, e-books, videos, webinars, etc.
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Importance of content marketing:
1)Content as a marketing strategy: Content marketing connects all elements of digital marketing, The content that is created for Blogs, E-mails, for social media drives traffic to the website due to which can increase the popularity of a brand and can improve the business.
2)Good Return On Investment: A Good content in the world of digital marketing is not only considered for tactics and usage of words, but good content will bring in more customers and due to which the image of brand not only goes up but there are more chances of customer retention ultimately increasing the profits and giving a high return on investment.
3) Good content helps in SEO: SEO is called Search Engine Optimization, Search engines Like Google, Bing from Microsoft, Yahoo search through Good content in websites and they crawl through each website’s content in order to determine what the users require, Strong content will generate more web traffic and more visitors are likely to happen.
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4) Content Marketing is Cost Effective: Content Marketing is affordable, a study has revealed that usage of content marketing is more effective and cost-saving and drives in 3 times more sales than traditional marketing. Good content attracts more people.
5) Builds trust: Good content builds trust among visitors of a website or a blog, take an example of a blog that is published well, that particular blog which has good content will be liked by people.
6) Understanding of Customers: Content marketing plays a vital role in understanding customers and their preferences, since the contents of content marketing are updated as per the latest trend, it helps the marketer to understand the customers.
7) Sets standards: Content Marketing helps a company to stand apart from the rest of its competitors as good content can differentiate companies in Digital marketing.
Key Things to be kept in mind for good content
Content Marketing is a vital part of digital marketing and there are some of the key points that are to be kept in mind while generating good content in content marketing.
1)Keep the audience in mind: Always keep the target audience in mind, know who your audience is and what do they want from the content and the demographics to be targeted, Change the content according to Geographical conditions, create content in such a manner that it reaches to a maximum audience with minimum effort.
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2) Maintain Professionalism: While making good content in marketing it is always better to have a personal touch with the audience and by doing this the content Marketer should not go too personal, do not try to be too casual while publishing any content. Never give personal opinions while writing any content in blogs or posts as it would attract criticism, use of slang or slang language is not recommended in content Marketing, and never use shortcut words as it ruins the whole content.
3) Avoid Repetition: Good content in marketing must not have repeated content, this means that never repeat the same context or point multiple times, Do not use high vocabulary as it might become difficult for the reader to understand the content, avoid too much graphics by not adding images as more image in content can make the page load slowly due to which visitors may not visit due to which there will be a higher bounce rate. A bounce rate is when visitors click on a particular link and they come out within a few seconds,
4) Less plagiarised content: Good content must have original content and should not be copied from other references and links.
Qualities of Good content: There are certain qualities for good Content in marketing. They are:
- Unique: The content should have no repetition and no plagiarism.
- Relevant: There should be a connection between the story.
- Exciting: The story should be exciting.
- Conclusive: There should be a conclusion to the content.
Uses of content marketing:
Content marketing can help a business grow in several aspects as it focuses on a target audience.
Here are some of the uses of content marketing and there are reasons that can make a business successful by content marketing.
1) Increases sales:
Content marketing increases sales by focusing on a target customer and will help the marketer in knowing the likes and dislikes of the customer, it provides controlled portable shop windows for companies to sell products in their own time. Great content will convert new customers, A good content will give attributes and features of a product or service which helps a customer to understand the product thereby converting a new customer and increasing sales.
2) Retention of customers:
Due to stiffer competition every company is focusing on retaining its customers, this is done by offering both entertainment and information content to the customer. Content marketing keeps the customer updated on new products or services by regularly communicating with customers and updating them with new products.
3) Positioning of the brand:
To build a brand position or to Reposition a brand content marketing helps a company, this is done by regular communication with the customers by sending them messages quickly when compared to competitors and by giving them personalized offers the company can position or reposition their brand ahead of their competitor.
The content marketer sends personalized emails and uses the cookies on the browsers to target a set of an audience if a customer randomly checks a product out on the internet. The content marketer provides them the best offer and draws the customer to the store. The content marketer knows the audience which helps the content marketer to target the right demographics and give a company a big return and thereby position the brand on top.
4) Relationship with customers for longer:
By using regular communication with customer database a company attaches a good relationship with the customer, by which it can create brand loyalty and the customer forms a long term relationship with the company by which there will be retention of the customer as well.
5) Good content brings in customer:
Good content can bring in new customers as well, by using catchy captions the customer acquisition will become easy, the use of words such as flat discounts and buy and get will bring in new customers, thereby maximizing profits. The use of easy language and making customers understand will bring in more customers.
6)Acts as research data for customers:
Customers will go through the quality blogs and content before purchasing a product, Due to which will help customers in Decision making. Make sure that you are making the right first impression by publishing quality content that helps leads better understand their greatest challenges and how your company fits into the process of solving them.
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7)Establish your reputation.
Content, especially in the form of a blog, is a great way to establish your brand by providing information that shows your knowledge of a particular niche.
Types of Content Writers:
There are different types of content marketing Writers they are:
Technical writers: They focus mainly on technical specifications and give reviews based on technology.
copywriters: They give exclusive tag lines and headlines that are not reusable their contents are copyrighted under the intellectual property act, they produce unique content, and their content is not copied or plagiarised,
Ghostwriters: These are the writers who write on behalf of others and they do not take credits for that. They are someone who writes a book or other published work instead of the person who is named as the author.
Social Media writers: Social media writers are the writers who publish articles on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube, Instagram.
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E-mail writer: They mostly deal with sending emails to clients or customers.
Scriptwriter: is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs, and video games, are based.
Conclusion:
Content marketing is a great option for the marketer since it targets the right audience and right demographics thereby knowing them in depth. Content marketing not only is useful for the company or a brand to be built, it eases the procedure of customer in buying behavior by providing the right knowledge and right information about a product or service, It helps a company in getting top Search Engine Optimization Results and also ranks a website on top. As discussed on top the search engine bots will crawl through good content websites and ranks them higher.
Good content will also help in customer retention and helps build a reputation of a company by giving a good brand image and higher social status to a digital marketing company. Content with good clarity and understandable language will drive in more visitors to your website.