What is Content Marketing?

Why Does Content Marketing Matter?

You’ve just launched your website, congratulations! Now the real work begins, and this work is known as content marketing.

Is Content Marketing Different than Advertising?

In short, yes. When most people think about “marketing” they think about traditional paid media advertising. While paid media is incredibly important, it should only make up around 20% of your marketing efforts.

Generally speaking, the most effective marketing mix is achieved by following the 80/20 rule: about 80% of your content should focus on providing value to your audience through education, entertainment, or solving problems, while only around 20% should directly promote your business and/or your products.

This is why having a great website is so important to businesses; it’s essential for creating a home base to house your content marketing strategy.

What do I Need to do to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy?

1. Start with your story:

Define your business’s “why”. This is what you’ll use to align your business and your audience, and it's the foundation to define who you are.

Your website is where you can begin to create a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience. You want your story to be consistently communicated across all channels and it starts with your website.

2. Build your framework for success:

It can be difficult to stay focused while trying to create and develop your content. You want to ensure you have an organized structure for content creation and publication.

Utilizing essential tools and resources will help you keep track of analytics, manage relationships (with a CRM), and maintain a calendar for content planning and execution.

3. Develop a long-term plan:

It's time to ask the right questions: who are your customers? What are their buying personas? Do you know what your customers' buyers journey looks like?

Questions like these will help you begin to generate ideas for content in the various stages within a buyers journey.

The Awareness Stage:

Provide broad, educational content to readers that address common questions and problems. This is a great time to utilize blog content that can rank high in search results. It's also a great time to provide entertaining content.

In the awareness stage, you want people to associate your company or brand with helpful or enjoyable content.

The Consideration Stage:

This stage requires more focused content. This is the point in the buyers journey where you can begin to position yourself as the solution to their problems.

The Decision Stage:

Now it's time to provide specific content and information about the products and services you offer that can solve the buyer's problems. Because you've taken the time to build trust through the other stages, they should be ready to commit to what you're offering.

4. Create and follow content creation best-practices:

One of the best ways to increase your awareness and attract potential customers is through focusing on high-quality content that engages readers and increases traffic to your website. Once you have your long-term plan, you can begin to set standards that will help you relate your content back to your narrative from step 1.

This is achieved by generating ideas consistently through research and staying on top of trends, publishing high-quality blog articles that answer questions your customers may be asking, structuring content with clear headlines and organized sections, and optimizing your content for search engines.

5. Try out more advanced content strategies:

While traditional blog posts are great, there are many different ways to showcase information. Many of the advanced strategies can be repurposed to create even more content on various channels.

What are more advanced strategies that I can implement for content marketing?

Creating topic clusters and pillar pages: These are great ways to provide comprehensive coverage of a topic. This comprehensive coverage helps you establish authority in specific subjects and it creates a content hub for your readers.

Podcasting: Creating a podcast is a popular strategy for businesses to connect with their audience, increase brand awareness, and establish authority in their market. This content can be used to create blog posts, social media posts, and email newsletters.

Video Marketing: Both long-form and short-form content are great to utilize. The best part is that you can repurpose long-form content into short-form. As mentioned above, (video) podcasts also offer a great opportunity for short-form content repurposing. You can edit the content into smaller chunks for different platforms like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikToks.

Guest Blogging: Leveraging your network is a great way to establish authority and expand your reach.

With how much social media has evolved over the past few years, repurposing content from one channel to another is a great way to maximize the value of each piece by converting it into different formats and channels. It's a great way to increase awareness without having to generate new ideas.

6. Measure and analyze:

While it would be great if everything you publish gets a ton of views, chances are this won’t be the case. Tracking important KPIs (key performance indicators) over time is essential for understanding your efforts and allowing you to make adjustments as needed.

You want to make sure you understand what content is working and what content is not.

How is Success Defined in Content Marketing?

First, you need to understand that success isn't immediate, it's cumulative. By consistently delivering content your audience can derive value from, you build trust and authority that will pay dividends over time.

Your website serves as the heart of this content marketing strategy; it’s the central hub for all of your content. Your website allows you to gather analytics that provide crucial insights into your content’s performance. It’s the foundation that enables you to convert casual readers into potential leads and potential leads into loyal customers.

So, congratulations! Your website is complete, it looks amazing, and you're ready to start creating your digital footprint.

It can be very difficult to manage all of this, especially for a small business. If you need help creating a content marketing strategy, please contact us for professional help. Let us help you be heard in the digital echo.