What Does Content Marketing Mean for Your Business?

By Shridha Dugar

Content is KING.

Content Marketing is the Future.

Your business needs content marketing to thrive.

But what does content marketing mean?

If you are an entrepreneur, marketer or someone even remotely interested in the world of marketing, then the above statements are not new to you.

It’s a concept that has existed for decades and is now an essential component of any marketing strategy. Unlike any marketing activity, content is universal and suitable for all business types. It doesn’t require too many dollars and is like a long-term investment that gives your business immense returns.

So, before we dive into understanding how content marketing can REALLY help your business, let’s get some basics in place.

What is content marketing?

In all its simplicity, content marketing is about value and experience over sales-driven marketing. The Content Marketing Institute defines this as:

“…a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Let’s break this down further –

a technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content
Marketing activities require content. However, that is not content marketing. It is about systematically creating content that is educative, informative and even entertaining. Content marketing is not a one-time activity and requires consistent efforts. Additionally, you must identify the appropriate channels to promote your content because all your efforts are in vain if your audience isn’t seeing it.

content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action

To successfully execute any marketing strategy, you must be aware of your audience. Your product is not for everyone but a select few. Similarly, content marketing requires you to identify the specific details about your customer for it to be successful. You need to understand your customer’s needs, pains and address them through your content. Content marketing activities aim to create customer-focused content that adds value to the customer and leads them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.

For example: At the awareness stage, you create content to introduce your brand to the customer. It may also include content that helps customers understand what you do and how you can change their lives. In the next stage, you reason why a customer should choose your brand over another. You can do this by features, pricing and other benefits that your brand provides; so on and so forth.

Image Courtesy: The Marketing Journal

What does content marketing do for your business?

Content marketing is a customer-focused marketing approach that helps address customer questions, needs and challenges. It helps a customer make an informed decision about your product. Additionally, it helps your business in several ways. These include:

Increase brand awareness

The content you create broadcasts over several channels – social media, web pages, email and more. As you develop more content, people notice it and explore more of what you have to offer. They may interact more with the content you provide and even look at the products or services you offer. Content marketing helps widen your reach over geographical boundaries.

Establish thought leadership

For example, Hubspot’s products focus on the customer journey. Through various channels, like its blog, Hubspot Academy and its YouTube channel, the brand talks about all aspects of improving a customer’s experience. In its content pieces, it subtly plugs in its services and how it can help your business.

Image Courtesy: Hubspot Blog

A loyal customer base

While content marketing takes time, its results are tremendous. People are looking for quick answers and that helps them connect with new brands. While it may take some time to gain their trust, consistently providing valuable content will improve your ranking on search pages and create a loyal base of customers.

Facilitates decision making

Content marketing helps your brand connect with customers personally by allowing them to get to know your brand, what it does and why they should align themselves with it. By doing so, you give people another reason besides already having confidence in your company to choose you over others!

It’s measurable

It’s all about the return on investment (ROI). A good content strategy will establish enough metrics that will allow you to measure the results of your content marketing efforts. The tiniest detail of where your audience came from, with which content did they interact the most, and what impact it had on your business can be measured.

Types and channels of content marketing

There are numerous ways in which you can create content that benefits your customers. Once you’ve identified where your audience is at different stages in their journey, you will be able to leverage the right channel for maximum results.

Successful content marketing is reaching the right audience, through the right channel and at the right time, consistently.

Some of the types of content formats that you can use include:

Infographics
Podcast
Videos
Books
Blog
Newsletters
White paper
Case studies
Live sessions (webinars)
Paid advertising

Pro tip: You don’t have to use all content formats for your business. The key is to be consistent, even if that means using one or two types of content.

Some content marketing channels include:

Social media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, Clubhouse)
Email marketing
Website
Audio channels (Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Soundcloud)

How to start with content marketing

To start your content marketing activities, follow the steps:

Identify your audience
Build an audience persona
Chart a customer journey and identify the various touchpoints
Identify the pain points experienced by the customers at each step
Identify the channels customers are most likely to use during a particular stage of their customer journey
Build a content strategy
Create content and distribute it through various channels
Follow all best practices to improve your reach on different channels

In conclusion

Content marketing is a rewarding marketing practice that influences customer behaviour. When done right, it can exponentially increase your brand’s reach and help build your brand as a leader in the market. The future of marketing requires content, and brands that have joined the bandwagon will differentiate themselves from others.

P.S. If you’ve read till here, then you’ve consumed a piece of our content marketing strategy. To build a content strategy for your brand