Content marketing is an interesting presentation of exciting and useful information for the target audience. More modest advertising, more benefits (mostly advertising and is completely hidden, while content marketing goes along with crowd marketing).
Content marketing is a properly designed message, distributed and created to attract visitors with a bright presentation, structured argumentation.
What it is?
This is content and work with it. And only then - with SMM and SEO.
SEOs without content will have absolutely nothing to optimize. How does SEO work? There is a visible area of the page - an article, video, photo - all this is content. There is also a hidden area - metadata that helps search engines index the page. At the same time, every link, every keyword in the text is a small tip that paves the way for people to your specific content.
Tweets and newsletters, brief descriptions and voluminous landing pages of goods in various online stores are all separate parts of the content. At the same time, content marketing is a certain work with any content that helps you achieve your goals. Moreover, everyone has different goals. Someone wants to increase brand awareness, the second is to demonstrate their own expert potential. Some seek to attract new customers, while others think how to keep the former. There are hundreds of different goals. And the main part of them allows you to solve well-created content.
In this article we will take a closer look at content marketing, new methods for attracting customers.
What gives content marketing to the business?
Content marketing is in fashion today. However, many do not dare to use it - the prospects are too vague and the advantages are not obvious. Of course, I want clients to appreciate the company, and how can this be achieved? The goal looks very abstract, but how to achieve visible results? Let's understand what content marketing is. Promotion of the company with its help today is becoming more popular.
Brand recognition
To begin with, after you have created the content, people have something to talk about, discussions begin not only on the content, but on the whole company that created it. So, people exchange links, exchange impressions, while forming their opinion about a particular company. Word of mouth is a great content marketing strategy.
Trust and reputation
It’s worth pointing out right away that building trust is not an easy task. It takes time. Moreover, when you prove your competence, they will turn to you much more often. People believe experts. Be it: content marketing (a book on it is now freely sold in any store) helps to earn a reputation as a real expert. The main thing in this is to rely on quality rather than volume: one good post per week is much better than 7 mediocre ones.
Sites that generate tons of content, while at the same time not caring about quality, in abundance. They should not be compared. Do not make your readers rummage through a dump of texts of dubious quality and fish out unverified information. A person needs a site that they can absolutely trust. It should be your resource.
Trust is the ladder leading from the content to the services of the company.
Indirect conversion
Properly composed content marketing, the new methods of which are presented in this article, allows you to attract the necessary audience, in addition, reduces the distance between your products and people. If a person is genuinely interested in articles, he will also be interested in your services. The main thing is to focus on your reader, on the person you need. Otherwise, you can run into a rake, like the once famous Megaplan.
Megaplan launched the newsletter in the fall of 2012. She gained 100,000 subscribers in a year and a half. This is a great example of content marketing: truly useful and quality articles - and zero advertising. At the same time, the newsletter did not have commercial potential. According to its former editor Maxim Ilyakhov, this turned out to be a loss-making project. And Mikhail Smolyanov, CEO of Megaplan, said that 100,000 subscribers is good, but not enough.
The newsletter became popular, while it was aimed not at the right audience. The first letters - about sales, management, business - were addressed to entrepreneurs. Moreover, all the following - about thinking, psychology, personal effectiveness - exclusively to employees. At the same time, employees are not the kind of people who will begin to implement such a business management system.
This newsletter was not associated with the product. And if you plan to launch content marketing - you need to consider this.
What else is interesting in content marketing? Stelzner, the author of a book on new technologies for managing him, says that you should not create content that is interesting to everyone. It is important that the larger the audience, the wider the reach, while you know for sure that you need these people? Let not 100,000 read you, but only 5000 - but it will become your target audience. People who can become your regular customers over time.
Traffic increase
Proper management of content marketing is impossible without this. Properly organized content increases traffic, and this is inevitable. At the same time, the more exciting content is published on your site, the more people you attract. And they will find out who you are and what services they offer.
SEO promotion
Considering the methods of content marketing, it is worth noting that without content SEO does not make sense. The more your content is in demand, the more often they link to it and the higher it stands in search engine results. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
In addition, search engines scan it and include it in their own database. Then, when people create a query, an index is built. In it, your page takes a certain position. In this case, the more your content is fully consistent with the request, the higher the page will be displayed.
Quality content drives traffic. A huge number of examples can be given. All of them lead to one. Without SEO, content makes no sense.
Direct conversion
Nothing convinces people more than faithful descriptions of a service or product. This is also stated in the book “Content, Marketing and Rock and Roll” (D. Kaplunov). If customers note that you are unusual, they will be drawn to you. Important: “faithful” - means competently made and aimed at your target audience, specific, interesting and clear.
Flywheel principle
At the same time, you should not think that this will all happen very quickly, which is also mentioned in the book “Content, Marketing and Rock and Roll”. D. Kaplunov, the author of the book, says that it is always a very long voyage. In achieving quick goals, it is completely useless. If you think it’s worth starting your blog, and after a month crowds of customers will come to you, and organic traffic will grow significantly - you are severely mistaken.
This type of marketing works like a flywheel. It takes effort to run it. You push the flywheel, you spend energy, the wheel accelerates - and only after it spins, it begins to produce energy itself. Have enough patience - over time, everything comes. Content marketing is not a panacea, the results are not instantaneous here. If the traffic tomorrow remained the same, this does not mean at all that the content is not working. Wait, while continuing to do everything according to the plan drawn up earlier.
Without a team and budget
It is not necessary to refuse content marketing if you have little or no money for it, while there are only 2 people in the team. Of course, if there is not enough capacity, then you just physically can not physically generate good content. In this case, focus on the content.
Let's take Google search algorithms as an example. It all started with a little material that the author of the company created for his own needs. At the same time it resulted ... you yourself know what. Today, everyone who wants to learn about the changes in Google algorithms is on this page. Since 2011, she scored 1,700,000 views. Moreover, all this with a small budget for further advancement. And also with little effort: the author replenished the material bit by bit, while recording only the important.
On the other hand, with small capacities, you will fight for the quality of the material more intensively and carefully plan your goals. It is worth noting that it is better less, but better.
How to convince a client or boss that they need it?
Content, of course, is king, but the people who produce it often try too hard to convince everyone of the value of such marketing. The reason for this is simple: the most popular types of content (manuals, articles, videos, newsletters, webinars) belong to the very top of sales, to the stage that is several steps away from conversion.
This content helps you find people. You can even be loved or remembered for him. You are able to reach a large audience. At the same time, educational content is not the final stage, and it rarely leads to sales. There are more conversion varieties of it. It’s hard to test its effectiveness and value, and therefore it’s not easy to explain to the boss or client what the charm of this marketing is.
Enlighten
Initially - tell them about the benefits:
- Experience accumulation.
- Long-term relationship with the audience. Thus, you build trust with people who will come back to you.
- Speaking of virtues, be completely frank. Do not make unrealistic promises. Build true expectations. Interested in creating an image? Audience increase? Awareness raising? All this will be. Just be careful. This type of marketing is the very first stage of sales, the period of awareness, when the client only remembers and recognizes the company. Therefore, it’s stupid to think that buyers will flock to your store in a crowd if they read 2-3 blog posts. In this case, it is necessary that the boss understands this as well.
- Launch a flywheel, allowing you to achieve the right marketing goals.
Many people refuse content marketing because they think that their business is too specific and it will be uninteresting for people to read about a cement plant, as well as about the production of mineral fertilizers or matches. But this is absolute nonsense.
It is important how, not what. Not what you are talking about, but how you do it. The question is the right strategy. If you engage in content marketing competently, it will be interesting for customers to find out about anything. Including matches and cement.
Speak in the language of numbers
Despite the fact that content marketing is at the top of sales, this does not mean at all that the rest cannot be convinced of its true value. Can. You just have to build a complex method of calculation for this - one that demonstrates how the content leads to conversion.
Google Analytics will help us with this. In it we will use the multichannel sequence model. It will be necessary to properly configure analytics - it will begin to track all points of interaction right before the conversion.
What does all this mean?
In the event that a user navigated to your site through social networks, it is they who receive a conditional score in analytics. If you read a blog post, then the blog gets the same score. After that, it will be necessary for you to analyze what role each used channel plays in sales. And already draw conclusions on the basis of all this.
Now you need to know only one thing: you can measure everything, including content marketing. Thus, you will have to justify by numbers how much the content will be profitable.
Show competitors
“Already all our competitors are using content marketing to the best of their ability”, “Everyone is doing this” - these are rather strange arguments. Moreover, if you need to convince someone that he is needed and useful, then in this case all means are good. Demonstrate competitors doing this. At the same time, get ready, as they will say to you: "Do the same." Just do not rush: for content marketing, copying is always a losing strategy.