-
Content marketing is a key component of digital marketing these days.
-
It comes in many forms, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and much more.
-
Learn more about content marketing and it's many benefits here!
In Brief:
“Content is king.”
-Bill Gates, 1996
It’s been years since Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates famously proclaimed that “content is king.” Time has proven the multi-billionaire entrepreneur right, as the rise of content marketing in the broader world of digital marketing has taken off like a rocket in recent years.
But what is content marketing? This frequently-used but often misunderstood buzzword certainly gets thrown around a lot these days! To figure out what it really means, we dive into the content marketing basics and take a look at what content marketing looks like in 2021 and onward.
Let’s get started!
Just What is Content Marketing Anyway?
Content marketing is a digital marketing discipline that centers on creating and distributing relevant, valuable content to attract users to a brand.
It’s been used by countless companies around the world as a key pillar of their digital marketing strategies in recent years thanks to its cost-effectiveness and strong ROI. Content marketing offers many benefits for brands, including higher website traffic and sales.
Overall, it’s an efficient and cost-effective way for brands to drive business online!
Why is Content Marketing Important?
Content marketing is important because it can generate leads and conversions, attract customers, build trust with customers, boost your SEO efforts, drive website traffic, and lay the groundwork for further digital marketing efforts.
To help you better understand the content marketing basics and why content marketing itself is needed, we examine these in detail below!
Generates Leads and Conversions
Content marketing is an excellent way to generate leads and drive conversions for a business. How so? When users read or watch your content, they can potentially become more interested in buying from your brand. This is especially true if your content includes a clear call-to-action (CTA) in it. Content marketing can play a key role in guiding users through the sales funnel, generating more conversions for your business.
Attracts Customers
Content marketing is also a great way to attract customers to your business. Creating and distributing a blog post, infographic, video, or other form of content that catches users’ attention can draw them to your site quickly and cost-effectively, increasing the chances that they’ll be retained as users and convert.
Builds Trust with Customers
Creating valuable, informative content can establish trust with your audience by answering their questions, interacting with them, and offering them useful information they can use in a practical way, building trust and loyalty with your brand.
Boosts SEO Efforts
Producing and distributing high-quality, relevant content is also an outstanding way to boost your website’s SEO. Given that search engines like Google place great emphasis on quality content that’s useful for audiences nowadays, a proactive, sustained content marketing campaign can give your SEO efforts a critical edge.
Drives Website Traffic
Similarly, great content can help to increase your website traffic not only by targeting priority keywords with blog posts, articles, case studies, whitepapers, and the like, but also by grabbing and holding the attention of users with memorable infographics, videos, and social media posts. Taken all together, this can help drive your website traffic and, in turn, potentially increase your conversions.
Lays the Groundwork for Further Digital Marketing Efforts
Finally, content marketing can help lay the foundation of your further digital marketing efforts in many ways. As just noted, quality content plays a crucial role in any successful SEO campaign. Great content can also attract and retain users on social media, while any PPC campaign needs useful, quality content behind it to succeed. In short, content is the lifeblood of all digital marketing!
What are Some Types of Content Marketing?
From articles to eBooks to videos and everything else in between, there’s many types of content marketing that have been widely used in recent years. Let’s take a closer look at some of them here!
Blogs
Blogging has long been the “bread-and-butter” of content marketing. Although many other types of content exist nowadays, blogs are still without question a proven and effective method of content marketing.
They offer a cost-effective way to grow organic traffic, generate leads, and expand your brand exposure. Be sure to understand and use SEO best practices when creating your blog posts for the best results!
Infographics
While blogging can be a great way to generate long-form content to drive traffic and leads, infographics are an effective way to grab users’ attention with catchy, fun, and memorable visuals. They’re typically quick and easy to make and are also an excellent way to convey stats and important data in a visual, easily-shareable way.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is very important in content marketing nowadays – and expected to become even more critical in the future!
Videos are a fantastic way to boost audience engagement and boost your brand recognition. They’re also one of the most multifaceted types of content marketing and can be used to do everything from explain the benefits of a product to introduce a new brand.
eBooks
eBooks are a useful form of long-form content that can convey information about your brand to your audience in much more detail and depth than a blog post can. They can be very effective in converting leads that have already been drawn to your brand through other content marketing efforts like blogging and video marketing.
Case Studies
Case studies are another very effective tool for converting interested leads that want to learn more about your brand in-depth. They offer a great way to showcase your brand and its achievements in a way that potential customers can relate to, increasing the odds that they’ll convert.
Testimonials
Testimonials are a great way to leverage user-generated content for your brand by showcasing the positive reviews your customers leave and giving them an opportunity to tell their story about how your business helped them out. This can be very effective in converting leads, as it creates a personal connection between your brand and real-life people that leads can see themselves in.
White Papers
White papers, even more so than eBooks and case studies, are the ultimate type of long-form content and offer the most information to the reader possible. Packed with data and details about your brand as well as eye-catching visuals in many cases, white papers are a proven way to convert leads already interested in your brand and should be an integral part of any content marketing strategy.
Influencers
Influencers are people with a strong digital following and significant influence in a particular industry. For digital marketers, they can be used to promote a brand and reach new audiences. Although this typically involves some form of payment or other compensation for the influencer, influencer marketing is an increasingly popular and effective way to grow a brand’s presence online.
Mastering the Content Marketing Basics Can Boost Your Brand!
Having a strong grasp of the content marketing basics can help you master it and ultimately leverage it to boost your business. Whether you opt to blog, create videos, distribute infographics on social media or anything else in between, see which of the many types of content marketing work for you and your brand and have fun with it!