The content marketing industry is spreading like wildfire in today’s digital world. 42% of B2B marketers say they’re effectively practicing content marketing for driving brand awareness. At the same time, 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day.
But what is exactly content marketing and how to execute it for the success of the marketing campaign?
In this article, we will answer all of your questions to give you a full picture of Content marketing Industry.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is an essential tool in your online business to increase traffic, drive sales, and bring in new leads. It is a great way to attract people to your website, especially if you’re just getting started.
It is also known as Web copywriting, a combination of copywriting and marketing. So, what is content marketing? It’s when you write content so that it informs and entertains your readers, gets their interest, and makes them want to know more. It is written around keywords that your customers use in search engines so that your content is relevant, fresh, and easy to find.
Content marketing is essential because it is what makes your business stand out from the crowd. It tells your potential audience what kind of things they should know about you or the product you are selling.
By providing fresh, relevant content, content marketing builds trust in your brand and your business. As search engines continue to change their criteria for what is acceptable and what is not sufficient, it is imperative that you keep up with the trend to stay on top. No one wants to visit a site that is continuously changing.
Content marketing is not the same as advertising, though many marketers tend to think of it. In reality, content is far different than advertising. With advertising, you are trying to sell something, while content is more about telling your customers why they should buy from you. Content allows you to explain your product or service in a way that will make them want to know more.
Content marketing is all about helping your readers to solve a problem for themselves. Knowing what questions your customers are asking and providing an answer for them will satisfy their curiosity. Most search engines look at direct sales activity as spam. So, to be sure that the search engines do not penalize you, you mustn’t just send them a sales pitch but give them useful information in the form of content that will help them solve their problem.
What are the stages of Content Marketing?
How do you know if your content is performing or, rather, is it performing to its potential? It can be easy to forget the big picture when you’re just getting started with your online business. You must still pay close attention to your content marketing goals to achieve your targets by following content marketing stages.
Even if you’re new to online marketing, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard about some of these stages. However, the good news is that there are only six major stages to worry about in particular.
1. SEO Keywords
2. Goal Setting
3. Content Strategy
4. Content Creation
5. Content Curation
6. Content distribution
Now let’s look into these stages in detail.
1. SEO Keywords
The first stage of SEO or Search Engine Optimization is keyword research. Knowing what your potential customers are typing in to find what they need can be the difference between a loss and a win. That’s why it’s so important to spend time researching everything from how long specific keywords will be favored to each one’s competition level. This can help you choose the right keywords and landing pages for your campaign and drastically improve your click-through rates.
2. Goal Setting
Setting your purpose of the marketing campaign and having clear goals to achieve will give you a straightforward action plan to follow. Define fixed targets for the number of lead generation and website traffic. A fixed goal will allow you to build an ongoing brand awareness strategy with consistent content and plan. This goal setting will push you to work until you achieve that target by attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience.
3. Content Strategy
Content strategy is comparatively a new discipline in the content marketing process. It is a continuous process of transforming and adapting business objectives and goals into a strategic plan where content plays a lead role in achieving those goals. There’s so much information out there about building a content strategy; read the famous content strategy steps to success. Content strategy is the detailed planning, development, and management of content for your business.
4. Content Creation
Now, the next most crucial stage of content marketing is content creation. In this stage, you have to figure out what you have to offer to your audience. You’ll need to research topics/titles that you think will be appealing to those searching on Google or other search engines. Create original and unique content, and make sure that the information is presented professionally and statistics and facts.
5. Content Curation
Content curation is an essential step for your plan to grow your content strategy. As you might be lacking the talent, tools, and resources, by curating other experts in the field, you can enrich your content requirement with well-versed professionals. Content curation helps you compete effectively and efficiently by providing significant benefits in today’s competitive market.
6. Content Delivery
Finally, there is shortlisting of the platforms where you will post and publish this content. At this stage, you have to focus on what you will promote and how you’re going to do it. There are numerous techniques and strategies for promoting your content, which you will need to learn and use properly to succeed with your promotion.
These are the essential stages of content marketing. However, the steps can be altered according to your specific business project and goals. When you start your marketing campaign, remember that you can stress at any stage to achieve your goals. You never know when something will work, but by staying flexible and following your gut, you should be able to get what works and what doesn’t.
No matter what you plan to do or how you execute it, there are always things that can change and alter your strategy. This is why you need to follow your strategy from start to finish to truly understand everything that you need to know about the content you are creating and promoting online. To get more insights on how to plan your content marketing, stay tuned!
What are the advantages of Content marketing?
There are numerous advantages of practicing content marketing for your business. Let’s walk through a few of the most prominent ones:
1. Promote your website
Content marketing is one of the best methods for promoting a website and generating traffic for it. Just think about it: you will be able to drive more traffic into your website by merely improving your website’s quality of content.
2. Attracting more visitors to your site
Content helps you build credibility because when readers find that your content is worthy of being read, they will likely tell other people. This leads to increased visibility on search engines. And when a lot of people visit your website, this means you will have a good chance of getting a better ranking on search engines. Thus, higher visibility means more chances of getting more traffic.
3. Higher Google ranking
Another advantage is that articles with keywords are more comfortable to publish online. Publishing content that has search engine optimized keywords is much easier and faster than posting content without keywords. This is because both content with high search engine optimization value and poorly written content will take much longer to get noticed by the search engine bots.
4. Better audience reach
The bottom line of content marketing is that these marketing techniques are beneficial because they make it easier for your website to gain more exposure. Moreover, it allows you to build relationships with other website owners, and it gives you more opportunities to earn money through additional activities such as advertising. The possibilities are endless.
These are just some of the many advantages of content marketing. But do not forget that even the best content can be rendered useless if you cannot get your message across to your readers. Make sure that your content is rich in information.
Also, be sure that your website is optimized properly so that search engines will easily find it when someone searches for keywords related to your content. Finally, learn about search engine submission and blogging. Both of these techniques are excellent ways to improve your website’s chances of being noticed online.
Why outsource marketing content?
Why is it better to outsource content marketing? It has become a more popular answer because Internet users have become hooked on the fast pace of the online business world. They no longer have the time to read and research the stuff they need. As a result, many are looking for effective ways on how they can achieve their desired results.
The most popular means of marketing online is content writing or content marketing. Many entrepreneurs have found content marketing to be very helpful in promoting their products online. Content writers have been regarded as one of the best sources of information for people trying to get in touch with the latest trends.
Here are some of the reasons why you should consider doing this:
- It is faster and cheaper
Content outsourcing has been proven to be very useful in terms of generating traffic. If you have many followers on your Facebook page, there is a big possibility that these followers will be directed to your website. By hiring content writers, you will save time in producing articles and marketing them on your site. Moreover, you can also save a lot of money because building an in-house content writing team will cost you more compared to outsourcing.
- It saves your time
Content writing can be very time-consuming. Since you will be the one to create the content, you must be able to produce high-quality articles that will be useful to your target market. However, a content marketing company can help you lessen the workload and make things easier for you. A good marketing company can provide fresh and relevant content for you so you can focus more on your marketing activities. Thus, you can also have more time for other aspects of your business.
- It provides more professionalism
Content outsourcing has proven to give you more professional content than in-house development since you can get content written from experts in the industry. Besides working with a marketing company, outsourcing articles and other promotional materials will assure you that it will be produced professionally.
A lot of people have already started seeing the benefits of outsourcing content marketing. Not only do they allow you to save a lot of money, but you also get more professionalism. These factors are enough reasons why companies worldwide are now starting to outsource content marketing. Start looking for a content marketing company today and start earning money within a short period. To get more information on content marketing and content strategy, keep following this space for regular updates on the industry’s latest moves. SearcHound can help you with all your business needs; contact us to get a free quote within 24hours.