Content marketing has been used for many years and consists of creating content that leads to having your own audience and attracting more and more customers. An effective content marketing strategy requires the creation of original content, and then distributing it on the most suitable channels.
Joe Pulizzi , founder of the CMI (Content Marketing Institute) , talks about it the most and explains that content means any type of information that can educate, involve or entertain and it comes in different forms.
Let's try to go into more technical detail to understand what the objectives of these contents are:
Acquire rather than push : content must acquire the customer, it must not be disturbing for those who view it.
Interact, educate, then sell : traditional marketing rarely makes it clear right away what benefits the customer will get from purchasing a service.
Think and act like a publisher, not like an advertiser.
Real time Marketing : think of a marketing strategy that azerbaijan phone number data is reactive and responds quickly to external stimuli.
Additional resources to the traditional ones : both people, tools and software.
We can define 8 fundamental stages to create a content marketing strategy that will allow us to have measurable and fundamental results to best carry out the next strategies:
GOAL SETTING : What do you want to achieve with this content marketing strategy?
Before starting a content marketing campaign, it is a good idea to precisely formulate the objectives, which can be divided into two main categories.
The first category of objectives is related to sales , where we find lead generation (list of potential customers) , closing sales, cross-selling (selling an additional product to an existing customer) , up-selling (the salesperson invites the customer to purchase more expensive items) and sales referral.
The second category is the brand-related one, which includes the following aspects: brand awareness , brand association (mental associations made by consumers when talking about a brand) and brand loyalty / advocacy .
According to CMI , most companies operating in B2C give much more importance to brand awareness and therefore to loyalty and engagement; B2B companies instead give importance to lead generation and therefore to sales.
It is very important to ensure that all content marketing operations are well aligned with the distribution channels, and that it is very easy for the user to get to the purchasing stage of the product.
2. AUDIENCE MAPPING : Who are your customers? What are their desires?
Once the objectives have been defined, it is time to select the audience to which we want to address: the target. This will help us to better create content that in turn will contribute to the success of the storytelling , that is, the story of the brand or its products, so as to work on awareness and then go through all the phases of the funnel, until we get to sales. ( See our article on the Purchase Funnel )
Harvard professor Douglas Holt recommends focusing on specific topics that are of interest to people in certain subcultures and who tend to congregate in communities to share content they’re interested in.
By studying these communities, you can get interesting ideas for creating content to produce, useful for creating storytelling.
It is also necessary to take into account who is part of these communities, in fact often many activists of these communities are real influencers who can help the brand to share the contents and thus increase its notoriety. Once you have selected the audience you want to address, it is good to understand what their problems or desires are, so as to be able to create ad-hoc contents.
3. CONTENT IDEA AND PLANNING : What is the theme of the contents? What is their sequence to achieve the objectives?
To find the right idea and produce quality content, you need to take into account two important factors.
The first is that the best performing content is the one that customers feel is closest to their needs. The goal of content is to arouse curiosity, so as to gain the attention of the potential consumer. By satisfying their needs, the brand can hope to enter the top of mind (TOM) and push users to purchase.
The second point to always keep in mind is that the contents must respect and tell the ethics and values of the brand itself. It is also important to use the most suitable formats, they can be in written form or they can take a visual form.
CMI reports that 80% of B2B companies use photos, e-newsletters, and website articles; while 80% of B2C companies use case studies, blogs, and real-world events.
Marketing must be able to exploit different formats, Google has calculated that 90% of media interactions take place on a single screen.
Content marketing has a road map and therefore an episodic character. It is more effective in the early stages of the customer journey, but it is important that the contents are distributed throughout the journey to accompany the customer throughout his purchasing phase.
At this point, and having understood and worked on the previous points, it is necessary to focus on the process that requires the most time and budget. Content creation can be internal to a company, and therefore different figures (marketing and otherwise) will be required to act as editors. Regardless of who or how this process is managed, it will always be an ongoing process, and for this very reason it is necessary to assign it to someone who has the right skills to be able to create content in the long term. In case there is no one with the right skills in content creation, it will be better to rely on external specialists.