Content marketing is the practice of creating useful, relevant content to attract leads for your business. Learn the basics + where to start.
You’ve probably heard that content marketing is a powerful tool for business owners who want to attract qualified leads, build brand loyalty, and drive sales. That sounds pretty amazing, but does it really work? Exactly what is content marketing and where do you start?
In this blog post, we’ll cover the basics of content marketing, from understanding what it is and how it works to the steps involved in launching your first content marketing campaign. Are you ready to learn about the power of content marketing and how it can help you reach your business goals? Let’s dive in!
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the practice of creating useful and relevant content to attract, engage, and retain leads for your business. The goal of content marketing is to strategically distribute content that provides value to your target audience in order to establish your brand’s expertise, increase brand awareness, and drive sales.
When used correctly, content marketing establishes and nurtures strong relationships with prospective and current customers. When your target audience begins to think of your brand as a valuable source of information and guidance, they’re more likely to seek you out when they’re ready to make a purchase.
What are the Main Types of Content Marketing?
With the right content marketing strategy, businesses can build relationships with their target audience and keep their products and services at top of mind. Here are some examples of content marketing types that any business can utilize to attract customers and drive action:
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Social media posts
- Infographics
- Email marketing
- Webinars
- Online courses
- Podcasts
- E-books
- Newsletters
- Whitepapers
How Do I Start Content Marketing?
If you’re a business owner who wants to leverage content marketing to drive sales, the first step is to define your target audience. Who is your ideal customer? What problems are they hoping to solve when they reach out to your business? Knowing who you’re creating content for and why will guide your topic choices and help you decide what types of content to create.
How to Plan Your First Content Marketing Campaign
Here is an overview of the basic steps you’ll need to take to plan your first content marketing campaign.
Step 1: Set Your Content Marketing Goals.
Once you’ve defined your target audience, you’re ready to set your content marketing goals. What are you hoping to achieve with your content marketing efforts? Are you hoping to increase brand awareness, drive organic traffic to your website, generate new leads, retain your current customers, increase conversions, or all of the above?
Step 2: Research the Competition.
Competitor research is an essential next step. How are businesses like yours utilizing content marketing? What types of content are working for them? What type of audience are they targeting? How often are they publishing new content?
Of course, you don’t want to copy your competitors exactly. You’ll use this information to get ideas and inspiration for your own content marketing strategy, making adjustments to reflect your brand’s voice and unique selling points.
Step 3: Set Your Content Marketing Budget.
Set your content marketing budget and decide how much time your team will have to devote to your content marketing efforts. This will help you make some important decisions in the next step.
Step 4: Define Your Content Strategy.
Now you’re ready to define your content strategy. Decide what types of content you want to create, how you’re going to distribute it, and how often you’re going to publish new content. Think about what your target audience is looking for and how you can create content that is tailored to their needs and interests.
You should also consider how you’re going to promote your content. Will you be utilizing paid ads? Do you want to leverage SEO to generate organic traffic? How about sharing on social media or working with influencers to spread the word?
Take your budget, as well as your team’s expertise and bandwidth, into account as you make these decisions. Do you have the resources you need to create the content in-house, or will you need to hire outside help?
Step 5: Make a Content Plan.
This step involves creating a content calendar that defines exactly what will be published when, where it will be published, who will be creating the content, and how it will be promoted.
Step 6: Do the Work.
Create, publish, and promote your content as defined in your content calendar.
Step 7: Monitor Your Results.
Track and analyze your results. Monitor your website analytics and conversion metrics to see which content is achieving the desired results. Make adjustments to your content strategy based on these findings.
Content Marketing Best Practices for Business Owners
Here are some general tips and best practices for business owners who are looking to dive into content marketing for the first time.
- For most business owners, the best way to maximize content marketing ROI when you’re first starting out will be to create a blog and publish SEO-optimized blog posts directly on your website to generate organic traffic that increases over time. SEO will bring traffic directly to your website month over month for as long as you maintain your website and blog.
- Once you have your blog up and running, you can begin investing in other content types and promotion strategies as budget and bandwidth allow. Diversifying your content efforts is a great way to reach qualified customers on a variety of platforms.
- Emphasize quality over quantity. No matter what type of content you’re producing, ensure that it is well-researched, engaging, easy to digest, and useful to the reader. You’ll get much better results from publishing one or two high-quality content pieces each week than you will from cranking out volumes of low-quality content.
- Consider planning your content one to three months at a time so you can adjust your plan based on what’s working and what isn’t. This will also allow you to easily adapt your content plan around seasonal opportunities, new brand launches, and current trends.
Content Marketing ROI: Is It Really Worth the Effort?
Are you wondering if content marketing is really worth the effort? Let’s take a look at some content marketing data and research to help you decide.
According to research by the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing around half the price. Demand Metric also published data that shows content marketing can deliver up to six times higher conversion rates than other types of marketing.
According to a study by HubSpot, businesses that publish daily high-quality content receive 4.5 times more website visitors than those who don’t blog regularly. In a survey conducted by Bright Edge, 73% of respondents reported that content was a significant factor in their decision to trust a brand.
And finally, the above expert research and data prove that creating and sharing valuable content consistently leads to an increase in organic traffic month over month. Now that’s some serious content marketing ROI!
The Takeaway: Is Content Marketing Right for Your Business?
If you’re a business owner who wants to attract a targeted audience, build long-term engagement with your customers, increase brand loyalty, and generate measurable ROI, content marketing is right for you. When done correctly, content marketing can increase your online visibility, build trust with your ideal customer, and drive sales.
