Why you absolutely need to do content marketing?
Is there even another option?
In my article on What to include in a Comprehensive Digital Marketing Plan, I spoke about content marketing as one of the pillars for any digital marketing strategy. Today, we will explore further.
First thing first, What is content marketing?
Content marketing centers on conceptualizing, designing, developing, distributing and promoting content to your target audience, primarily online but also offline. The ultimate aim is to capture the mind share of your prospects and attract them to become your customers.
And what content marketing is not?
1. Content marketing is not a silver bullet that will get you instant customers
2. Content marketing is not a new name for native advertising (Amazing article by Joe Pulizzi -- Founder of the Content Marketing Institute )
3. Content marketing is not just something that you write to rank higher on search engines.
4. Content marketing is also not some flashy social media posts or the videos you posted on Youtube.
Hope you get the gist.
But without a content strategy, you may well be putting your content in black hole. Especially if you are running a business that still need customers to run or if you are trying to build a brand that you want people to recognize apart from your family.
Let’s consider another scenario. You and your team created an amazing video on how to reduce belly fat in 30 days. Great! You posted it on your website, your social media pages, on YouTube and other video publishing platforms.
Do you know that 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute?
And how long do you think, your stand alone video will be able to withstand the onslaught of all that new content that is getting created every single minute?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Another scenario on top of this could be, if you decided to seed your video with some advertising money, more specifically some YouTube Ads, some sprinkling of PPC ads and some social media promotions.
At the end of month you got some 1000 leads and the cost for acquiring every lead is not much, only INR 500. So you spent some INR 500,000 in a single month. Not bad considering the ROI. But what about next month? You have to spend INR 500,000 again. And then the next month, again. And again. off course that will happen, if you want the leads to keep coming. In other words, when your marketing budget is exhausted or dried then the leads will stop coming out.
What if you create a video again which contains a link to your product so that people can try it themselves, Then you create another video in the same series and then another. As if you are telling a story. And every video is watched by 100 people apart from your company employees and your family members. People who could be your customers. Out of those 100, two become your customers. Then next video, again you get 2 new customers. And again. And again. What about your ROI now. Zero marketing cost and X number of customers. and these videos will continue to generate leads over, and over, and over, every single month. And not just that video - every video that you create will do the same for you.
And that is why you need a CONTENT STRATEGY.
But this is not it. Content marketing helps in multiple other ways;
1. Strong brand awareness
2. Building thought leadership in the industry
3. Customer Conversions - Direct and Indirect
4. Increased Web traffic
5. Improved SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The best thing about content marketing is that you could easily be successful in content marketing even if you don't have a huge budget or a large team. The minimum team size you need to start is ONE. Yes one person, who could be YOU.
And you can start content marketing at almost zero investment.
Yet do not, even for a moment, think that customers will come in droves to buy your product after reading one blog post or after watching one video.
If you still don't believe me, then think what are the other ways that you can use to entice your customers to your products or services. Anything that you can think of will be a form of content, either paid or free but still be some form of content.
Content marketing is tough but completely worth it because who doesn't want to see those customers coming in with all the trust they have in your products or services.
Content marketing build that trust.
So, what are you thinking? If you are already using content marketing for your company, I would love to know more on what is working for you and what isn’t.
Also, you can tell me if I missed anything because I will be covering each topic and associated technique one by one.
And if nothing, then I would be glad to know your biggest takeaway.
