Content marketing is a form of promotion which helps businesses to turn ordinary users into interested audiences, the audience into buyers, and buyers into regular customers. A well-planned strategy and, essentially, content – useful articles, guides, tutorials, checklists – allow us to go this way. In general, anything that tells you about the product without prejudice and with interest.

Expertise of materials is also important. Such indirect advertising via useful content forms the trust of the audience and increases confidence that professionals stand behind the products. In some niches, this is a key factor – sometimes it’s hard to navigate in the big stream of offers. That’s why those who show their expertise and usefulness to clients stand out from the competition.

What Tasks Content Marketing Solves for Promotion

Content marketing is an effective way to attract customers through engagement and familiarity with a product or service. And this rule works for any business, even if you advertise extra-chilli-slot.com/ or a recently opened online store. According to analytics agency CMI, 81% of marketers consider content a key component of their business strategy. And here’s why.

Traffic Growth and Position Improvements

One of the key stages of promotion through content marketing is preparing a content plan. For this purpose, they take statistics of queries from search engines, on the basis of which they come up with topics for articles, guides, checklists and other materials. If the content is useful, relevant and accurately hits the pains of the audience, the site begins to get traffic, and its position grows.

Promotion Through the Audience

Audience warmed through the content willingly sharing useful and meaningful information with other users: friends, colleagues, family. Thus, over time, brand recognition grows, and the percentage of coverage increases.

No less important are reviews or product guides from ordinary customers. People willingly believe real reviews – according to Trustpilot, almost nine out of ten (89%) consumers read them before buying.

Successful Market Positioning

Content marketing helps you effectively distance yourself from the competition when the price and quality of your products are largely similar. In this case, expert materials and good communication with the audience tip the scales in your favor. But to do this, you will have to break the product down into its components, highlighting its unique features and advantages. That is, the user must understand through the content what problems it solves, what it is for, and how it functions.

Studying the Audience

Feedback is an important stage of interaction with the audience. Feedback can be received through different channels: publications in social networks, feedback, mailing lists, bots in messengers. The goal is to highlight the user’s typical difficulties in interacting with the product, give advice and eliminate problems in the future.

Increasing Expertise and Building Trust

Indirect advertising through content helps build trust with the audience, gaining a large number of loyal customers over time. This is what any brand that builds a content marketing strategy strives for.

With the help of useful and expert materials, the customer gets answers to questions about the product or service, learns its value and uniqueness, and as a result, is motivated to buy. This is especially useful in niches where you want to work with the audience at different stages of the decision to buy. These include medicine, home improvement, B2B, and IT products.

In order to systematize your publishing and get the most out of it, you need to create a strategy. This is a fully thought-out plan that determines which channels are most effective for engaging the target audience.

Implementation of a Content Marketing Strategy

The key element in developing a strategy is the semantic kernel – it will allow you to choose the direction of movement based on the topic of the resource and audience requests.

The Basis of a Content Marketing Strategy

Whether it’s promoting a commercial website or an information project, any content marketing strategy consists of the following aspects:

  1. Channels for promoting content. As a rule, the more of them – the better, because even a homogeneous audience is distributed across different platforms. Therefore, it’s better to share content through several channels:
  • Your own blog.
  • Social networks.
  • Specialized media.
  • Messengers, which are actively gaining popularity.
  • Thematic platforms.
  • Email newsletters.
  • YouTube channel.
  • Events: offline or online in the form of webinars.
  1. Audience. When working out the strategy, it’s important to take into account the peculiarities of each channel, identifying your own audience, the target audience. The content and the final product are designed exactly for it. The basic parameters of the target audience are demographics: sex, age, education, income level, lifestyle, values. Knowing your target audience “by sight”, you will understand their needs.
  2. Metrics to measure effectiveness. To understand how useful a content marketing strategy is, you can track a wagon and a small cartload of different metrics. Depending on the channel, it could be:
  • Number of views.
  • Conversion rate.
  • Price per click.
  • Volume of traffic.
  • Site visibility.
  • Number of subscribers.

However, behavioral factors are important for almost any promotion channel. The time spent on the site, the depth of viewing, and the bounce rate are metrics that help evaluate the audience’s interaction with the content.

The strategy is the base on which the further dynamics of audience engagement and sales growth are built. And its important component is the content plan.

Writing a Content Plan

A more tangible and equally important part of content marketing is a content plan. In many ways, it’s part of a platform-specific promotion strategy. A content plan does not define goals, objectives, or methods, but rather one task: publishing relevant and regular materials on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

Schedule with specific topics only when channels are selected, target audience is clear, and metrics for evaluation are defined. The content plan framework includes:

  • Frequency of publications with dates.
  • Content topics.
  • Promotion channels.

Once the content plan is drawn up, you can begin preparing relevant and useful materials for the target audience.

Where to Look for Ideas for a Content Plan

Finding topics will not be difficult if the target audience is well understood. At this stage, it should already be clear how, where and why to publish materials. Topics can even appear by themselves – just ask the questions of the target audience.

In general, finding topics is possible with:

  • Competitor analysis. Monitor and study publications on your topic. It’s better to do this with the help of analytics services, identifying the most discussed and popular materials for a certain period.
  • If possible, find out from your audience what topics they are interested in. Polls should reveal the things users are most concerned about. And what concerns people, they actively discuss.
  • Google Trends. Reacting with useful content to relevant news and events will help attract your audience. Among the trends you can find topics relevant to your topic.

What Content Is Used for Promotion

Content marketing helps build audience trust in a product through different material formats. According to statistics, the most popular format among authors is articles with practical advice, in second place are news and trends, and in third place are instructions and e-books. In general, there are several types of content:

Selling

Such materials are aimed only at promoting a product or service – they should not exceed 20% of the total share of the published content. The forms may be as follows:

  • Product descriptions.
  • Cases.
  • Special offers.
  • Announcements.

Engaging

Materials that dispose of and motivate the audience to communicate. This kind of content aims to engage and motivate the audience, strengthening the connection with the brand. Formats include:

  • Surveys.
  • Questions.
  • Discussions.
  • Tips.
  • Answers to user questions.

Entertainment

Materials that do not carry any special semantic load, which aims to provide positive emotions. Act carefully – what’s funny to you will not necessarily go to the target audience. Formats:

  • Memes.
  • Stories.
  • Selections.
  • Riddles.
  • Corporate humor.

Reputation

Its purpose is to create a positive image of the company, to support the loyalty of the audience to the products. It can be said that any content, to varying degrees, either kills or strengthens the reputation of the brand. However, the main formats include:

The achievements of the company or employees.

  • Beautiful numbers.
  • Tops and rankings.
  • Cases.
  • Media publications.
  • Teaching

This content helps build an expert image with your target audience, especially in a niche of complex products or services. Formats:

  • Instructions.
  • Infographics.
  • Debunking myths.
  • Educational articles and videos.
  • Detailed reviews.

Whichever content format is chosen, it should be useful for the target audience. You should use as many channels as possible: your own blog, social networks, third-party platforms, mailing lists. About 62% of consumers are inclined to buy if the products are accompanied by pictures or video.

Content for Post-sales Service

Attracting customers is a costly and often quite complicated process. But it doesn’t stop at the point of purchase, because that’s where the post-sales service comes in. Its job is to prolong the pleasure of the purchase by maintaining the connection between the customer and the brand. You can engage with your audience throughout the buying journey with a variety of content:

  • New product announcements. Interested audiences love new products, which mailers help deliver information about. Useful content can be in the format of articles, manuals, checklists. Announcements of new products can also be included at the end of each email.
  • Answers to questions. It’s not only about the FAQ section on the website or support via email. Customers often need guides to help them use the products.
  • Educational content. Instructions, reviews, and other educational content help not only with purchase decisions but also with repeat sales. When preparing content, you can focus on users’ questions.

Current data, trends, news. Users often keep up with the world of technology, medicine and other niches. The more complex the product, the more picky the audience. The goal of the business is to become a reliable source of information. Then customers will be guided by your opinion when making a purchasing decision.

Summary

Content marketing solves many business problems: from attracting customers to post-sales service to retaining them. Most importantly, every piece of content you publish becomes part of a system that works for your brand image. However, approach SEO through content marketing with caution. Remember that even though it’s effective, it takes a lot of time and effort.