A substance digitally created by an individual or an organisation for online consumption is called content. Content marketing is the process of creating relevant, valuable, witty, and attractive content for a product or service promotion and publishing them online.
Generally, a series of contents are released in a sequence. The purpose is to grow, engage, nurture, and retain a targeted audience. Meaningful content and interactive digital platforms support brand creation. Online feedback leaves room for improvement. The bottom line of content marketing is making a profit, either by an individual or an organisation. This process is also termed digital marketing.
Different Stages and Strategies of Content Marketing
One requires to understand that like all other business strategies, for content marketing a prospective business owner needs to follow a series of processes through a given time chain. The steps to be adhered to for successful online marketing are mentioned sequentially -
To get the goal defined
The goals chosen should be smart, realistic, time-bound, and achievable. The business owner must have a full end-to-end idea regarding the business he wishes to venture into and how he plans to stand out from the competition.
Another important point to be noted is the budget of the project. The advertiser must have a clear concept regarding the initial budget and should know how to regulate the same with the passage of time. The content to be prepared should be based on these inputs.
Audience acclimatisation
Knowing one’s customers is an important aspect of any business, online or offline. Based on such knowledge, business channels are chosen. Content marketing is generally done through the following online avenues – blogs, tweets, newsletters, videos, social media posts, emails, white papers and podcasts. Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Messenger, and Twitter or professional connecting media like LinkedIn, Naukri.com or FountIt may be utilised by the advertiser depending on the target audience for the selected business.
Sometimes advertisers also choose emails and portals of Government companies for their content marketing. One of the best modes of content advertisement is to do it through e-commerce portals tagged with the sale links of associated products or services. The content should be published on the platform which drives the maximum volume of targeted audience for a specified business. A thorough customer research is essential before one foray into real activity.
Relationship building with the audience
Online platforms offer a business owner the privilege of building a one-to-one relationship with the targeted audience. He gets the advantage of growing his audience by virtue of interacting with them directly and providing feedback, in general. This feedback will mature the audience and give them a new perspective, which is aligned with the product or service the business owner plans to sell.
This process has a double benefit. First, the potential buyer feels important that his specific queries or problems have been responded to with care. Secondly, the customer develops trustworthiness with the blogger individual or organisation. Additionally, enthusiasm regarding the new product grows in their mind.
Keyword research
Content marketing is an online publication, hence all care should be taken to use strong keywords in the content so that the publication hits within the first ten on any search engine. The business owner must find out the most appropriate keywords to be placed in the content.
The keywords must describe the product exclusively and should also hit a prospective customer’s mind while searching for similar genre products. It may be noted that using specific phrases for a product may narrow the search results largely.
Publish the main content
After the relationship has been established with the audience or prospective clients, comes the time to publish the main content. In whatever form the content is published, it must be technically informative and transparent. Content must be aptly descriptive about the product and reveal benefits to demonstrate how it stands clearly out from the competition. Generally, the business owner hires a digital marketing expert to get things right.
Email list
The business owner must get his relevant email list ready. He may deliver his content to meaningful individuals or organisations, who may be interested in his product. There are a lot of cost-effective options for subscriber plans. It may be noted that the content of the email may be partially derived from the technical blog already posted and may be created further as deemed fit.
In the initial days, an email per month is good enough. However, it may be increased based on the response you get in the long run.
Using paid advertisements
When content has started picking up on online media and a business owner starts getting positive feedback, he may make the best use of paid advertisements on social media pages to grab more eyeballs for his content. The business owner must analyse and measure results periodically.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Online content marketing has its own benefits when compared to its traditional counterpart. The advantages are as follows:
Digital advertisement saves enormously on cost. Product promotion through shows, free sample distribution or engaging celebrity brand ambassadors are far too costly. Good content drives more traffic and hence creates more business leads.
Loyal customers become advocates of the brand themselves.
Quality and genuineness of the content published by the business owner bring in his reliability and authority amongst the users. A business owner has the privilege of being a brand influencer. Many loyal customers are created as a result.
Conclusion
Nowadays online marketing is being practised largely. People rely on blogs and videos published by all the influencers. Content marketing is a specialised task. A digital marketing expert knows all the steps that need to be followed in sequence and this has become a lucrative profession nowadays.
The Post Graduate Program in Digital Marketing offered by Imarticus will give prospective candidates a perfect start to their careers. The duration of the course is 6 months and the mode of training is online.
Visit the official website of Imarticus for more course-related details.
