What is Content Marketing ? Learn the Basics of Content Marketing - AatmaBharat

Before starting with the Content Marketing topic, we must know what does Marketing means?

Marketing is the process of teaching consumers why they should choose your product or service over those of your competitors, and is a form of influencing communication.

Content Marketing is part of Digital Marketing which is vital for your business and brand awareness. To know more about Digital Marketing visit Aatmabharat’s most loved topic: What is Digital Marketing: Everything About it. 

Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing valuable ideas in language to attract prospects and convert them into customers. Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience.

The primary goal is to educate, entertain, and inspire people to earn their trust and build brand awareness. Businesses use content marketing to increase leads and enable sales by using site analytics, keyword research, and targeted strategy recommendations. 

Why Content Marketing is Important for Your Business?

Awareness:  Content Marketing creates awareness about your product or even services. You cannot visit each and every customer to communicate about your product or service, you create a strategy to connect with them in an effective manner. 

Research: Once a customer is aware of you, they will perform research to educate themselves. For example, a car buyer will try to find out what different types of cars exist, and which one will fit their needs.

Consideration: At this point, the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they’re getting a high-quality product at a fair price.

Types of content

The content fits into 5 buckets:

Written:	Video:	Graphics:	Social:	Audio:
Blog articles.	Video blogs.	Infographics.	User-generated content.	Podcasts.
Product descriptions.	Studio production.	Custom illustrations.	Hashtag campaigns.	Webinars.
Landing pages.	On-location video.	Calls-to-action.	Quizzes.	Recorded interviews.
Press releases.	Vox pops.	Content formatting.	Complementary social posts.
Long-form guides.	Video interviews or testimonials.	Wireframes and site mockups.	Polls/surveys.
FAQs.	Animations and GIFs.		Contests.
Email copy.	Web demos.
Ad copy.	Product demos.
eBooks.	Corporate promos.
White papers.	Event footage.
Case studies.	Virtual reality and augmented reality.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

To create a successful and worth content marketing strategy which is specially designed for your brand, here are some starting points and simple examples:

1. Identify short- and long-term business goals:

40% increase in customer subscriptions in the next quarter.

2. Establish how the marketing team can help deliver on those goals:

Create middle-of-the-funnel content that’s helping push prospects closer to a conversion.

3. Create a template, model, or workflow that organizes and facilitates the execution of the above steps:

Use agile methodology, project management software, creative agency vendors, or other “systems” to coordinate your campaign.

4. Understand which buyer personas you’re targeting with your content:

Who within your target audience has purchasing power to become a paying customer?

5. Decide which types of content are preferred by those buyers:

Does this persona mostly consume short articles or do they prefer video demos and face-to-face meetings?

6. Select promotions and distribution channels your target audience uses:

Are they active on specific social media platforms or are they relying on email or search engines to gather information?

7. Map conversion pathways to the customer journey:

At which stage of the funnel are you hoping to increase conversions and remove any final customer obstacles?

8. Design calls-to-action and event triggers for tracking and measuring performance and goal completions:

To properly attribute success and identify dropoff, create clickable CTAs that lead to dedicated landing pages – and track those clicks, links, and actions with code and integration into your analytics dashboard.

Beside all these strategies you must question or you must be prepared to answer some of the key points. Stay here with AatmaBharat to know what exactly you are required to ask yourself to establish a successful Content Marketing Strategy.

What Questions are required to be Answered to accomplish the Strategy?

Here is the no. of questions you must answer yourself or you must have prepared for it so that you can establish a successful content marketing strategy:

1. Who are your users?
2. Who are your competitors?
3. What do you bring to the table?
4. What do you hear?
5. Who will produce your content?
6. What content do you already have?
7. What is the purpose of your content?
8. How often should you publish content?
9. How will you distribute your content?
10. Who is in charge of your content?
11. Who is going to maintain the content?
12. Who is responsible for the results?
13. What’s your destination (core strategy)?