What is content marketing and how can your business use it?
Written by Barry Eichhorn
Owner & AI Advisor
Content marketing is one of the fastest-growing branches of marketing. We live in a world where content is here to stay. Want to know more about why content marketing is important for your business? Read more about it in this blog.
Bringing your brand or business to the attention of your target audience doesn't always require big advertising or PR activities. With a good content marketing strategy, your business can effectively bring your products, services or story to people's attention. Content marketing is a branch of marketing that focuses on consistently distributing valuable and relevant content for your target audience. The aim is to attract the attention of your (potential) target audience, keep it, and ultimately bring about the desired customer behaviour.
Why should your business use content marketing?
Did you know that 90% of all companies use content in their marketing efforts? Content marketing is an important part of digital marketing. When we look at the younger generation (Gen Z), this generation uses online resources for almost everything they do. They no longer read newspapers and hardly ever go to physical shops. It is therefore important that your business has a consistent and relevant online presence in order to create more reach and reach your target audience. This contributes to achieving your goals.
Forms of content marketing
Video
Besides Google, YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world. Many people search for information by watching a video. TikTok has also become a major platform where short videos are posted and watched. On a channel like TikTok, making short videos is important. Instagram also focuses on short videos with its Reels feature within the platform. These short videos contribute to your content marketing strategy. It is important that your business gets started with this quickly.
Infographics
An infographic is an image that incorporates other images and text. One example of where an infographic can be posted is Pinterest. In an infographic you can make elements clickable and in this way send people to your website to read the related information.
Social media
This form of content marketing is familiar to everyone. Social media consists of multiple platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter etc. Through social media platforms your business can reach many people, based on your goals.
Podcasts
Podcasts are becoming more and more popular. With podcasts you can share information by recording a conversation or discussion. Podcasts are especially popular because listening to a podcast can be combined with other activities such as walking, cycling or driving.
Email marketing
Email marketing can also be seen separately from content marketing, but it is still a handy way to share information with your target audience. With email marketing you can, for example, share newsletters, discount promotions, announcements or other information so that your target audience or customers receive it in their inbox. Emails are generally read well and offer the possibility of sending a lot of content to a person in one go.
Blogs
Blog posts will, in time, bring organic visitors to your website when they are well written for SEO. When writing a blog, it is important to think in advance about what the most important keyword is that you want to write about. In this blog, for example, that is the term content marketing. You also need to look carefully at the words surrounding it. Google looks at the main keyword of a blog (page) and related keywords such as content strategy or content planning. By writing a well SEO-optimised blog on a particular topic, you will in time start to claim a position in Google and get organic traffic from it. More SEO optimisation is still needed, though, to seriously lay claim to higher positions in Google. Read more about SEO here.
Below are a few more facts about blogs
1. 70% of internet users prefer to get to know a company through blogs rather than through ads
Many consumers say they find blogs very reliable sources of information. The more relevant information consumers can look at about your business themselves, the sooner they will feel comfortable with your business, which in turn will lead to achieving your goals.
2. Blog articles with an image get more views
Our brain has been shown to prefer images. For example: people retain 95% of a package leaflet that is presented visually, whereas when it is presented as text we retain as little as 70% in our memory. Images in your blogs are therefore very important!
3. Blogs give you more indexed pages
The more content on the website, the more content there is for Google to index and rank in the search results. Ultimately, this improves the quality of your organic search traffic.
4. Interconnected blog posts generate more traffic
By interconnected blog posts we mean blog posts that stay relevant for quite a long time. From various blogs you can link to other blogs, and as a result organic traffic will still be sent to them for a longer period of time.
How do you start with a good content marketing strategy?
With a good content strategy you put the focus on organic growth of your online business. It helps you determine the goal, the planning and the channels you want to use for this. Ask yourself what content your target audience would like to see and what they might respond to. Be informative and try to take on the role of adviser for your current and potential customers. That way, content marketing can come to play an increasingly important role in your entire digital strategy.
Want to know more about content marketing or a good content strategy? Get in touch with no obligation and we will be happy to help