Do you know how many B2C and B2B that leverages content marketing? Can you guess? Well let me tell you, 90% of B2C and 93% of B2B marketers utilizes content marketing.
Incredible right! With numbers like these, it is actually hard to imagine what the 10 and 7% are waiting for!
HERE IS AN OVERVIEW OF EVERYTHING COVERED IN THIS ARTICLE:
- Understanding Content Marketing
- Concept
- Execution
- Laying Your Foundation
- Defining Your Goals
- Defining Your Unique Value Proposition
- Gathering Your Resources
- Intellectual Capital
- Creative Talent
- Network Connection
- Building Your Platform
- Blogging
- Social
- Additional Media
- Developing, Monitoring, and Engaging
- Idea Creation
- Analytics
- Distribution
- Expanding and Beyond
However, while these numbers indicate the commonness of content marketing as a practice, they fail to capture the efficacy of the respective campaigns.
In reality, just 34% of B2C and also 42% of B2B marketers feel that they are “effective” at content marketing.
Any kind of content marketing campaign requires a solid foundation of knowledge, planning, as well as implementation in order to succeed.
Failure to lay this foundation can cause misguided efforts, disinterested readership, and a waste of company and human resources.
If you are just beginning to create your content marketing campaign, or you are looking for a clean slate, the process of building from scratch is in fact not so intricate.
By knowing the objectives of content marketing, building your corporate identity, developing your platform, and establishing a process of content creation that is optimized, your team can count themselves among the growing number of marketing experts that feel confident and effective.
Understanding Content Marketing
Content marketing is actually often touted as the next level of digital marketing. For any discerning business owner, claims like these should give pause.
It goes without saying that any type of solution that purports to be the next step in business development need not be accepted without discerning consideration.
So, before we discuss the building and application of a content marketing campaign, it is crucial to know specifically what your aims are, and what function content marketing serves in shaping your brand image and positioning your business.
Doing this will definitely help you to better recognize the goals of each measure of the process and also help structure your decisions and expectations in a pertinent context.
Concept OF CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is actually, on the surface, exactly what it sounds like: advertising and marketing via content.
In a cursory way, content marketing is about creating blog posts, videos, slideshows, photos, infographics, webinars, and other media pieces that capture target market attention and create a good association with your brand.
On a much deeper degree, content marketing is actually the strategy of developing stimulating and meaningful relationships with your customers.
Traditional advertising methods are actually made to entice viewers using depictions of positive advantages and lifestyle fulfillment attained through a solution.
Content marketing, on the other hand, enters into a discussion regarding the needs and aspirations of the client via value-driven media.
From a top-down point of view, content marketing is the establishment of one or many customer-facing interface networks that help better satisfy their needs and inform your products and marketing.
Your blog posts, webinars, and YouTube videos end up being the face of your company, demonstrating your personality and authority as well as welcoming consumer relationship at the same time.
Execution
This is the theoretical basis for content marketing. The implementation of this concept refers to seeking, developing, and nurturing those consumer relationships through a range of channels.
An analysis shows that buyers experience 57% of the buying journey before speaking to sales, and content is created to address their needs, questions, and concerns during the course of time.
Blog posts are likely to be a major resource of content marketing and for your organisation. In reality, 82% of marketing professionals that maintain a company blog see good ROI for their inbound marketing efforts.
Blogging involves the creation and monitoring of articles, both textual and visual, that deliver value to your customers.
Furthermore, your staff will be tasked with responding to comments in both the discussion section and on social media.
Other platforms have their own respective responsibilities. The platforms you use will rely on your available budget and creative resources.
According to Content Marketing Institute, 87% of businesses adopted a video component, while 86% and 85% adopted articles and in-person events respectively.
Nevertheless, your campaign contents are dependent on your particular sector, resources, and goals.
What matters most is that it is based upon a solid foundation of strategy, self-knowledge, and quality.
Laying Your Foundation
It is crucial to note, prior to diving into the specifics of development and execution, that any marketing campaign must have to stem from a foundation of focus.
Without understanding your aims and your assets, and marketing, inbound or otherwise, can easily and will experience an absence of crucial directions.
Thus, before we write our first blog post or begin shooting our first video, let’s lay that foundation.
Defining Your Goals
The first thing to determine about your campaign is what it is designed to achieve.
For obvious reasons, no two businesses find themselves in the same market position, subject to the same brand perception, level of awareness, or share of available revenue.
First ask yourselves, “what will our company like to boost,” and let all subsequent efforts arise from the answer.
For businesses with low market share, the answer might be “awareness”. For businesses with unfavorable perception, positive associations may be your goal.
Whatever answer coming from your unique position in the market, see to it that your goals are sound. A common strategy for guaranteeing this is described as making your targets “SMART”.
This stands up for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Further reading relating to SMART goal may be found many places, but for the sake of presentation, below is an instance of a SMART marketing goal:”
Increase our Twitter audience through 15% over the following 6 months.”As you can see, the objective has each of the SMART components.
The goal is specified to Twitter, given a number against which to check current progression, attainable to our hypothetical firm, relevant to the aim of improving brand awareness, and also time-sensitive with the goal of 6 months.
Defining Your Unique Value Proposition
The identity of your content marketing plays a crucial role in your efforts.
Clients wish to see the human side of your firm; a side with personality, consideration for their needs, and delighted to pass on value from a unique position of knowledge.
This position is referred to as your “unique value proposition.” simply put, your unique value proposition is the one thing you can provide the market that others can not.
The nature of this unique value proposition varies between sectors.
B2B companies should use a position of knowledge and authority, acting as a source of valuable information to guide the work of other businesses.
B2C enterprises should adopt a position that contributes to the lifestyle of the buyer.
Consumer goods and services are tailored with the goal of improving consumer lives, so portraying a good way of living made possible by your product is a prudent tactic.
This value proposition will certainly end up being the source of your creative and logistical planning.
Conceptualize your efforts around the fulfillment of consumer value in a manner that others cannot, and idea generation, brand positioning, and cross-channel marketing start to fall into place.
Gathering Your Resources
Content marketing, like any other marketing effort, costs money.
With blogs, videos, man-hours, and paid promotion in the mix, it’s effortless to expect that such a venture may be a needless drain.
Nonetheless, a study has shown that content marketing costs 62% lower than traditional marketing and generates 3 times as many leads.
Two main elements motivate this decrease in cost and synergistic increase in lead generation. The first is the price of the distribution channels involved.
Social media and YouTube profiles are free for any individual to sign-up, and while some might offer premium resources for organisations, these are by no means necessary.
Blog hosting can be acquired via existing web properties and email campaigns are much less expensive to generate (and far greater ROI) than direct-mail campaigns.
The second variable lies in the availability of resources.
Ad campaigns might require the enlistment of an ad agency, and interactive web properties may require the services of a web developer.
In the content marketing stadium, however, your knowledge is your resource.
With a little writing talent and some creative minds at the helm, content generation is a process of taking what you know and putting it to paper.
Intellectual Capital
The official meaning of intellectual capital is the “the value of an organization’s employee knowledge”.
“In the particular context of content marketing, this refers to the proprietary and professional knowledge that your team has that you can easily wield to create unique content.
For B2B business specifically, intellectual capital is the major source of inspiration for white papers, articles, and info-graphics.
The ability to study an intricate condition and recommend a solution or set of suggestions for sector fellows is the formula for creating a position of authority within the market, and also your intellectual capital makes that possible.
For B2C ventures, this idea is actually a bit a more ambiguous.
Expertise in garment production or bike manufacturing does have some value, yet consumer experiencing publications must concentrate instead on the lifestyle that your business espouses.
In this particular sense, your intellectual capital is the aggregate workplace and consumer culture that you’ve created, and the ability to articulate that culture to others.
Creative Talent
Intellectual capital refers specifically to the knowledge that your team has that relates to your vertical.
Creative ability, on the contrary, refers to the talents your team delivers when tasked with conveying that information in unique and meaningful ways.
The capacity of your crew may vary greatly and, depending on your budget, can be outsourced to trustworthy vendors.
Several firms have the creative abilities to make your campaign a success, giving you the time to supply the knowledge while skilled professionals handle the visual and textual details.
Network Connections
Something whereupon blogs thrive is guest posting. Other creative outlets, featuring podcasts, webinars, and video series can also take advantage of the utilization of prominent names and talents within your line.
Use your available professional connections to your advantage and avail both your guest and your company a platform on which to shine.
Building Your Platform
The next step in the process is to build the platform for your campaign. In a general sense, this consists of all social media accounts and web properties needed to distribute a variety of media types.
Due to the fact that you are starting fresh, it is beneficial to start just with a blog on your corporate website and some essential social media accounts on high-traffic sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
This will provide your organisation with a sound foundation on which to work, but it is necessary to realize that the location and preferences of your customer base can vary significantly.
Later, we will review the value of monitoring and repeating your technique so as to specialize your campaign to your needs.
Blogging
Blogging has become a real necessity for any type of content marketing work. Blog sites boost web presence, providing 434% additional indexed pages and 97% more indexed links than websites without one.
Furthermore, B2B organizations that blog generate 67% more leads monthly than those who do not. If your business is larger, consult with your IT department regarding setting up a blog.
Your IT staff likely have their own protocols for website development, so they will definitely have the knowledge required to set it up and set it up accurately.
With the blog in place, coordinate with other constituent parties, including marketing and design teams, in order to finish the development process.
If your business is smaller, setting up a blog is feasible through a number of free of services.
An examination of each platform individually lies outside the scope of our discussion here, but WordPress is a time-tested go-to for professional and personal bloggers alike.
Additionally, WordPress includes a huge library of totally free and premium themes for visual customization, widgets for functions, and forums for help.
If your team have some accessible budget, a web developer might be a prudent investment.
These individuals comprehend both the technical and aesthetic aspects of blog development and can operate with your existing web infrastructure to create a platform for your use.
They could be a little pricier, but the web result is a polished and professional look. It is essential to keep in mind, nonetheless, that blog writing is not for everybody.
B2C enterprises, as an example, may benefit more coming from a well-curated social network account.
This is because, while blogging uses the opportunity to share and cover extensive topics, many customer interests are better shared with other forms of media.
Rock climbing, as an example, is much better demonstrated using YouTube videos as opposed to text.
Retail clothing is better showcased via a tool like Pinterest, where sharing and discussion are enabled by the platform’s unique capabilities.
What is essential is for your organisation to recognize what works for you, and do it effectively.
Social
Social media profiles are a lot less complex than blogs but not less significant.
In 2012, 72% of adult internet users were active on social media sites, making it one of the most centralized channels for customer contact.
This presence is not passive either, as 67% of Twitter customers indicated that they were actually even more likely to purchase from brands they follow. Sign-up is free and painless.
Select a name that could be easily related to your business, if not the business name itself.
Fill in your full account on each channel, as this makes it simpler for users to trust the honesty of the account.
Where appropriate, choose graphics for backdrops and profile photos that fit your business image.
Once again, the services of a designer can easily help make your profile page stand out and create a favorable perception with your clients.
Additional Media
Many other media profiles are available at your discretion. YouTube is strongly encouraged thinking about the digestibility and potency of well-managed channels.
Other options include SlideShare, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tumblr, and Soundcloud, just to name a few.
The priority of each of these channels depends on your team’s evaluation of their use in your practice, and none are mandatory in a content marketing context.
Other kinds of content are just beginning to come up as readers ask for more powerful and engaging formats.
Developing, Monitoring, and Engaging
The next step in the process is setting up a creative engine.
The moment content marketing job starts, it is necessary to remain both consistent and focused on the needs of your audience in order to create an impact.
According to one case study, the anticipated maturation time-frame for companies who secure their content and reliably blog 2-3 times weekly is 6-12 months.
This figure is absolutely not gospel, but carrying reasonable expectations once you start the process is equivalent to success.
Idea Creation
This is where everything begins. No infographic or blog post is created without first developing a concept.
Concept development or idea creation is commonly a team-wide effort, merging the most effective ideas of every person involved in order to choose the best items for the week or month in advance.
Typical methods for idea generation include spreadsheets, roundtable discussions, or project management systems like Trello or Asana.
Digital platforms specifically allow the generation and development of ideas clear through to completion, housing the creative process in one place.
When ideas run dry, there are loads of places to find inspiration. Other industry publications or blog sites supply a look at what’s on people’s minds at the moment.
Comment sections provide direct reviews coming from your target market regarding what topics should be dealt with.
Current events are yet another productive opportunity, specifically when a headline provides an opportunity for your company to comment and provide guidance.
Whatever the specific strategy or source of inspiration, idea creation need to start early and continue often.
All ideas can then be included to a master content calendar to maintain a constant flow of publication for voracious audiences.
Bear in mind that consistency is actually more crucial than quality (not that you should sacrifice either!) and your target market will reward you for your initiatives.
Analytics
Google Analytics
You will not master content marketing for the very first time. Understanding your specific market and audience requires repeated models of idea creation, publication, and monitoring.
To allow this method, ensure that your team puts together Google Analytics for all applicable web properties.
If your firm is larger, your IT division can easily support this procedure. If you are small sized, plugging the platform into your website is actually fairly straightforward.
With analytics, your crew is given a myriad of data from which to draw insight.
Web traffic, bounce rate, new visitor percentage, and time spent on site can all help determine the efficiency of your strategy.
More advanced analytical approaches call for a discussion that is outside the scope of our discussion, but a bunch of resources may be found via the Google Analytics YouTube channel, Analytics Academy, and other independent professionals.
Distribution
As pointed out, your content marketing efforts are a conversation.
Establishing a platform to share content is vital, however, but its ultimate purpose is to enable meaningful engagement with your target market.
This is actually where social networking sites truly shine.
What once was a static process of publishing on a website and hoping for the best has actually ended up becoming a dynamic process of exploring and engaging with users through social tools.
Each social media platforms has its own strengths and weaknesses, and comprehending these is crucial to successful distribution. Twitter, for instance, simply enables 280 characters worth of text.
Nevertheless, the news-feed design of the platform enables rapid, frequent updates on developing stories or for blogs with regular publishing timetables.
Google+ enables you to effectively develop a blog-post teaser with complete formatting as well as affix a high-resolution image for greater visibility in user news-feeds.
As a result of these unique functionalities and specific strategies, social media is a component of content marketing on its own.
Savvy businesses would do well to recognize the capacity and value of social networking sites and allocate resources to efficiently utilize each platform to their potential, distributing content in a manner that enhances the content itself.
With your creative and also logistical framework in place, ensure that you have a plan to keep an eye on as well as respond to social media and forum activity.
Depending on the size of your business, this may involve one or many people, just ensure that user questions and comments receive a reply.
Content marketing is the human face of your organization, and no audience likes a bad listener
Expanding and Beyond
From this foundation, the sky is the limit. Through the info provided right here, you will definitely have a strong strategic, logistic, as well as creative structure to begin and cultivate your content efforts.
While we’re still on cloud-nine about our new content marketing campaign, it is vital to keep our feet on the ground.
Ideally, every piece of content you create will be a home run, social posts would take off because of the inherent quality of the piece, and your company would expand overnight.
Having said that, as a result of a combination of moving pieces, hit-or-miss ideas, as well as unstable social audiences, content marketing takes a while to develop.
During upticks and doldrums bear in mind: acceptable expectations and consistent work are more valuable than shattered dreams and pessimism.
You’ll arrive, it only takes time to get it right. In the meantime, create.
Additional content ideas and campaigns are only limited by imaginative ability and strategic foresight. Nissan went as far as to create a full action film sequence designed around enticing potential buyers.
The experience included an interactive website and social media sharing activities, all built to inspire positive associations with the Nissan brand.
Know your firm and what it has to offer, compile your resources, build your platform, and create with the audience in mind.
No matter how small your business might be, your organisation can get in the globe of the world of content marketing.
The process of corporate self-discovery, viewer engagement, and positive business output has a couple of equals in an increasingly linked and user-centric business world.
CONCLUSION
I believe you now know the objectives of content marketing, and the importance of establishing a process of content creation that is optimized.
Are there somethings you’d love to be treated further? I’d love to know all about them in the comments!
