Learn how to create a successful content marketing strategy to reach your audience and boost conversions.

Your customers, leads, and audiences want valuable content from your work or business. That content should reach your desired audience in a way that feels really organic and natural. Content marketing helps businesses do this and explains the process of attracting, entertaining and engaging your target market.

By adopting effective content marketing, you can do just that — and ultimately increase conversions, increase brand awareness, increase revenue, establish yourself as an industry leader, and more.

Whether you’re just starting a strategy or changing an existing strategy, it never hurts to re-evaluate your business and find new ways to create and share content that your audience wants. In this guide, we’ll give you an eye view of content marketing, types of content marketing, examples of content marketing, and how to implement that strategy.

Definition of Content Marketing

The definition of content marketing is simple: The process of publishing written and visual materials online with the goal of attracting more traffic. This includes blog posts, pages, eBooks, infographics, videos, etc.

However, content marketing isn’t just about publishing any piece of content and hoping people find it. It’s about tailoring your pages, videos, books, and articles to your target audience so they find you the way in, not out.

Today, external marketing strategies (or anything that engages your audience members) are not as effective as resonating with and converting audience members.

Today, your content should reach your audience in a way that feels natural. A common way to do this is to create a story or tell a story for your content. By doing so, your content will be more credible, engaging and relevant to your audience.

So what defines content marketing?

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the activity or process of planning, creating, publishing , sharing, and distributing content via digital channels i.e. blogs, websites, social media platforms, apps, podcasts, media or press releases, print publications etc. And main target is to reach your potential audience and increase your brand awareness, net sales, audience engagement and of course loyalty.

Why is content marketing important?

Here we will describe some important needs, that makes the content marketing so important for the businesses.

• Educate your prospects and customers about your services and products you offer.
• Boost the conversions.
• Drive loyalty between your customers and your business.
• Show your audience how your products and services solve their problem.
• Create a real sense of community around your product or brand.

Now let’s have a look at various types of content marketing.

Types of content marketing

There are many types of content marketing that you can choose to incorporate into your strategy – here are the most common:

1. Online Content Marketing

In this type of content marketing. it refers to any content material you publish online, specifically your website. A strong online content marketing strategy will help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and in front of the right people at the right time.

Trendy Answers homepage is an example that directly engages visitors with specific content about our products, content or services.

2. Social Media Content Marketing

With over 4.26 billion social media users globally, it’s easy to see why so many businesses are investing in social media marketing. There are several platforms to work with (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat) and each has different ways to create and share content (photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, stories).

3. Infographic Content Marketing

Infographics present content, information, and data in an easy-to-use graphic format. With a mix of simple words, short sentences and clear images, infographics are a great way to communicate your content effectively. It works well if you are trying to break down complex knowledge and/or topics so that all readers can understand.

4. Blog Content Marketing

Blogs are a powerful form of inbound content and allow for a lot of creativity in terms of goals and topics. With a blog, you can do things like promote other internal and external content and blog posts through links, add social sharing buttons, and add product information.

5. Podcast Content Marketing

Currently, approximately 60 million people listen to podcasts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. That’s why many businesses and media outlets have started creating and sharing their own podcasts.

Podcasts allow you to be creative because they can be about any topic you want. You also determine other factors related to the podcast, such as the pacing of the episodes, who is on the podcast, where you promote the podcast, and how long the episodes are.

6. Video Content Marketing

As per Wyzowl research, approximately 91% of consumers prefer to learn about a brand’s product or their service through video content. Additionally, video marketing can boost conversions, increase ROI, and help build relationships with your audience. You can easily choose to share your videos content on popular social media platforms, some landing pages, or co-vendor websites.

7. Paid Ad Content Marketing

Paid advertising can help you reach a wider audience and allow you to be everywhere you want to be seen – paid advertising is most useful when paired with inbound marketing. There are many places where you can share paid ads on social media, websites, banners and sponsored content.Examples of Content Marketing

Content Marketing Strategies

You can think of your content marketing strategy as your content marketing plan — let’s go through the steps you’ll take to develop an effective strategy.

1. Set SMART goals.

The initial part of your content marketing strategy is to study and set SMART goals. These should be specific to your business – they will complement your marketing and wider company objectives.

Here are some SMART goals:

• Increase brand awareness.
• Increase income.
• Increase conversions.
• Increase brand loyalty.
• Increase customer engagement.
• Build relationships and trust between your prospects and customers.
• Attract strategic partners.

2. Determine your KPIs.

Next thing to focus, key performance indicators (KPIs) for your SMART goals. KPIs are main target points that you can use to calculate your actual performance vs your SMART goals.

3. Decide on the type of content.

Next, choose the type of content you want to create. To do it, you needs to start by thinking about your target or potential audience and buyer personas.

Answer the following questions about your target audience to help find the right content for them:

• What exactly they need from you?
• What kind of challenges are they looking to overcome?
• Why do they need your service or product?
• How can you support them succeed?
• Where do they utilize their time?

Then, take a look at the different types of content we’ve reviewed above to determine what content to create.

4. Choose your content channels.

Once you’ve determined the type of content you want to market, it’s time to choose a specific content channel. Where will you share your content? Where will it live and share?

For some types of content, the channel will be obvious. For example, if you create content for Facebook, your channel will become a social platform.

5. Set a budget.

Create your budget now. Think about the type of content you create and what channels you sell that content to.

Then, to determine your budget, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I need to purchase software or technology to create content (graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop, a Canva subscription, a camera to capture high-quality photos and videos)?
• Should I hire a marketer or content designer (artist, writer, editor, designer)?
• Do I have to pay for advertising space?
• Do you need access to special tools or resources to promote or measure your specific type of content?

Note how your answers affects your budget — whether it’s an increase or a decrease from what you already budgeted for.

6. Create and distribute the content.

Create and distribute your content so your audience can consume – and convert. Use a social media calendar or an editorial content calendar to ensure that you are consistently producing content and sharing it with your prospects and customers.

This will help your team stay on top of all the content they create, as well as allow you to plan ahead.

7. Analyze and measure results.

Finally, analyze and measure your results so you can make the necessary changes to boost your content marketing efforts and reach more audience members.

Study your SMART goals and KPIs results to determine the success of your content marketing strategy. Are you achieving your goals and KPIs? Are you close to achieving it or did you miss your estimate?

Traits of Effective Content Marketing

With so many companies creating and distributing content online, it’s important to go above and beyond standard industry fare. The secret? Trendy Answers strives to meet the following criteria to ensure that all of our content and other audience needs are met. The results? Millions of visits per month to our blog posts and websites.

And your content can get results for your company like:

1. Provides value beyond your product offerings.

Content marketing isn’t just about sharing the benefits of your product with your audience to turn them into customers. It’s important to give your customers value that allows them to do something more productive, like make their business more profitable or shorten their work timings.

In any case, strive to create content that meets your customers’ most pressing needs. Your product may be a solution, but if you don’t explicitly write a product page, you should include product specifications if it makes sense.

2. Targets readers’ specific buying journey stage.

Providing value and responding to customer needs is only part of the story. Each piece of content should target our specific buyer’s journey stage.

In general, the buyer’s journey has three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. In the awareness stage, the buyer is still learning about the problem. In the consideration phase, they look for solutions. In the decision stage, they have to choose a provider.

If you’re writing an article “What is [X]?”, then the person reading your article initially may not be ready to make a decision about the content or service provider. They complete research to find out who has the solution.

Conversely, if you write a product page, the reader who visits that page has already searched for potential products and found them as potential suppliers. That means you have to position your product at every turn, reiterate your value proposition, and differentiate yourself from the competition. You should not be shy about the most valuable features of your product.

3. Demonstrates a consistent brand voice and image.

Whether you create a blog post, website, or e-book, visitors can get to know who you are after consuming your content. It’s not like ten different people are writing for you, even if it’s your brand.

That’s why it’s important to create a writing style guide and brand style guide. Both of these documents will guarantee:

• Your brand visuals look the same across all platforms and devices.
• Your brand tone and voice are consistent across all written communications.

Once you’ve created both of these, distribute them to your content writers, freelancers, or in-house designers. Your content marketing output will be more cohesive and consistent, which will keep readers coming back to you as a resource and make you look more polished and professional.

4. Is timely and engaging.

Do your clients usually plan their finances at the beginning of the year? If you’re starting out in finance, you can blog about quarterly budgets to avoid mistakes and avoid overspending.

At the end of the post, you can add a request to test your software or take the user to a downloadable template after giving an email.

A timely and compelling example of content marketing. If you know the habits and spending of your customers throughout the year, it is very important to take advantage of them. Publish blog posts and offers that are timely and respond to immediate needs. Then you will get ahead of other companies publishing similar content – often be the first to get customers.

Now that we have seen the top features of effective content marketing, let’s move on to the best resources you can use to learn more about it.

Conclusion:

With effective online content marketing, you can reach your potential or target audience and boost conversions. There are many ways to market with content to increase revenue, increase awareness and recognition of your brand, and build relationships with your prospects and customers.

Don’t forget to get more value for every content you create.

To get started, determine what content works best for your business and your audience, and develop a content marketing strategy to start boosting your bottom line today.

Also Read: Digital Marketing for Beginners: The Ultimate Guide