Let’s say you want to communicate to your followers about a brand new product upgrade that you have launched. What would you do? Under normal circumstances you’d post it on your Facebook wall, probably do an email campaign or at the most post a video on youtube. But would you just randomly do all of these one fine day or would you rather go about it with a strategic, marked out, action plan? Chances are, you’re first likely to highlight the single most crucial thing that forms the basis of all these communications- Content, and then move on to the how’s and where’s.
Why Content Marketing?
As consumers are moving at a frenzied pace, far away from the world of traditional marketing, the approach of marketers towards sending out advertisements and communication messages is also undergoing a paradigm shift. The basic understanding in this context being that a consumer is more or less turning a blind eye towards the launch or discovery about new products.
So, how then does one go about advertising/ marketing?
In this highly fickle and ever changing arena, content marketing is a boon for digital marketers who’ve learnt that convincing an uncertain customer requires a content marketing strategy that is out of the box and out of the world. This is where content marketing has been a saviour, as the focus is on delivering consumer centric content without extrovertly selling, in other words, providing something which the customer will genuinely learn and gain from.
How many kinds of Content marketing are out there?
Content marketing is not a one off process which is can give out instant results in a day or even a month, for that matter. It requires a careful examination of the audience profile and the competitor’s strategy, an inward process of aligning the products and coming up with the best propositions suited for them and then deciding on which content platform is appropriate.
On a broad level, content marketing is everywhere you look on the internet. Be it in the form of a SMM (social media marketing) campaign, where the content forms the main driving force that propels the promotion forward. It is no secret that most digital marketers prefer to plan their content marketing strategy long before the SMM strategy.
Search Engine Optimisation also performs on the backbone of content. We’ve already learnt before “Practical seo tips that are relevant in today’s day and age” that SEO is a process that functions best when the content is relevant to the user. This is why most marketers believe that a good SEO plan is incomplete without its relevant and engaging content strategy.
Video Content marketing is the new buzzword that has been driving sales and piquing consumer’s attention in equal proportions. To say that video content marketing works is simply not enough. Recent statistics have shown that a relevant video has proven to be much more effective than a blog posted randomly elsewhere.
The reasons for video Content marketing’s success being that users get a better audio/visual understanding of the product/ business and the business owners get an opportunity to display a human side while getting an opportunity to educate and engage the consumer effectively.
The impact of video marketing can be gauged from the quantum of videos the world is consuming nowadays; in fact the launch of Meerkat- the live video feeds on Twitter only establishes how this trend has caught on. Today, users are comfortable consuming content via Facebook or Instagram versus reading an article posted somewhere on the www
Relevance of context in content
As explained above, content is king and there are very many ways of reaching out to a consumer provided you have a well chalked out content marketing plan on hand. To state the obvious, a sketchy plan will do more damage than a thousand fires; sounds more apt, isn’t it?
Today, there is a conscious effort to come up with contextual content that matters and a smart digital marketer knows when to junk that piece of content rather than publish and face the ensuing fire. Estimates suggest that nearly 70% of content is never used.
Who’s cashing in?
Now that we’ve understood the importance of content marketing and why it’s vital that your business start off on a plan right away, let’s discuss the other side of the same coin- Are other businesses cashing in on it? Yes, they are. The significance of content has not escaped the attention of big, medium, small, gigantic and ‘everything in between’ businesses and there are roughly more than 27 million content based articles/ videos that are generated on a daily basis.
Let’s take a look at some rough estimates and get a bird’s eye view as to why content is the undisputed king of online marketing-
- Content marketing is considered a reasonable marketing expense, as it usually costs 62% less than traditional marketing. What’s more, it generates nearly thrice as many leads.
- 73% of users now prefer to source information about a product/ service/ business through content based articles with more than 20% of the time spent online being utilised for seeking out and consuming content of choice.
- Nearly everyone is hooked on to content in one form or another and it is approximated that even office workers check their email inbox roughly about 30 times every hour.
- The CTA (call to action) is almost instantaneous with nearly 60% people actively seeking out a product/ business after reading something about them.
