You just heard someone say "content marketing" and felt like you should already know what it is, but were too embarrassed to ask someone. Congratulations, this post is for you! :)
The Content Marketing Institute, an online institute for information related to content marketing, defines content marketing as follows:
Content marketing is a marketing technique for creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of generating profitable customer action.
If you've watched the Lego movie, you've seen one of the greatest examples of content marketing to date. Oh, you thought they made that movie to sell movie tickets? Think again. That was a 100-minute toy commercial, and you paid to watch it. Is it any coincidence that Lego surpassed Mattel, the creators of Barbie, to become the world's largest toy company? You may not have the budget to make a movie to promote your business, but you can still provide valuable information to potential customers.
Companies that invest in content marketing for at least 12 months can achieve a 400% return on investment.
When it comes to content, more is better. On average, long-form articles generate nine times more leads than short posts.
And why is this so valuable? If you stop to think, the world's most visited website is a search engine. This means that, in general, people access the internet in search of something. Since we're in a digital medium, the only thing people are really looking for is information. The Future Consumer enters a store knowing exactly what they want to buy and will likely question the sellers about deep community feedback acquired in their extensive internet research.
But then what? Where does content marketing come in? If it's not clear yet, by providing quality content, or also known as "rich content," you are doing what everyone expects when they're on the internet: receiving valuable information.
I could stop here because this is an argument that supports your cause. However, there's more! The big reason this strategy is so powerful is that, once your consumer is investing their time in reading/watching your content, it means they've started a relationship with your brand. If you can truly understand what your audience is looking for and how you can link that with your product/service, you've discovered the key to turning customers into fans.
To make it easier, here are some practical examples of content marketing:
If you're not sure how to add value through content marketing, we can help you research your audiences to understand what kind of content you can produce that would be useful to them now or when they search for your product or service.
Everyone knows the saying "Advertising is the soul of business," but if advertising is the soul of business, what is the soul of advertising? This is the value we want to add to brands.
And you? Do you know the value your audience is looking for? And more importantly, do you produce quality content to attract your audience to this value?
