In simple terms, content marketing is making stuff - blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, apps, memes
that draw customers to your brand by informing them of something they already want to know.
It's a part of inbound marketing. It's never forced on your audience. When done right it doesn’t feel like marketing at all.
Why?
Earlier marketing was advertising, all of it was outsourced. Then the internet upended everything.
Nowadays, people use internet search to discover products. Hence you need to be discoverable and differentiated in the search.
Hence content marketing is needed.
Steps in buying cycle -
Awareness
Research
Consideration
Buy
Traditional advertising caters for the last two steps. Content marketing taps into the first two stages of the buying process by raising awareness of solutions and educating consumers about a product they may have never considered before.
Benefits
With good content marketing, you don’t have to engage in any high-pressure sales tactics.
It creates a sense of community around your brand. Additionally, it supports other digital marketing channels like SEO.
The easiest way is to start blogging.
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Content is good if people genuinely want to read it. Content is great if they’re willing to pay to read it.
Examples
The Lego Movie and Drive to Survive are excellent examples of content marketing.
While researching their fan base, makers of D2S gained an insight that fans wanted to get closer to the sport. Hence, they turned a niche spectator sport into a soap opera and brought in millions of new fans to the sport.
Guidelines
You do content marketing mostly for branding or SEO.
It's better if the content reaches the audience in a way that feels natural and organic versus being disruptive (Inbound feels more authentic and engaging than outbound).
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When unsure of how to add value through content marketing, ask your existing customers what kind of content you can produce that would be helpful to them now or would have been helpful to them when they were looking for your product or service
Principles
Content marketing takes a lot of time to be fruitful.
It needs to be consistent, different, and entertaining.
Process
Goals - What do you want to accomplish with content marketing?
Channel & Content - Which channel will allow you to accomplish your goals?
Create & Publish - Consistency is key
Measure & Analyze - Review KPI goals every month or quarter
Steps
Spend 30-40% of your time on the title
Start with a story
Break your blog/video/podcast down into bite-sized parts
Always provide a conclusion or a fact sheet, or a takeaways column
Remember what the content is for and edit with that idea in mind
Blogging tips
Pick a niche that you are passionate about
Check if the requirement has a big enough market size
Content creation vs content marketing vs content as a product
A campaign is a short-lived event meant to activate a category
B2B is easier because you just need to convince the head.
B2C is slightly more expensive
Positioning is what and for whom.
Go deeper in positioning, once you have nailed it then making content is easier.
2
Content Marketing Channels - Medium is the message
Rule of distribution - If your content is not doing well by itself, either you are not talking to your customer or your definition of doing well is wrong.
Traffic does not mean engagement
3
Make yourselves visible to get out of the typical job cycle.
Write after 29 or once life has slapped you around.
