Content marketing for beginners
Content marketing is a considered marketing approach, strategically focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and maintain a defined audience. The main purpose of content marketing is, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. At its most basic level, content marketing is the providing of content such as Blogs, eBooks, Video and so on in order to generate qualified customer leads.
Here are Cyberfrog’s four handy steps to help you on your way to developing a successful content marketing for beginners strategy for your business:
1. Identify Your End Goal
Generally, your objective from content marketing will be successful leads and sales. But you should also consider the other opportunities it provides for your business, such as showcasing your brand through the use of text, images, video and audio. Content, especially in blog format, is a great way to establish your brand as an industry leader by providing information that shows your knowledge and expertise in your particular area. Content marketing also provides shoppers with the information they require before making a purchase. Therefore, you must provide the information they seek in order to enter the consideration set. If you don’t supply this content, someone else will.
2. Knowing When To Publish
Timing is everything, and maintaining a blog is no exception. Learning when your audience is tuning in, and therefore when to post, is mandatory for any successful content marketer.
Fortunately, you don’t have to guess! In a study from leading content publishers KISSmetrics, Dan Zarrella, Search Engine Land, and HubSpot, we have learnt a lot about blog publishing times. Your goals for your blog post should be taken into account when determining optimal publishing time. Do your research to see when your publishing will have most impact.
As with anything, there are pros and cons to publishing at the height of popular times of day. Sure, you will get plenty of visitors, comments, and engagement. But at the same time, you will also get higher bounce rates and may be buried in social news feeds along with all of the other publishers taking advantage of popular posting times.
3. Recognise Your Target Audience
Identifying your business’s target market is essential for making sure you publish your content directly to your real customers effectively. To identify your target market, you first need to answer the following questions:
- What are you selling, and what makes it so unique?
For example, what makes your merchandise different from what people can buy from other big retail chains? - To whom do you want to sell it?
Are you selling to parents? To retirees? To the environmentally conscious? - Why should people buy the product or service from you?
Are you open very late at night so that customers who work long hours can drop by your store? Do you offer free delivery of large items so that walk-in customers don’t have to lug your product home?
When you have the answers to these questions, you should do two things:
Focus on your primary market. Many business owners fall into the trap of believing that their products or services are “for everyone”— that is, anyone would be interested in or need the products.
But even if your business appeals to a broad market of diverse consumers, you need to identify who your ideal consumer is. After you’ve identified your primary market, your advertising should match that focus.
Research and find out as much as possible about the people you want to sell to. Understanding your target audience is crucial and your content won’t work if they don’t appeal to what your potential customers want or need.
4. Publish and Promote!
Publish your content online and scatter it as far as you can.
Send your links out to industry journalists, blogs and post across all of your social networks. If your content remains informative and not completely sales driven it has a good chance of appealing to industry press and becoming highly shareable. Keep your content regularly updated and fresh, and not too sales driven. Change the subject of your content each time, from industry news, to your opinions, to company press releases and much more.
Happy creating!
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