What is content marketing

Content marketing is a strategic long term marketing approach that includes developing original, relevant content for users and customers. It’s a way of distributing content in a strategic way that absorbs your audience convincing them to take action.

Examples of content marketing

 

Examples of great content marketing include:

Hubspot

 

 

They provide e-books, user guides, webinars, and video courses.

Whole Foods

Whole foods market educates their customers. Special diets and pages on their website are dedicated to helping their customers stay healthy.

It has a recipe newsletter and promotes its recipes on twitter and instagram.

Their blog, The Whole Story, provides tips on healthy eating without shamelessly promoting the product. Theirs also videos, health tips, and recipes. Pretty much anything you can think of to add value for their target customer.

 

Airbnb

Airbnb, the vacation rental company, is very creative in their content marketing efforts. Along with Hearst Magazine, they’ve launched Airbnb magazine which shows articles on its top travel destinations and much more. Sourcing from billions of data points, the editors assign stories for an audience eager to learn about local hot spots.

 

The company also provides travelers with Neighborhoods  which provides vacationers valuable information on where in a city to stay and to feel more connected with the culture. You can read about things to do in New York for example. You can find everything from what locals love, what locals complain about, and how to get around.

 

Why is content marketing important

Content marketing is essential because your customers are indirectly asking for it. Click To Tweet

They really appreciate it. When I started Brand Sentrik, I didn’t know how to market it. I had some tools and some programming knowledge but I didn’t know what I was up against. Then a local marketer introduced me to content marketing.  He pointed to an article that showed marketing generates more leads than outbound marketing… three times more leads and costs 62% less.

 

How content marketing works

Content marketing works by earning your consumers trust. If you can get your target audience to have positive interactions with your brand, they’re more likely to choose you when they need what you sell. And those initial interactions landed my first SEO gig (a handshake deal — YIKES).  So I started implementing content marketing into the company’s business. The sales went through the roof.

Earning the customer’s trust was key.

 

 

Why content marketing works

Content marketing works because our brains are programmed for stories. A great story told in the form of great content will earn trust. You’re solving someone’s problem with an infographic, picture, video, or even a pdf. The more content marketing you produce in the right places the better off you are.

 

Content Marketing Statistics

– 66% of people have found a new business on Twitter

– Long Term ROI – 1/10 blog post compound. That means that organic search steadily increases to these posts over time.

– 78% of effective content marketers use press release services in their content marketing strategy

– 9 times more leads are generated from long form blog posts. Long form is more in depth which builds trust.

– 73% of B2B marketers publish case studies.

– The average blog is now 1142 words. A 41% increase since 2014

 

Benefits of content marketing

The more content you have the more opportunity for people to stick around on your site. That means they’ll become familiar with your brand, which leads to higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates (great for SEO). When people read content they’ll be building up a perception of your brand. Also, the more you show in social news feeds, the more trustworthy you’ll be perceived. One of the greatest benefits of content marketing is you reach an audience who hates ads — millennials. If you’re trying to reach the generation who is completely turned off by ads, content marketing is for you.

 

Why content marketing matters

It’s the ultimate brand builder. The internet can be noisy, and in order to build your brand you’ll need to find your voice amongst the chatter of everyone else. Creating compelling content helps deliver your brand message.  Today’s buyer wants to hknow who’s behind a business. They want to see a face. They’ve been burned so many times. An authentic connection matters.

 

How will you implement content marketing?