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Industry-wide studies on consumer behavior from the Cohley Insights team.
According to Hubspot content marketing is “the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience. It can boost factors like brand awareness, sales, reach, interactions, and loyalty.” Marketing is created through a strategic lens that provides value to your customers. It’s important to consider that content marketing creates an impact and addresses problems for both the business and target audience.
Content marketing helps attract more people to your website, creates more conversations, and helps build brand loyalty. Companies that have a blog create a positive ripple effect on their business. It’s been proven time and again that content helps bring people to your website - whether that’s on your blog, or through social media content.
Solving a customer’s problem helps build trust between the customer and business. Content is a great way to show how your service or product is used. The content you create on any platform can help solve a problem and build authenticity that helps draw in more people. You are providing value and meaningful content to your audience through content marketing.
In content marketing there are a variety of platforms that brands can utilize and test to see what works best. Some tools you can use include email marketing, social media, infographics and blog posts. There are no right or wrong ones to use! Dip your toes in a variety of areas and test how it elevates your brand to a new level.
Videos create a space where you can connect with the viewer, especially with short form videos - think TikTok. There are opportunities to speak on a variety of subjects, use different videos lengths and be creative. The content you create can be related to your products, service, be educational, or have deep roots in the industry. What you make should be engaging, catch viewers attention and address a need they have. It’s a medium that can help increase engagement on your social channels and connect to people on a deeper level.
Social media is a tool to market to your target audience and engage with them directly. Your analytics is key, giving you insight into how your audiences engage with content, based on: likes, comments, shares, clicking the link in your bio, and purchasing products. You’ll be able to see what content they prefer, what tone they like, type of videos, educational content, what types of photos and more to curate the best content. It’s important that the content you’re posting is not only promotional. Other things you can post include testimonials from customers, inspirational content, and showing what you can offer in different formats. Diversifying content creates a balance in your feed and helps understand what your audience likes the most.
Infographics are great to display data and content in a long versatile format. They are easy to read and typically include charts and graphics. The content is communicated in a simple way through small amounts of text and visuals. It’s great to help boil down a topic that’s complex or if you want to educate others on a topic to your audience.
Blogs are a great tool that increases organic traffic to your website and communicates a message. They help answer questions people have while bringing in potential customers. This is a great medium to dive deeper on a variety of topics whether it’s about it’s promotion, industry trends or educating people. Blogs allow you to link to other items so people can stay connected to your brand on a variety of mediums. In the post you can link to a newsletter sign-up, product recommendation and social media pages. The blog has become a bridge to other platforms and continues exposure to your brand.
A content strategy is a strategic plan that translates your brand's business goals and objectives into your content to achieve a goal. The content you’re making should align with “why” for creating the business and your objectives. If there’s a disconnect to what you’re publishing online you need to reevaluate your strategy. A solid content strategy will engage current customers and potential customers as well as stand out from the competition.
Understanding who your target audience is will help you curate content to the right people. Research, built in analytics in the app and external tools help you understand your followers. Many companies and marketers have three segments they break their audience into and target through their content. They are different types of customers with different backgrounds and experiences. By understanding that and identifying the three groups and personas you create for them that will help elevate your brand. Different platforms whether it’s blog posts or your social media channel may have different audiences so make sure your content isn’t the same. Shifting the focus from generalized to intentional targeted groups will help increase engagement.
There has been continuous growth in content marketing and it’s being used by more businesses than ever before. More than 80% of marketers focus on increasing brand loyalty as a goal in their content creation. Your goal can be brand awareness, sales, brand loyalty, engagement and more. Ask yourself why you are creating content? What outcome do you want as a result of the content you publish? The answer you have to this will help fuel your strategy and future content. Once you understand your target audience more, create a strategy and make content on a variety of platforms people will pay attention more which could lead to more conversions.
In content marketing it’s important to be intentional with your content and have it align with your goals. Make sure you have a balance of content so you’re not constantly overwhelming the customer trying to make a sale. Strategy is the foundation of great marketing, regardless of the medium you publish on. Creating content can be overwhelming and here at Cohley we are here to help. If you have any questions about how we approach content marketing contact us for a free demo!