Whenever I meet new people and tell them what I do, I am almost always greeted with a blank look. While we may have chosen the term ‘creative content agency’ because we like the ring to it, the nuts and bolts of what we do is content marketing. If you’re trying to market your business online, odds are you’ve heard about content marketing somewhere along the line. It’s everywhere you look, with 86% of businesses today using it in one form or another. But if you don’t practice content marketing, do you know what’s involved, what it means, or how you can weave it into all of your marketing efforts to make them more effective?
What Does ‘Content Marketing’ Mean?
Content marketing is defined as ‘a strategic marketing approach focussed on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.’ A bit of a mouthful! In essence, the point of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by creating, curating and retaining content that is relevant and valuable to them. By doing this, you are portraying yourself as a thought leader in your subject, establishing trust and ultimately changing or enhancing the behaviour of your customers. This could be convincing them to start using your service, change the way they behave towards something or encouraging them to talk about your brand.
Of course, change doesn’t happen overnight. The key thing to remember about content marketing is that it’s an ongoing process that needs to be integrated with your overall marketing strategy. The creation and dissemination of original content and media is essential, and for this to have a noticeable effect it needs time to circulate and build an audience. I’ve lost count of the number of people who tell me they quit blogging or using social media because they didn’t see an increase in sales after the first 2 weeks. If you’re going to invest in content marketing, you need to understand that you are playing a long game, and it might be a while before you see any significant results. The concept of content marketing is built around the tried and tested idea that if we as businesses deliver consistent, ongoing, valuable information to buyers, they will ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.
How Does Content Fit Into My Marketing?
The marketing world has been undergoing a subtle shift for decades, moving away from direct selling and advertising and towards subtle, broad marketing strategies. Today, marketing your business effectively is almost impossible without great content. Quality content affects all forms of modern marketing, including:
Social media – content sharing is a fundamental part of all social media strategy.- SEO – search engines rank and reward businesses that publish regular, quality content over those who don’t.
- PR campaigns – Successful PR campaigns don’t talk about the business but address issues the audience cares about and discusses them, through content.
- PPC – For a Pay Per Click campaign to work effectively, you need great content behind it.
- Inbound Marketing – Driving traffic to your site and generating inbound leads revolved around drawing uses in with great content.
Essentially, for any marketing activity you can think of, content now plays a key part in its execution and effectiveness. Today’s consumers don’t want to be sold to (in fact, many would actively avoid buying from a business that ‘hard sells’), instead, they want valuable information when making their purchasing decisions, which is where content marketing comes in. Once you have created your content, it can spread through social networks generating powerful word of mouth exposure and convincing people to visit your site and buy. The takeaway here is that content marketing should be an integral part of your marketing process, not something completely separate.
Intrigued? Content marketing is as powerful and effective as the time and money you put into it, so if you want to see great results, be prepared to jump in with both feet. Not sure you can create your own content? There are always people out there to help you out – like us! At Eleven Eight we not only create high-quality content, but we teach you how to create and spread your own content. Want to know more?, Give us a call or drop us a line for a chat with absolutely no obligations.
Whenever I meet new people and tell them what I do, I am almost always greeted with a blank look. While we may have chosen the term ‘creative content agency’ because we like the ring to it, the nuts and bolts of what we do is content marketing. If you’re trying to market your business online, odds are you’ve heard about content marketing somewhere along the line. It’s everywhere you look, with 86% of businesses today using it in one form or another. But if you don’t practice content marketing, do you know what’s involved, what it means, or how you can weave it into all of your marketing efforts to make them more effective?
What Does ‘Content Marketing’ Mean?
Content marketing is defined as ‘a strategic marketing approach focussed on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.’ A bit of a mouthful! In essence, the point of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by creating, curating and retaining content that is relevant and valuable to them. By doing this, you are portraying yourself as a thought leader in your subject, establishing trust and ultimately changing or enhancing the behaviour of your customers. This could be convincing them to start using your service, change the way they behave towards something or encouraging them to talk about your brand.
Of course, change doesn’t happen overnight. The key thing to remember about content marketing is that it’s an ongoing process that needs to be integrated with your overall marketing strategy. The creation and dissemination of original content and media is essential, and for this to have a noticeable effect it needs time to circulate and build an audience. I’ve lost count of the number of people who tell me they quit blogging or using social media because they didn’t see an increase in sales after the first 2 weeks. If you’re going to invest in content marketing, you need to understand that you are playing a long game, and it might be a while before you see any significant results. The concept of content marketing is built around the tried and tested idea that if we as businesses deliver consistent, ongoing, valuable information to buyers, they will ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.
How Does Content Fit Into My Marketing?
The marketing world has been undergoing a subtle shift for decades, moving away from direct selling and advertising and towards subtle, broad marketing strategies. Today, marketing your business effectively is almost impossible without great content. Quality content affects all forms of modern marketing, including:
- Social media – content sharing is a fundamental part of all social media strategy.
- SEO – search engines rank and reward businesses that publish regular, quality content over those who don’t.
- PR campaigns – Successful PR campaigns don’t talk about the business but address issues the audience cares about and discusses them, through content.
- PPC – For a Pay Per Click campaign to work effectively, you need great content behind it.
- Inbound Marketing – Driving traffic to your site and generating inbound leads revolved around drawing uses in with great content.
Essentially, for any marketing activity you can think of, content now plays a key part in its execution and effectiveness. Today’s consumers don’t want to be sold to (in fact, many would actively avoid buying from a business that ‘hard sells’), instead they want valuable information when making their purchasing decisions, which is where content marketing comes in. Once you have created your content, it can spread through social networks generating powerful word of mouth exposure and convincing people to visit your site and buy. The takeaway here is that content marketing should be an integral part of your marketing process, not something completely separate.
Intrigued? Content marketing is as powerful and effective as the time and money you put into it, so if you want to see great results, be prepared to jump in with both feet. Not sure you can create your own content? There are always people out there to help you out – like us! At Eleven Eight we not only create high quality content, but we teach you how to create and spread your own content. Want to know more?, Give us a call or drop us a line for a chat with absolutely no obligations..