What is Content Marketing in Digital Marketing?

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is basically a well thought-out marketing tactic that focuses on creating and disseminating content consistently to your target audience. For content marketing to actually work, the content must be relevant to your target audience. It must also be informative, meaningful and engaging. 

The core purpose of content marketing is to grab the attention of your defined audience, and retain them over the long run. This is a very viable approach which helps establish your credibility, increases brand awareness, and improves brand recall. When your business is on your audience’s top of mind, your chances of getting real-time sales automatically increases.

Often people confuse content marketing as a medium to deliver your sales pitch. This is actually far from reality. When you pitch your services or products, you directly promote them. Content marketing works a little differently. It follows a strategic approach fueled by powerful content. 

Using this strategy, you create different kinds of content including long videos, short reels, articles, social media posts, banners, graphically designed posts, polls, questionnaires, guides and ebooks. Once your content is ready, you need to distribute on different channels so it effectively reaches your audience.

Well that does answer your question: what is content marketing in digital marketing? Simply put, it is a marketing strategy that centers on content creation and distribution. So how does content marketing work? Let’s find that out next.

How Does Content Marketing Work?

Businesses use content marketing in many ways. Some use it primarily to get more leads. For others, content marketing in digital marketing is a good medium to make a well-structured case for their service or product. Some users perceive it as a means to get both information and entertainment.

The usage of content marketing in digital marketing also depends on the stage your audiences are in during their sales cycle. Different marketers define the cycle and its stages differently. Typically, there are three main phases of an individual’s journey in the sales cycle. It starts with awareness, moves to consideration and ends at purchase.

Let’s take a look at how different companies leverage content marketing in every phase of the sales cycle to improve user engagement and increase sales.

Awareness Stage

If your audience has just begun their sales cycle, they are likely resting at the awareness stage. This is the time when your target audience is learning about your brand, its offerings, and trying to figure out the most appropriate solutions to their pressing concerns.

At this stage, it is best to write about the challenges your audience faces, concerns they are likely to have, and their pain points. Make sure that the content for the awareness stage is educational, easy-to-understand, comprehensive, and guides users about your offering and solution in a step-by-step manner.

The most suitable content for the awareness stage comprises videos, newsletters, blog posts, e-book and articles. For instance, a cafe creates an original post on how to plan a birthday party in winter?’ Those who are planning to throw a birthday party for a loved one, and that too in the winter season can benefit greatly from it.

Consideration Stage

This is the stage when your target audience is considering choosing your brand over the competition. At this point, you need to churn content that educates and informs them, but also strategically plays with their emotions. Your content should guide them about how their problem can be solved, the kind of solution they need, and what to look for to fulfill certain needs, but it should also very cleverly portray your product/ service as the best available solution.

For example, an organic skincare brand creates videos and guides on how to best care for your skin using organic products. In those videos and articles, the brand indirectly promotes their products.

When creating content for users at this stage, focus on how-to videos and articles, checklists, worksheets, case studies and user-generated content (UGC.)

Closing Stage

This is when a potential client is about to close a deal with you: purchase your product or service. At this point, your focus should lie on making a sale. But at the same time, you need to reaffirm your audience that your offering is the best option available to them.

Your content should constantly emphasize that you have the best expertise and knowledge to address your audience’s needs, and your offering has the ideal benefits they are looking for. For example, a design company creates a series of short videos that showcase the diversity in their design across multiple industries which establishes their amazing expertise.

Get your team to create more UGC, case studies, product videos, buyer’s guides, research reports, testimonials and before-and-after videos, images and articles. You can also create more tutorials to target the users at this stage. Tutorials aren’t directly linked to the closing stage, but they do have a strong, indirect effect. Often, users enjoy watching how to use a certain product even if they haven’t bought it. Done tastefully with ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), such tutorials do wonders in converting a prospect into a real-time client.

We understand how content marketing tends to become overwhelming. Honestly, it does not have to be overpowering and exhausting at all. Successful and seamless content marketing campaigns are sustainable and manageable. Let’s take a look at the steps you need to take to get started with content marketing for your business.

Getting Started with Content Marketing in Digital Marketing

There is no rocket science involved with doing content marketing in digital marketing. It does seem tough, but in reality it is quite easy to execute. Here’s what you need to do.

Determine Your Audience

Your audience is your ultimate target—they are the ones you’re trying to reach, pitch and sell to. To know what type of content to create, you must have complete clarity on whom to create that content for.

There are typically two perspectives on identifying your audience. 

• First you know what you want to create and sell, and then determine the exact target market and audience. For instance, if you have seen your loved ones struggle a lot with backache, you decide to create an organic, pain-relieving remedy for achy backs.
• The second is when you know the kind of people you want to create something for, and that helps you decide the exact product or service you wish to offer. For instance, you are a digital creator and are looking to create a new tool. Due to market saturation, you cannot land upon a certain idea. That’s when you notice the Millennials’ struggle in coping with AI (artificial intelligence), and decide to create a tool to facilitate them.

Whatever route you wish to take is your choice entirely, and of course depends on your unique situation too. Figure out the kind of audience you want to target, and create their personas. This requires you to determine their age group, gender, preferences, pain points, needs and the likes.

Identify Suitable Content Formats

Once you have determined your audience, you need to figure out the right kind of content for them. That depends a lot on the stage your audience is at. Obviously, your audience will travel across all the stages so you need to create content for all the 3 main stages.

Make sure to create suitable content for every stage. To create the right content, keep in mind the places, both online and offline that your audience spends time in. For instance, if your audience comprises individuals who use Snapchat a lot, you need captivating content for Snapchat. If your audience spends time on Facebook or LinkedIn, pay attention to the kind of content that does well on these platforms. 

Remember, social media is quite popular these days so it is crucial to pay attention to social media marketing as well when you draft your content marketing strategy.

Inversely, if your audience has more offline activities, your marketing strategy needs to have a mixture of traditional and digital marketing.

Make sure to create good quality content irrespective of the type and platform. Audiences these days are quite picky. They are likely to ditch poor quality content, and even perceive your brand as ‘cheap’ because of the weak quality of your content. It is best to hire an expert who offers digital marketing services, and specializes in top-notch content marketing for this purpose.

Figure Out How to Distribute the Content

How are you going to share the content and make sure it reaches your audience? This is a pressing concern that you must focus on during your content marketing journey.

Start with determining where your audience is most likely to be in, and what your audience prefers when they are at certain stages during the sales cycle. For instance, if a major chunk of your audience sits mostly on social media and enjoys engaging content, create polls, quizzes and checklists to be distributed on their favorite social media platforms. If you have an interactive article, perhaps email it to your subscribers.

Also pay attention to the different stages of the sales cycle. Each stage is different, demands a different kind of content, and distribution channel. If your audience is at the awareness stage, they need more information and education. Pushing them to like your channels, or subscribe to your email newsletters right away will only annoy them.

Pick a Schedule You Can Manage

If you are at this stage, it means you are done and dusted with the previous steps. Kudos to you! Now your task is to create a sustainable content marketing schedule. Sustainability here is the key to make sure your audience gets to see your content consistently, and starts to gravitate more towards your brand.

Quite often, businesses start content marketing very enthusiastically, churning 3 to 5 articles a week, creating daily social media posts, and publishing videos on YouTube. Once the enthusiasm dies, the content flow breaks too. Audiences start losing interest in your brand, and before you realize it, you are out of the limelight.

To ensure this doesn’t happen to your brand, create a sustainable schedule. Keeping in mind your team and resources, figure out the kind and amount of content you can create on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. If you have enough funds and resources to hire skilled experts, get digital marketing services from a renowned agency. Work with them to create your content marketing schedule.

If that’s difficult for you, work with your in-house team to create your content marketing plan. Ideally, it should have a mix of articles, emails, social media posts, guides, videos and reels. Even if you cannot create a handful of these every week, try to create 1 to 2 articles a week, 2 to 3 social media posts weekly and at least 2 videos a month.

Remember to stay up-to-date with the best practices and trends in the industry to incorporate those in your content marketing plan.

Level Up Your Content Marketing Game with ITechSole

To scale your business and reach your ideal audience, content marketing in digital marketing is absolutely crucial. You simply cannot make do without it. To make the most of it, start creating your content marketing strategy right away.

Need help with crafting your content marketing strategy, plan and even the entire content? Leave this tough job to us. At ItechSole, we have an entire team of skilled and experienced content marketers. Get in touch with us today, and let us take care of your content marketing needs.