Content marketing is the foremost marketing approach that creates and distributes content that attracts and retains a specific audience. Content marketing most likely would have popped up during your strategic planning if you have a new website, blog, or product. This could mean blog posts, social media posts, sponsored posts, and more. Outsourcing experts say content marketing takes up almost all the marketing fronts—a whopping 91% on B2B marketers and 86% on B2C.
Why is it suddenly relevant?
It has been speculated that the rise of content marketing came to be a response to the adage’s oversaturation of traditional marketing practices. By 2014, an average person saw up to 50,000 ads in just one day! Ads were everywhere: billboards, magazines, newspapers, promo posters, flyers, television commercials, and digital advertising…this overwhelming bombardment of ads brought about a sense of insincerity, especially in this digital age where every single thing could be easily looked up online by any discerning consumer. Not to mention the annoyance whenever too many commercials would interrupt TV shows!
Building Trust with Consumers
With the rise of smartphones and the ease of access to information brought about by the internet, consumers have grown smarter and more cautious of ads that bombard them daily. Big fashion, travel, and food brands have taken to social media for marketing, placing carefully curated yet personable photos on Instagram and using celebrities from all walks of life to preach the brand or product’s message to consumers. Put yourself in a consumer’s shoes: you go about your day distracted by billboards and posters, then go home hoping for a reprieve, only to have countless commercials suck the joy out of your favorite shows. With content marketing, the consumer is considered in the entire process. ‘In sends consumers on a bit brands f a treasure hunt: ads are not shoved or forced in their faces; rather, they are also given the agency to examine the brand’s content across many platforms, developing trust and rapport.
Consumers and Brands get to Know Each Other.
Traditional marketing has always emphasized getting to know its audience and, in a way, manipulating them into buying its products. Content marketing provides a more transparent process as the brand gathers information on its consumers, but the consumers also get to know the brand better. This transparency only makes way for more growth: the more the brand knows its consumers, the better it can improve and fine-tune its products through better buyer personas and improved personalization; the better the outcomes, the more loyal consumers it will attract. This transparency creates a solid foundation for customer experience and product development.
Getting Started
Content marketing sounds promising, but where does one begin? To start, you should know that content marketing has no shortcuts. It entails a lot of work that only delivers great results in the long run, as you are developing your brand as a trusted authority in your industry. Blogs, videos, white papers, interactive content, personalized email newsletters, infographics, and a solid social media campaign are only a handful of platforms you need to start working on to establish a presence.
Start small if you have to but make it a solid start. Make a strategy, commit to its quality, and focus on the brand’s message. From there, you can slowly grow your content as you get to know your audience, engage with them, and build bridges between the brand and the consumers you set out to reach when you first started.
