A relatively new kind of marketing, but one that’s gaining popularity over traditional advertising, content marketing is indispensable to any forward-thinking and relevant digital marketing strategy today. If you don’t yet know what content marketing is, there’s no need to worry, for we begin with the basics.
Let’s start with a definition.
What is Content Marketing?
As the Content Marketing Institute puts it, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
How is Content Marketing different from Traditional Advertising?
Content marketing, as opposed to its former paid advertising counterpart, is first of all, free.
Secondly, and more importantly, unlike traditional advertising, content marketing does not interrupt customers with all this “stuff” they don’t want at any given moment (think of that annoying hoarding at the traffic signal or those TV ads we’re happy to stay away from on Netfilx).
On the contrary, content marketing creates content that is valuable and relevant to the target audience as well as in direct response to what the said audience wants. What do you get in return? Well, the underlying permission to market your product or service to them, subtly.
Why is Content Marketing important?
Good quality content is essentially the base of any kind of marketing.
Now, by creating content (be it blogs, mailers, infographics, videos, books, or any other kind) that is valuable and useful to your customers as part of a content marketing strategy, you are achieving the following:
- Creating an online brand presence.
- Helping your potential customers solve their problems thereby helping them remember you.
- Generating trust and a loyal customer base.
- Creating a base of voluntary brand ambassadors who will talk about you and share your content, thereby bringing you more potential customers.
So, if you’re ready to begin your journey as a content marketer, head here to know more about types of content you can create and how to use them to your advantage.
