If you want to offer visitors a helping hand in a relevant and attractive way without directly promoting your product or service, content marketing is the way to achieve this. When you do this consistently, people will see your organization as a reliable source of information. That's not the only thing you get in return. You will be rewarded with brand preference, brand loyalty and word-of-mouth advertising, among other things. Before you learn how to use content marketing, it is important to know what exactly content marketing is.

 

content marketing is a strategic market approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content with the aim of attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience. That content can consist of print, digital content, audio, video or events.

The main purpose of content marketing is to attract potential customers. Content marketing creates a substantive connection to entice the potential customer to take the next step. This is called a conversion. For example, leaving an email address or signing up for a newsletter. By creating and producing content, companies work to improve their findability.

Be direct

Content marketing is the future for all companies. If you use it properly, it can lead to up to 95% more conversion. The average attention span of a visitor is only a few seconds. If it takes too much reading before the person knows whether the product or service is what they were looking for, they will drop out. To prevent this, you must ensure that the visitor immediately knows which product or service is offered or what is expected.
It's not just consistency that is important. Continuity ensures that people can recognize their favorite brand. You can create this recognition by, for example, always using the same layout. Content marketing is not suitable if you want to see short-term effects. It will give you much more in the long term, because visitors will bond with your brand. They will appreciate your company's efforts and be grateful for the information. So see content marketing as a way of investing, so that visitors ultimately make a return on their investment.

Create a personal connection

Visitors want to feel like you know them personally. That is why it is important that you work on and maintain a personal bond with your customers. The measure of success in content marketing is not the Return On Investment (ROI), but the Total Addressable Market (TAM). This means that a brand builds a market by consistently distributing valuable content. So make sure that you not only post content consistently, but also listen to the customer. Enter into dialogue. Use humor if necessary. Look for what you and your customer have in common and focus on this.

Multi-deployable

Another advantage of content marketing is that you can offer it in different ways. You can post an article on a page with the aim of generating more website visitors because this page obtains a certain position in search engines. You can turn that same article into a blog and then offer it on different platforms. You can convert your content into an email format, allowing you to share valuable or possibly personal information directly with customers. A number of content marketing options have been mentioned, but the possibilities are endless.

Search engine marketing

Offering varied content makes a positive contribution to the findability of your company in search engines. This is also called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Texts are always written with the customer's wishes in mind, but be sharp when it comes to incorporating important keywords in your texts. These words ensure that your text, website or company ranks higher in the search engine results. The more content you create, the more leads your website generates. An effective blog can lead to up to 97% more leads. However, this does not mean that quality is not important. Converting findable content into conversions is only possible with relevant, high-quality content.

That the online findability this improves does not mean that there are more possibilities. As mentioned earlier, it's all about continuity. Come up with a new campaign or a nice discount promotion. Make sure customers know that you (still) exist.