Content marketing is all about storytelling, and humans have told stories for as long as they could speak. Our attention will always go to those who tell great stories.
Definition
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:
“… a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. ”
This definition could use some clarity. Here is a better one:
It means that content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.
Eventually, when customers make a purchase decision, their loyalty already lies with you. They will purchase your product and prefer it over competitors’ options. In contrast to one-off advertising, content marketing shows that you actually care about your customers.
Today, more than ever before, people want to feel like you care about them. The world is louder and noisier than ever before, and attention is our most valuable resource.
Overview
Since the foundation of content marketing is simply high-quality content and storytelling, you can already see that the activity has been around longer than the term itself. There’s still plenty to learn from those first offline content marketing activities that pre-date the Internet, social media, and the like. However, any successful content marketing campaign today can hardly ignore the online part. Because storytelling has changed over the years, the attention of people stretches to more places than a few years ago, and marketers have to make sure that they tell stories in the year we actually live in.
Well, now that you have a good idea what content marketing stands for, you might wonder, “How can I succeed at content marketing myself?” I’m glad you asked! There are three major categories where you can put content marketing efforts these days: online, offline, and hybrids. The best way to learn how to be a great content marketer is by example.
Strategy
Today, more content marketing mediums and methods exist than ever before in the history of the world. That means that the number of strategies is even greater.
One online publication suggests using the “3D Content” model, for instance.
Basically, it’s three individual steps.
1. Map the content to the pain point.
2. Then use the right type of content for that problem.
3. Finally, map the content to the buying cycle of the people who have that problem.
This strategy is a way to move the focus away from the marketer and to the person that the marketer is trying to reach. That, after all, is an incredibly important step to take in your own content marketing strategy. If your content doesn’t cater to the right people with the right problem that your product solves, then your content marketing efforts are all for not. Of course, you’ll probably want to adapt this to fit your own audience and marketing theories. Whatever the case, though, you should always start with your audience. You must create content for that audience. Then, and only then, will the right people pay attention to you.
According to the source itself — Content Marketing Institute — here are the tips you should follow when creating a content marketing strategy.
Look at the part 2 of this blog post to know about content formats, why content marketing and content mapping
Source: https://neilpatel.com/what-is-content-marketing/
Image: http://www.trend.media/2016/11/04/5-advantages-content-marketing/
