Content Marketing 101

By | May 11, 2020

Having a content marketing plan for your business is one of the most crucial marketing strategies you need to implement. One of the surprising things you may not realize, however, is that content marketing is not new, and you are probably doing some aspect of it already.

Content marketing is used to grab attention, qualify an audience, and build a customer base and drive brand advocates, and then some. When it comes to marketing, almost anything you want to accomplish can be done with content marketing.

Types of Content Marketing

There are several types of effective content marketing that you will want to incorporate into your marketing efforts. Most of you are probably doing a lot of this already. You may not have even realized it is content marketing.

Of course, to use content marketing successfully, it’s important to figure out your goals, understand your audience and your products, and act consistently.

The types of content marketing you’re going to learn about include:

Blogging

Your website needs a blog so that you can add updated information and posts regularly. In fact, most of your content should originate on your website/blog and be shared from there to other platforms because the point is to bring people to your website and landing pages.

Email Autoresponder Messages

These are messages you send to your list subscribers to make them want the products they haven’t purchased, help them use the products they have purchased, and even improve customer satisfaction post-purchase.

Videos and Webinars

People love video, and if it is live or feels live, that’s even better. The awesome thing about creating videos and webinars is that you can easily repurpose them into other creations. Plus, they help impart more difficult concepts in a more understandable way.

Case Studies and Interviews

This is a great way to come up with convincing and persuasive content. Case studies show that your facts are real. Interviews show real-world scenarios that help people put themselves in the place of the person receiving the solution.

eBooks, eReports, and White Papers

When you have more information to impart, using longer types of content is very helpful. eBooks and eReports can consist of many types of information. White papers are more specific in terms of what they cover, but many consider them interchangeable.

Checklists and Cheat Sheets

Anytime you want to provide helpful content to your audience, these are always great additions to get someone on your list or to use as an after purchase unannounced bonus material to help delight your customers.

Social Media Posts and Updates

For the most part, the things you post on social media will be sharing what you created for your blog or website and will include other types of content but using social media content to persuade your audience is a no-brainer because that’s where your audience hangs out.

Infographics, GIFs, Memes, and Images

Naturally, every single image is helpful to tell your story and explain different concepts. Infographics help explain data-centric posts, eBooks, eReports, and white papers too.

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What Exactly is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is not an invention that started just when the internet took off. The truth is content marketing has been around in various forms since the beginning of marketing and advertising. You’ve seen content marketing in commercials, television shows, movies, and even in magazines via “advertorials.”

Essentially, content marketing is simply creating and distributing valuable, relevant, attractive, and consistent content to your very specific audience with the goal of persuading those who consume the content to act on your calls to action.

What’s powerful and special about content marketing today is that you can distribute content marketing materials online basically for free. You don’t have to pay money for an advertorial or even pay to promote your posts if you don’t want to.

Using content to get information to your audience is a long-term strategy that may include expenditures on content, but it doesn’t have to include any advertising at all because of the power of the internet.

A few examples of content marketing, as mentioned previously, are:

* Blogging

* Email Autoresponder Messages

* Videos and Webinars

* Case Studies and Interviews

* eBooks, eReports, and White Papers

* Checklists and Cheat Sheets

* Social Media Posts and Updates

* Infographics, GIFS, Memes, and Images

Your job when using content to market is to understand your ideal customers’ buying cycle. The basic buying cycle includes awareness, consideration, and decision. However, most marketers like to add more to the buying journey because there are many steps in each of the three basic steps of the buying cycle.

For example, they may list the buying cycle as awareness, research, consideration, purchasing, and retention instead. However, you decide how to define your customer’s buying journey.

The more specific you are about where they are in their decision-making process or buying journey, the more targeted and effective your content marketing efforts will be.

When you endeavor to practice effective content marketing, you will create and distribute content that matches your goals that you set for each piece of content based on where the customer is in the buying journey. Having this knowledge about your audience and your products will make your content marketing efforts more effective.

Some examples of content marketing goals include:

* Increasing brand awareness

* Increasing solution awareness and knowledge

* Driving targeted traffic to your website

* Building your email list with interested members

* Generating more sales

* Converting more leads to customers

* Drive upselling

* Improving retention

* And more

You’ll determine the goal for the piece of content, and you’ll note the ideal audience you want to target and where they are in their buying cycle before you even start creating the titles, adding keywords, and developing the content.

Finally, you’ll need to know where to distribute the content. That will again depend on the goals you’ve set for the content, as well as who the content is meant for based on their buying journey. 

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Reggie Patterson is a part time mid-level online marketer. He specializes in content marketing, email marketing, product creation, affiliate marketing, membership sites, and helping others do the same.