Some years ago, different brands and companies were focused on the need to be online, which was strongly supported by Digital Marketing. Nowadays, every business, even small ones have their own website. We can say that focus changed, being the main target the online availability. This is what you get naturally with Content Marketing.

But, what is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is the strategy to be used in order to produce different content, having them available to the potential customers a certain brand may have. This content must be available since the first contact the customer has with the brand, throughout the entire sales process and loyalty program. When using this process, the content will allow customers to feel identified with the brand and understood by it, this way he or she will be attracted naturally to whatever product a certain brand will have to offer.

This must be quality content, mainly relevant for actual and future customers, teaching, informing or providing entertainment. This way you will achieve not only a person to know your product but for he or she to develop a relationship of trust with your brand. Besides selling them something you will be taken as a source of good quality info. Then you will not need to stress out on recognition since it will happen as naturally as possible.

We could say that Content Marketing creates and communicates info that customer needs. On the other hand, traditional Marketing push customers to whatever a company had to offer. When we talk about different topics within your area of expertise, you educate your audience, earn respect and authority which as a result influence gently on the sales decision.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Content Marketing is, somehow, achieving results that traditional marketing couldn’t. It is extremely important to understand just how relevant the creation of content is instead or massive advertising that just show your product. Here are examples of the most important ones:

1- Increase traffic to your websites:

One of the reasons why content marketing is very relevant is the fact it could guarantee that websites are easily accessible to the audience, since content is the main fact of positioning at a search engine, being the main and most known: Google. In other words, your priority will be to position your website on the first page of Google searches and this will allow your product to be well known.

2- Generate recognition:

When you create content, more people start recognizing your brand, identifying easier the products and services you offer. Generating this recognition is very important as it will take the person that has the most likelihood of buying what he or she already heard about. Or, in case of having more than one offer about the same product, most likely the customer will go for the one that seems more familiar. Even more if, through content, you get your audience engaged.

When you create content, you mainly get readers. But there are also high chances these readers remember you next time they are planning a purchase. Due to the customer already having a vision and got the help they needed through your website.

3- Strengthen your customer-company relationship:

Creating good content that is updated periodically on your website or blog, your brand gets to strengthen the relationship and interactions with your customers, based on trust. The customer feels as identified with the brand that he or she ends up feeling part of it, defending or recommending your product.

4- Educate the market:

Besides being an advantage of content marketing, it is also one of its functions. Sometimes people do not know the details of a product nor of the specific industry nor understand correctly how they work. This is why it becomes the best tool to educate, in a simple and practical way, everything a customer needs to know. It is necessary to find the correct language to your audience in order to get to them.

5- Generate sales:

Content takes the customer, in the most gentle and natural way, towards a purchase decision. This happens because the customer is directed through content to choose a brand. Then the probability to end up buying (understand as “buying” any action that the website wishes to get from the audience) is greater than just “asking” them through a banner to do such action.

6- Increase your lifetime value:

LTV (lifetime-value) is the amount of time a customer spends with any given business. The greater the time a customer is involved with the brand, the greater the LTV will be. A customer that already purchased from your company is a truly interesting person, because it is easier to sell a product to somebody that already had the experience with you, than to attract somebody completely new.

7- Reduce your customer acquisition cost:

Customer acquisition costs are high, because it needs marketing efforts to plan specific campaigns for people that in the near future could potentially become your customers. Besides that fact, it takes time until you are able to see results. Nevertheless, with the right content marketing strategy you could bring those costs down. Since you will be already providing useful content to clear any doubts that might come up during the purchase process.

Content and Sales Funnel

Sales Funnel theory is well known and easily proved. This states that the total amount of potential customers that are located on the top of the funnel is decreased until you get to the total amount of real customers which is considerably lower. This is an interesting tip that must be used when thinking of the content for your blog or website. You could create specific content for each part of the funnel, promoting interaction, helping decision making and later optimizing the purchase process.

Lets’ remind ourselves the parts of the funnel and their characteristics in order to generate content:

1- Top of the funnel

This is the stage where you are aware you have something to learn about. Usually people are not even aware of the existence or a problem that needs a solution, this happens only after searching for info. Therefore, the main focus of the content for this stage is to generate consciousness of the problem. This way, your content must not include advertising but simply have something appealing for people to come back to you.

2- Middle of the funnel:

Here, people are aware of their need or problem, therefore your objective must be mainly to position yourself. This means, to leave your brand in their minds as a reference for the problem the customer needs to solve, offering your product or service as one of the main options available.

3- Bottom of the funnel:

In this stage, audience already knows what they need, they are aware of your brand and are even considering the possibility of purchasing your product. In this stage, your content must include key info for them to make a decision. It is very useful to increase contact in order to earn trust, focusing content on your product and its advantage against competitors.

4- Post-sale:

The entire process is not done when a sale is made. It is necessary to dedicate some time and think about strategies for customer retention. You must invest some time on the generated trust with your customer, interacting with them, and pursuing further future sales.

Measurement: how and why?

After content is created and communicated, there is still a relevant topic as far as content marketing is concerned. The last but not least step in the strategy is to know whether our efforts were profitable. We must know exactly if our plan was efficient, through daily, weekly or monthly measurements.

When getting the results of the measurements, you will have to analyse them in order for you to know what exactly to change, keep or plain leave out from your strategy. The three main aspects in Content Marketing as the visualization, clicks and conversion rates.

Mistakes you must avoid

In order to implement a good content marketing strategy, it is necessary that you keep in mind some of the most common mistakes in this field. Let’s see a few of them:

1- Believe that all created content must be about the company, brand, product or service. It is clear that you must talk about it but not exclusively, as readers want much more info.
2- Focus only on the communication tools, forgetting your main target.
3- Lack of a CTA (Call-to-action). Every content that you create must include an action: therefore, must include a CTA.
4- Believing that an informal blog means lack of planning. As every serious job, you must plan your posts ahead in order to maintain proper frequency.
5- Not having enough patience. When you work on Content Marketing, it is a must that you understand that results are only achieved on medium to long term.

Have you already considered implementing this strategy? Remember content marketing is the main communication tool to an affiliate. Take advantage of it and see the results for yourself.

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