Content marketing is the practice of creating and disseminating high-quality material to reach target audiences more effectively, as well as supporting other forms of promotion such as SEO, social media and public relations.
Content marketing services typically involve blogging. Blogs typically discuss industry trends, perspectives and possible solutions to customer pain points; many can even be gated-off so only those with access can view them. To access one, an email address may be necessary.
Blogs
Social media may have become the go-to content marketing strategy for many businesses, but blogs still remain an invaluable component of any comprehensive content marketing service. They help build brand recognition while reaching a wider audience while simultaneously driving traffic and qualified leads for websites.
An effective blog should attract readers by offering engaging headlines, regular updates, and an intuitive page experience. This ensures people come back and search engines prioritize it in ranking processes.
An effective blog should also be tailored towards its intended target audience, providing answers to common inquiries consumers may have about your product or service. Conducting competitive analysis on other blogs within your industry can help identify what types of content are working and where improvements can be made – with these simple tips in place, your blog could become even more successful and generate additional online revenues for your business.
eBooks and white papers
White papers and eBooks are advanced forms of content pieces that offer invaluable research, insights and analysis. Used effectively they can generate leads for your business as well as assist with other content marketing efforts; best suited for the middle to bottom of your content marketing funnel and gated to collect customer contact info. White papers and eBooks aim to answer “why” related to your services and products while showing how they benefit the reader; additionally they feature eye-catching custom graphics and imagery to entice readers.
White paper and eBook content differs significantly in terms of audience, purpose and tone. Ebooks tend to target consumer readers while white papers typically target business-to-business marketing efforts. Furthermore, eBooks tend to be more interactive than white papers with lighter writing style that often features bold headlines and sidebars; eBooks can easily be repurposed as blog posts, infographics or slide presentations at business events while white papers require a longer commitment of time to fully read through.
Videos
Videos have long been an effective form of content creation and delivery, providing interest generation at the top-of-funnel, nurturing leads in the middle, and encouraging conversions at the bottom.
Video content has the ability to capture attention and provoke emotion unlike written or graphical text, making them an efficient means for increasing engagement across websites, social media channels and email lists.
An explainer video can provide potential customers with an easy way to understand your product or service and can address common questions and objections that come up during sales processes. Furthermore, creating myth-busting videos will distinguish your brand as an industry expert while showing it cares about providing solutions to customer problems.
Videos can provide social proof and attract search engine attention, where they’re 53 times more likely to rank than text alone. As such, smart content marketers are taking full advantage of them as part of their content marketing strategies.
Email marketing
Email campaigns are an integral component of digital marketing, making an agency that specializes in them an invaluable resource that will save both time and money in addition to offering insightful guidance that will allow your efforts to thrive into the future.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of content marketing services, it’s essential that you know who your target audience and their interests are. A reputable content marketing agency will then create content relevant to them that drives traffic directly back to your website.
They will also provide high-quality email campaigns that are customized and optimized for each subscriber, segmented based on demographics and targeting content to each group of subscribers. In addition, they can track and measure results to make sure your campaign is performing as intended; this also allows you to understand if necessary adjustments need to be made in terms of content strategy or tracking results.
Social media
Finding an agency with expertise in content marketing is often the solution to many content marketing woes, from improving buyer personas and conducting an SEO audit of existing assets, to developing content strategies aligned with business goals. But finding one can be challenging – particularly if you require best practices compliance and can show ROI.
At the awareness stage, your content should be educational in nature and offer “how-to advice.” This could include blogs, eBooks or white papers. At mid funnel stage, case studies can demonstrate your expertise while building trust. Videos may also be beneficial – provided they don’t focus solely on products and services offered.
Content marketers are creative individuals. To be effective at what they do, they must understand your customers and their problems, wants, and desires in order to evaluate the impact of their efforts on sales and website traffic. Software such as Deskera can assist them with this evaluation by offering real-time data integration capabilities which allow marketers to customize their marketing strategies.
