Content Marketing – what is it?
Content marketing is the marketing of content. A content marketing strategy is based on providing various types of engaging website content that can interest potential recipients of your services or products. Content marketing is a highly effective strategy for several reasons. Let's explore them in more detail.
Advantages of content marketing
diversification
An undeniable advantage of content marketing is the ability to create content/materials and then share them across multiple channels simultaneously or gradually. By creating content on a blog—like this one—you're using it not only there—you can share it on your own LinkedIn channel or Facebook page , for example , to engage your community or new people. This type of content can also be a place to drive traffic from ads, for example, on the Google Display Network . It all depends on the content you create.
A good example is video content, which is currently enjoying enormous popularity on social media. This type of format keeps viewers on the site longer, is more engaging, and resonates better with the audience.
Take a look at this video about machine learning, for example.
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The idea behind this video was to introduce our clients to the concept of machine learning. We wanted to quickly explain what it is and why it's a good idea for running Google Ads campaigns.
What we did first with our clients in mind, we used as self-promotional material, sharing it on our YouTube channel, which is the second most visited search engine in Poland after Google.
This isn't the end of sharing interesting content – we also used our video as a promotional material for Women's Day – not only because we wanted to showcase the vast knowledge and charisma of our colleagues – Google Ads super specialists . We shared the video on both our Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, as well as on the accounts of our employees, who found the material interesting. The content, good not only in our opinion, went viral and did a good marketing job. We killed two birds with one stone – we prepared industry-specific, substantive material from our field, providing clients with a wealth of information, and at the same time, we showcased our video on as many online channels as possible.
Multiple methods
Content marketing can be misinterpreted as marketing based solely on text. Nothing could be further from the truth. Content marketing utilizes virtually all forms of online communication. This includes text, videos, podcasts, webinars, infographics, and much, much more. Of course, many of these have been given their own names and taken on a life of their own. Overall, however, they can be called content marketing.
This is important because each industry has its own specifics and it may turn out that building content on a blog is not the optimal solution in absolutely every situation (a blog is undoubtedly a great way to promote your business 🙂 ).
Let's assume, however, that you can't afford a multi-pronged marketing effort and are launching a small B2B product/service. What would be best then? Perhaps personal branding based on podcasts or quick video content shared on LinkedIn ...
Regardless of your needs, you must design your content marketing not only with your target audience in mind. You should also consider where online users might find you, and importantly, how they can do so in a natural environment.
A response to needs
In fact, you can assume that what you're reading right now is content marketing. At some point, someone decides they'd like to learn more about a topic—for example, how to make tomato soup or which car to choose for under 50 złoty. In response to a search query or phrase, you're presented with pages that can help you. Google's crawlers evaluate which content is most likely to be useful to you. There are around 200 factors that influence a page's visibility, and most are obviously unrelated to content. However, content is the most important criterion in this evaluation.
Good content marketing is one that, firstly, meets your needs and, secondly, aligns with your company's business. Take the article you're currently reading, for example. Your interest in content marketing stems from the fact that this form of advertising intrigues you – perhaps you'll choose this method to promote your company. We, at Verseo, have been operating in the advertising industry for many years. Therefore, there's a chance that after reading this article, you'll want to learn more about other aspects of our business and decide that using promotional methods other than content marketing – such as Google AdWords or SEO – would be more appropriate for your business . The content we've prepared may direct you to other areas of our marketing activities, so this text will serve its purpose!
Naturalness of the message
We encounter content marketing in various situations, but most often when we're looking for something—answers, recommendations, opinions, explanations. Marketers then provide us with guides, tutorials, and video reviews. The more we align with the recipient's tastes and the closer we come to their intentions, the better our content will perform. Therefore, every content marketer should possess not only emotional intelligence and the ability to extrapolate other people's states, but also, at least superficially, an interest in psychology and behavioral science.
Content is one thing, but the reader's reaction to it is another. Therefore, it's crucial to enable the recipient of your message to take further steps within your environment – for example, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a guide, "catching" it for later remarketing, or following a link to an article they might also be interested in. When creating content marketing, it's always worth putting yourself in the role of the recipient, not the creator. Therefore, the more flexible your mind, the better for your content. 🙂
Possibility to export activities
Another advantage of content marketing is that you don't need to have the staff in your own company to create it. You can outsource blogging to an experienced copywriter , for example, who will not only write texts on a recommended topic but also research relevant phrases and topics related to your industry.
Video recording is often outsourced, as it's often because you don't need a film crew, recording equipment, or a subscription to editing software on a day-to-day basis. By engaging an external provider, you can also entrust them with creating the script and choosing the format.
However, before entering into this type of collaboration, always consider what you need in terms of subject matter, format, and video length. You can't wander blindly, especially since filming a video is an expensive undertaking.
Personally, I believe that, provided a company has the resources to invest in a team, it should still consider building an in-house content marketing department. I always recommend this approach because someone who identifies with the company, lives within it, and knows its audience and offerings inside and out will create content more efficiently and naturally than someone from the outside. It may also turn out that this approach will simply be cheaper (perhaps with the exception of in-house video production, which requires significant upfront investment).
The image of an expert
It's simple. If someone doesn't know something and you do, you can take advantage of it. The more competent the answer or opinion, the better the image you can create for yourself or your brand. Therefore, even "free" knowledge transfer has a completely business rationale and ultimately pays off. A classic win-win.
Content marketing 2019/20 and beyond?
In most cases – from stove-making to online marketing – a blog is a must-have. Content marketing is essentially a house built on blogging. I remember the days when blogs were the domain of people who wanted to share their interests with the world and… that's it. Back then, no one thought about monetizing their blogs, and within companies, the idea that someone's job could simply consist of writing…
SURPRISE!
We owe everything to Google's dominant role in our lives. Over 90% of Poles look for answers here. Companies are therefore providing the country's most popular search engine with more and more content. And for now, there's no indication that this trend will change – with one small caveat: content will have to be increasingly concise, and its quality will have to be as high as possible. Google is developing increasingly refined methods for measuring user intentionality. Soon, it won't be able to provide relevant answers to an entire demographic group or a specific community broadly interested in a given topic. Over time, Google will deliver answers tailored to your needs. It will also analyze whether you prefer reading more comprehensive content or more concise posts. While writing this article, I'm wondering whether this length of my argument will be optimal. Theoretically, the longer the text, the better for the search engine. This has been the case so far, but it's now clear that this trend may soon change.
Regardless, blogging will remain the dominant form of content marketing for a long time to come – not only because of its enduring popularity, but also because there are few barriers to content creation. Word processors and platforms for sharing various types of content are currently trivial to use. The only real limitation is the time available for content marketing.
However, blogging is starting to face stiff competition from video and podcasts. Video, which has fueled the popularity of the YouTube search engine , is now being heavily pushed by the algorithms of social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn . As I've written before, the video format resonates better with users – it's more engaging, engaging, and people are more likely to interact with it.
These factors, supported by social media algorithms, are behind the growing popularity of video-based content marketing.
Podcasts are also being mentioned more and more often, although I honestly don't see any qualitative differences that would suggest this format will dethrone video in the coming years. Podcasts are currently used for personal branding and primarily to stand out with a new form of online presence. It's definitely easier to record something solely in voice than in video format. Perhaps, then, in certain situations—such as driving a car or bus—podcasts will join audiobooks and become more widely used. I still remain somewhat skeptical.
Content Marketing – Summary
Should I make this content or not? If you plan to only do what you're currently doing in the future, the answer is simple – ABSOLUTELY YES!
High-quality, authentic, and above all, well-established content marketing will always pay off in the long run and will positively impact your business, your website's SEO, and your audience's perception of your products or services. Importantly, once created, content will "work" for you forever (e.g., in the case of blogging). Of course, it's important to remember to update the content, which should be constantly supplemented with new texts or other forms of content promotion.
Finally, I encourage you to download my guide to blogging for business . In the material, I highlight success factors and the topic cluster strategy, which we also used for ourselves. If you're serious about content marketing, I believe this guide will be for you.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- content marketing as an effective strategy for attracting the attention and interest of potential customers,
- the benefits of content marketing, including its various forms, content distribution possibilities, adapting to the needs of recipients and building an expert image,
- trends in content marketing,
- development of new forms of media such as video and podcasts.
