Many businesses are barely scratching the surface of content marketing’s capabilities. To remain ahead of your competition, you can no longer rely on social media alone for your direct sales attempts.
Instead, you need to provide relevant, targeted content across various platforms and outputs that help to solve the biggest problems facing your customers and prospects.
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.”
If your goal is to broaden your horizons beyond social media, this blog lays out the types of content marketing available to you which will help attract, engage, and retain your audience. We’ll also share how to use specific types of content marketing to solve some of your biggest marketing problems.
Types of content marketing
Content marketing is made up of many different elements, and every business will have a different strategy depending on what they sell (their product or service), who they sell it to (their target audience), and what problems they are solving.
To give you a better understanding of what is included under the content marketing ‘umbrella’, we’ve compiled the following list:
Should I be utilising content marketing?
If you want your customers to be aware of your company and consider buying your products or services, in short, the answer is yes.
In fact, a staggering 80% of business owners and executives prefer to learn about brands through articles as opposed to ads, and 41% of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before talking to sales.
And it’s not just B2B that benefits from content marketing. If your company sells directly to consumers, you shouldn’t disregard the power of this channel. Design high quality, consistent pieces, and you too can build awareness about your product.
As blogs, social media posts, and podcasts are released into the public domain for anyone to access, your target audience could come across your blog whilst looking for an answer to a question. Similarly, your social media post could make its way into their feed.
By having information about your brand and product/service readily available, you can increase brand awareness and increase your chances of attracting prospects.
And this content is helpful to have for all your customers at every stage of their journey. Buyers now view 3 to 5 pieces of content before making a purchase. So, to meet the demands of your customers and help nurture them towards a sale, you must have different types of content in multiple formats readily available for them.
Knowing what type of content to create can be difficult. It can depend on your audience, their demographics, and the challenges they face. But to help, we’ve compiled some of the most common marketing headaches and will show how content marketing can help solve them…
Common marketing questions and how content marketing can help
Question 1: How do I increase the volume of organic searches?
Up to 93% of buying cycles start from a search engine, so you’re right to try and create content that will boost website traffic from the likes of Google and Bing.
Aim to create content that answers your target audience’s common questions. For example – if your business sells air conditioning units, writing a blog post entitled ‘Ways to Stay Cool This Summer’ will solve one of your customer’s problems.
When they search ‘ways to stay cool’, your relevant blog post will rank in search results, which will increase the volume of traffic gained through organic searches.
Question 2: My content marketing plan doesn’t engage my customers… What should I do?
The first step to engaging your customers is to understand them. Our customer persona profile template lets you understand more about your customers, including their biggest pain points.
Certain websites such as Answer the Public are also a great way to see exactly what your target audience want to know more about. Simply type a keyword into the search bar, and you’ll be given a list of relevant questions.
Once you know what concerns your target audience, you can start creating content that provides a solution. This is likely to be much more attractive to them than irrelevant content.
Question 3: How can I present myself as a voice of authority on a topic?
If you are the face of your business, presenting yourself as a thought-leader will reassure your audience that you are an expert on your subject. They will turn to you for advice, and this trust will mean they come to you for recommendations (or even to make a purchase).
To establish yourself as a thought-leader, you need to create content that provides in-depth industry insight and opinions. We would suggest monitoring news articles and product developments within your sector. Share knowledgeable commentary on these subjects (via social media, email newsletters, blogs etc.) and you will show your audience that you are in touch with your industry. This will help you to build credibility.
Need help with your marketing?
And there you have it – answers to some of the most common content marketing problems that we get here at 10X Marketing. If you found it beneficial, why not share it with a fellow business owner to help them solve their marketing headaches?
If you’re ready to go beyond uploading to social media to get ahead, we create content that educates, emotes, or entertains audiences. This strategy helps build a relationship that will encourage a better return on investment in the long run.
Whether you’re simply looking for advice or would like a content marketing team to take the reins of your marketing output, get in contact. We’d be happy to help!
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