Content Marketing

Content Marketing

🔥 Content Marketing (CM) is a type of marketing that focuses on creating and publishing valuable, consistent, and relevant content (videos, blogs, text, etc.), which does not directly promote the brand but aims to provide important information that benefits the public and indirectly motivates them to take an interest in the company's products or services, which will ultimately drive them to make purchasing decisions.
CM enables companies and brands to communicate with their audiences in an attractive and effective way, gain their confidence, and provide them with useful information in a continuous and enjoyable way. The essence of CM is the belief that if businesses deliver consistent, ongoing valuable content to their audience, they will ultimately win their trust and admiration which transforms into long-lasting relationships.

Content Types and Forms

CM may be done in the many different types and forms, including:

Blogging: Companies employ content writers to write various articles on product-related topics, providing benefits and explanations to consumers, answering their questions and providing solutions to the problems they face related to the product or service.
Infographics: A visual representation of information or data which helps to simplify a complex topic, or enliven a boring topic. It contains simplified graphics, pictures, and information, presented lightly to readers in a way that reduces time and effort to understand the topic.
Videos: These are made on specific topics and are usually extracted from articles, questions from followers, and other text content. They typically last in between 2-5 minutes and are available for viewing on the company's website, or various social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Research and Studies: One of the more reliable types of content marketing among customers. Most people trust numbers and statistics. Therefore, conducting research and sharing it with customers is an important way to obtain customers' confidence, and increases the company's credibility/professionalism.
E-books: Companies search for questions occupying the minds of customers and offer solutions by launching an e-book that is available for free download or by subscribing to the mailing list, which gives more credibility to the company and enhances its position as an expert in the market.

Why Is Content Marketing Important and Useful?

Creates value and helps people: CM answers questions and provides fundamental, basic information. This, in turn, leads to a situation in which the recipient (consumer) is educated and informed enough to make a decision concerning a potential purchase, or she/he can recommend the purchase to her/his friends, family, or superiors;
Saves marketing costs: Through CM companies can collect a massive amount of data related to current and future customers easily and at low cost;
Attracts and retains customers and prospects: Since the company is the expert of its own field, therefore, it possesses the most trusted content resource that will attract and retain customers and prospects;
Increases sales and profits: CM builds customer trust and loyalty and increases brand awareness which will turn into buying decisions, therefore, increasing sales and profits;
Expands the client base: CM helps to establish lasting contacts, which in the long term expand the client base and contributes to the reactivation of relations, or gaining contacts by recommendation.
Builds a good reputation: CM helps to build a reputation for brands. The more unique and useful the content provided by the brand is, the more respect it will gain from customers and competitors.
Promotes the company's position: CM strengthens the company's position as "a market expert" in its field of work, which helps achieve many of its goals.
Solves the problems related to low audience: CM keeps users longer on the site (this is what search engines prefer), thus the content reaches more visitors and the audience becomes customers.

Do you use content marketing in your marketing strategy or do you have other remarks? Please share your experiences with us below. Thank you.

Resources:
1. Witold Świeczak (2012), Content marketing as an important element of marketing strategy of scientiﬁc institutions, Marketing of scientific and research organizations, pp.133-151.
2. Rose R. And Pulizzi J.(2011), Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand, Content Marketing Institute.

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Sarah Daghman
Lecturer, Russian Federation

How to Choose the Appropriate Content?

There are several points to consider when choosing the type of content used for content marketing:

THE TARGETED AUDIENCE: the company must know its targeted audience before choosing the form of content, as gender, age, and even geography play an important role when choosing the type of content. For example, Red Bull uses marketing though videos because it offers content to athletes and adventurers. Therefor videos are their best choice (better than publishing articles, designing infographics, or even providing e-books).
PRODUCT/SERVICE TYPE: this plays an important role in choosing the form of content. For example, the mixer manufacturer (Blendtec) discovered that posting fun videos about its mixers is more feasible than any other type, so the company reduced marketing expenses on other marketing forms and started publishing videos on YouTube which show that their mixers are able to grind anything (the experience of grinding iPhone 6 Plus in the blender), the videos were very popular on YouTube, and their sales increased significantly!
THE WORK STAGE: before choosing the type of content, the company must determine which stage it lies in. Because if it was at the beginning of its journey and needs to enhance awareness of its brand, therefore, the focus must be on videos, whereas, when launching a new product, the use of Infographics will make a huge difference in the success of the marketing strategy.