Content Marketing. Two words that seem pretty straightforward, but do you truly understand them, apart and together? Let’s take a brief moment to dive deep into the meaning and break it down.
Content is all information you push out to your target audience that gives them insight into your business. It is an engaging way to tell your business’s story. Content is a way you connect with your audience. It can include blog posts, YouTube videos, social media posts, podcasts, websites, case studies, articles, and the list goes on. Marketing, on the other hand, is about building customer relationships and ultimately meeting the needs of your target consumer. In all actuality, those two words together encompass a strategy that you probably never realized you’re implementing every day.
Now, you may be thinking that this blog post should have ended there. However, we’ve just barely touched the surface of this topic.
Let’s take a look at a definition given by the Content Marketing Institute. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is, “…a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The key takeaway from this definition comes from three words: value, relevance, and consistency. Take a second and think about what your content encompasses and how you are delivering your content. Are you providing content that is valuable, relevant, and consistent?
Value
Not all content is good content for your business. It needs to be valuable to your consumer. Think about how you need to convince your audience that they should be interested in your company. Value can be subjective from person to person. However, a way to measure value is through your metrics of engagement. If I am someone that values content provided by a brand, I share it. I share it with friends, family, and co-workers, people who would benefit from the information. Naturally, I am not only providing value to those I share the content with, but I am adding value back into the company or brand, organically. Thus, this saves the company more money on their end.
Relevance
Transitioning on to relevance. Consider whether your content relates to your brand and audience–will it reach the audience you are targeting? If you lack relevance, you lack in customer acquisition. As Michele Linn, former editor of Content Marketing Institute, said in her article, “Content marketing is not about your brand, products or services. It’s about your audience. What do they care about?” The content you develop should be relevant to your brand and audience. Your goal is to keep your audience engaged. Be conscious when researching and developing the content for your audience; your content should be educational and relevant to your brand.
Consistency
Finally, think about consistency. How often are your pushing your content? On average, humans consume 34 gigabytes of content each day . If you think about it, that is a myriad amount of information being consumed. If you are consistent with your content, you have the opportunity to remain in the consumer’s mindset.
Focusing on those three words can make content marketing an effective way to engage, acquire, and retain customers. Providing your audience with valuable content that is relevant and consistent with your brand leads to profit, savings, and essentially brand loyalty. Be mindful that customer engagement and acquisition will not increase overnight. It may take a few months before you begin to see growth. However, as long as you stay focused on that value and relevance, you will see the consistent growth and value added to your business.
Please comment below if you have any questions for us! If you’re looking for someone to oversee and execute the content marketing for your business, start a project with Buckeye Interactive. We’re more than happy to help you capture and maintain your brand through original and engaging content!
