“Content is King”
Today that phrase is thrown around marketing magazines and articles left and right. Everyone loves a good story, and every consumer wants to be wooed, entertained, and engaged when they’re eyeing brands and companies. Consumers are inundated with millions of ads, information, and marketing materials, and content marketing is key for businesses looking to distinguish themselves from the enormous competition that exists in today’s marketplace. Furthermore, content marketing allows you to convey your brands personality and offering to the consumer in a highly tailored and specific way.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is exactly as it reads: it’s focusing efforts on developing thoughtful, engaging, and informative content that is going to draw in the right consumers to a particular product. It falls under the Inbound Marketing umbrella, which works by intriguing and alluring consumers through posts and materials that particularly appeal to them. Gone are the days of blindly bombarding consumers with Outbound Marketing and newspaper ads.
Content marketing includes website copy, social media posts, video content, blogs, and articles. It’s not just the words on a page, either. It’s the total content that consumers can absorb by visiting a company’s website, social media profiles, and video streaming platforms. In a perfect world, all of this content would be working in harmony to push your business.
Quality is Key
Successful content marketing is the combined efforts of creative, energetic, and passionate writers and designers. Unique and eye-catching content has the ability to take any brand out of the shadows and into the consumer spotlight in a matter of months. Social media and other inherent aspects of the Information Age allows consumers to have an immense amount of online control and choice, and there expectations for quality marketing is incredibly high. The better the content marketing, the more your message will resonate with your consumer.
It’s Only Going Up From Here
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2016 Content Marketing Budgets Benchmarks and Trends, 76 percent of marketers use content marketing in their campaigns, but less than half have a documented strategy. The study also found that businesses plan to expand their content marketing initiatives over the course of the next year.
Additionally, this year, B2C companies are allocating roughly 32 percent of their budget into content marketing compared to 25 percent from last year.
What should this tell you? Content marketing is here to stay. When done creatively and thoughtfully, it is a great way to differentiate your brand or product and engage your target audience in a meaningful and memorable way.