Aren’t we constantly talking about content marketing? But what the heck is it, recently asked one of my clients.
I could totally relate to his confusion, I mean, does it make sense to go on publishing blog posts and articles hoping that after reading them people will do business with you? Even if that is possible, for how long one has to keep on publishing?
As a content writer who makes a living off providing content writing and content marketing services to my clients, it’s very important that I’m able to explain to them why the heck they should pay me, and that too, on an ongoing basis.
The clients who get what is content marketing and why their business needs high-quality content have no problem. Some of the clients understand that their business requires content marketing but they don’t have much clarity. I’m happy to get their business, but while I’m working for them, it is my constant effort to help them understand exactly what I’m doing and what it is going to lead to.
What the heck is content marketing?
Content marketing basically means creating, publishing and disseminating content, useful and highly relevant content, to a targeted audience in return for their attention. The scarcest commodity on the Internet is attention. There is too much distraction. There are way too many options available on the Internet and it often becomes extremely difficult for people to choose one business in favor of another. For instance, how do you know whether you should hire me as your content writer or another person?
In order to help you decide in my favor, I need to get your attention in a positive manner. I should be able to convince you, that whenever you need a reliable content writer, you should come to me. How do I do that?
One option for me is to constantly advertise my services. But the problem with advertising is one, it is too expensive for me (the last time I checked, Google AdWords charges almost $8 per click for the term “content marketing services”) and two, conventional advertising is interruptive and hence less effective. Even if I advertise on Google, I have enough data to prove that given a choice, people prefer to click links that naturally appears in the search results (due to the strength of their content) rather than those that appear by the side as sponsored links.
Content marketing is all about making connections with people rather than stuffing your messages down their throats. Once you have made connections, people do business with you not because they have seen your advertisement but because they have trust in you and they really believe that you’re going to deliver on your promise. They come to your website or blog on their own – this is called inbound marketing.
Does content marketing simply mean writing and publishing lots of content on your website or blog?
It differs from case to case, but “content marketing” per se doesn’t simply mean writing and publishing content on your own blog or website. Merely publishing your content doesn’t solve any purpose. Your content must reach the right audience or the right audience must reach your content in order to make an impact. This is where content marketing helps you. But yes, you cannot do content marketing meaningfully unless you have lots of valuable and compelling content on your website – if you don’t have anything to market, what do you market?
Here is the basic essence of content marketing:
- Publish highly relevant and useful content people are craving to get.
- Publish your content in multiple formats because different people prefer different formats – blog posts, articles, white papers, social networking updates, PDF files, videos, infographics and slides.
- Use different platforms to distribute your content – as mentioned above, simply publishing content doesn’t do much good to you. The right people must avail your content. For example, if I want to promote my content writing and content marketing services then people who may someday actually need my services must somehow be able to access my content.
- Build your mailing list so that you can constantly keep in touch with people who have shown even a little bit of interest in regularly hearing from you (that’s why they submitted their email ID to your mailing list); provide them high-quality content so that when they actually need your product or service, they remember you.
- Establish yourself as an authority – it’s easier to trust people whose authority you respect. Once people trust you for who you are they do business with you more eagerly.
- Constantly engage people – engaging people means interacting with them and responding to their feedback.
Why content marketing is better compared to conventional marketing or advertising?
For advertising you are paying constantly but this is not the cased with content marketing. Once you have established yourself (at the fraction of the cost of conventional marketing and advertising), once you have built good stock of content, once people have come to know you and what value you offer, your customer acquisition cost begins to move towards zero. Once you have gotten better search engine rankings for the quality of your content, you are not paying for every click the way you do with PPC programs. Just imagine, coming on the first or the second page of search results and getting 100s clicks everyday without having to pay them.
In monetary terms, let us suppose, you pay me $35 for a blog post that ranks well. Assuming you are paying $0.50 per click, for 70 clicks you will be paying $35. But if you’re getting your clicks due to my blog post, after those 70 clicks, you are paying nothing. And you’re not just getting traffic from search engines. Many well-written blog posts and articles go viral on Facebook and Twitter and massive amount of traffic can be generated.
But it’s not about money when it comes to content marketing; it’s about creating a credible presence on the Internet. People need to trust you. You need to be familiar to them. They should be comfortable because they know you have always been there. Through your content marketing they can easily find you on search engines, different blogs and websites, on your own blog and website and, websites like Facebook and Twitter. For them it is very reassuring. Conventional advertising can never accomplish this.