An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Content Marketing

The current business world has witnessed a massive shift in the buying patterns and behaviors of consumers.

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As search engines become more robust and quicker, a massive wealth of information is accessible to people all around the world. With just the click of a mouse, consumers can tap into this vast resource to make informed decisions before purchasing. Not only are buyers intensely researching products online, but they’re also comparing one to another. 

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No wonder 90% of companies are actively investing in content marketing.

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If you’ve been putting off content marketing in your business, then consider this your sign to start.

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However, creating willy-nilly content just for the sake of it doesn’t cut it. Your content strategy should eventually drive business results and contribute to the bottom line. 

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In this blog, we’re going to walk you through a few basic concepts of content marketing that you can put to use immediately.

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What is content marketing?

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The average consumer today is bombarded with a ton of interruptive marketing tactics such as ads, billboards, and cold calls. And honestly, they’ve heard, seen, and experienced it all. They are simply hard to be budged.

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Enter content marketing – the less pushy and non-intrusive form of marketing.

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Content marketing is the process of creating and delivering informative content in order to raise brand awareness, attract your ideal audience, build customer loyalty, and boost sales.

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When it comes to content marketing, there is no presence of cold hard pitches in the equation. Instead, it follows the long-haul approach of educating and building relationships with your customers. 

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Content could take the form of e-books, guides, videos, blogs, customer success stories, social media posts, videos, and infographics.

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Broadly speaking content is classified into the following forms

• Written content
• Video content
• Social media content
• User-generated content
• Lead magnets

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Benefits of Content Marketing

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1. Increased organic traffic

Content and search engines go together like peanut butter and jelly. When you invest in quality content marketing you are essentially positioning your brand in front of the largest traffic channel (i.e. organic search). By tapping into customers’ emotions you can leverage keywords and phrases that your potential customers would use, thus giving yourself a chance of ranking higher on search engines. This in turn generates more organic traffic. 

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2. Attract Quality Leads

As we mentioned before, content marketing is more of a pull than a push. When you catch your consumers in the research phase, it is much easier to persuade them considering that they are already looking for what you offer. Match this scenario with quality content that answers your reader’s burning questions and you’ll soon find yourself drawing in a steady stream of potential leads, on repeat.

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3. Increased engagement

Effective content marketing is all about building strong customer relationships. It prevents you from forcing your product or service down your audience’s throat thus welcoming the opinions of your audience through likes, shares, views, and comments. Plus when customers love your content and constantly engage with it, search engines take notice and further boost the content reach.

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4. Shortened sales cycles

The first step to closing a sale is through awareness. When you intentionally create educational content, you are pre-qualifying leads and educating them at the same time. If your content marketing addresses the challenges that customers face, you can position yourself as an expert and gently nudge them toward a decision faster, thus shortening the sales cycle.

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5. Lower costs 

Compared to steadily rising advertising costs, content marketing offers a significantly lower cost opportunity. Studies have pointed out that content marketing is 62% more cost-efficient than traditional marketing channels. With plenty of low-cost tools to choose from, creating content has never been easier than before. However, you may still need to invest in a skilled team or a professional. Regardless, the costs associated with hiring talent redeem in the long run because the one-time effort that you put into your brand’s content builds upon itself.

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6. Build trust with audiences

When your marketing is centered around educating and providing value to your prospects, you are no more viewed as just an ordinary company whose prime motive is to get people’s hard-earned money; your brand earns recognition for being the go-to place for helpful resources in your niche. This in turn builds trust, and earning trust is just as important as marketing in today’s world.

Content marketing puts the consumer's needs front and center and eliminates the concept of hardcore sales from the equation, thus making it more receptive to the audience. 

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A Typical Content Marketing Funnel

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A content marketing funnel is a roadmap that guides your prospects through the buying process, from brand awareness to the final goal of purchase. One of the classic marketing funnels widely utilized today is the AIDA funnel, it stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action wherein each phrase defines a certain stage of the prospect’s buying journey. Ideally, your content should be specifically targeted toward each stage of the funnel.

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Here are the four different levels:

• Attention: At this stage, consumers have no clue about your brand, and are merely seeking out information. The goal at this stage is to increase brand awareness and attract your prospects to your brand. You can do this through informative blogs, SEO, how-to videos, and social media posts.
• Interest: This stage is regarded as the consideration phase where consumers are weighing different options. The goal at this stage is to encourage them to stick around. Keep them engaged by creating invaluable email newsletters, white papers, and lead magnets.
• Desire: At this stage, consumers have a stimulating desire to make their decision and purchase. The goal at this stage is to further drive desire by communicating the benefits of doing business with your brand. Create case studies and leverage user-generated content to stack social proof.
• Action: This is the final stage where your prospects trickle down into. The goal at this stage is to spur your prospects to take action. This could be to book a call, a free trial, or a sign-up prompt. Give them clear, uncomplicated CTA’s and eliminate any friction during this step. 

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4 Steps To Build A Content Marketing Strategy

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1. Set your goals and objectives

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A good starting point for an effective content marketing strategy is to nail down your goals and objectives for creating content. This is your big “why”. While the benefits of content marketing may seem like a no-brainer reason to jump on the content wagon, you also need to dig deeper and think bigger.

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Ask yourself, what are the goals and long-term vision for your business? How can you hit those goals while still supporting and adding value to your customers? Is it to generate high-quality leads through blogs? Or do you want to reduce your marketing cost while going all-in on social media campaigns? These goals are extremely crucial to determining the success of your strategy. So don’t skip them.

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While you set these goals, keep in mind to make them specific and measurable by assigning relevant KPIs to each objective.

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2. Research your target audience

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Generating consistent leads and traffic is one of the most challenging marketing tasks today. The primary reason for this is the lack of target audience data. Merely knowing the audience demographic is not enough. You must understand who you are talking to, at a much deeper, intimate level.

The more intimate and visceral you can make this activity, the better you can understand your target audience. 

Create a customer persona and spend time fleshing out both demographic and psychographic information. Go beyond the age, gender, and income specifics. Delve deep and understand their deepest fears and challenges. Snoop around on Facebook groups, discussion boards, and niche forums where they hang out.

An alternative route is to ask your current customers. You could use surveys, polls, and interviews to collect feedback and draw information about your audience.

A successful and fitting example of this step is how accurately GoPro has nailed its target audience. Their ideal customer is someone who is adventurous, outdoorsy, and regularly indulges in an adrenaline rush. They are proud to advocate for their audience and feature their content heavily across all marketing channels. These low-key, unassuming moves make the audience feel more valued and heard.

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3. Create content

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When it comes to creating content, creative blocks are a pretty common occurrence. Plus there’s the added pressure of having to consistently crank out fresh and relevant content.

 Don’t fuss! As it turns out there are a ton of places, tips, and tricks to draw content ideas from.

• Look at what industry leaders are up to, get inspired, and try to emulate what they do.
• If you have limited time and resources on hand, repurpose your existing content into shareable formats on other sites. If you have an e-book use snippets of information available in there and turn it into a blog or a reel.
• Practice social listening. Use social media polls to ask their opinions.
• Capitalize on new trends and memes by turning on trend alerts for platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram.
• Free tools like UberSuggest, Google Trends, and Ahrefs are beginner-friendly and are great springboards to play around with keywords and phrases.
• Turn your testimonials and case studies into a user-generated campaign.

4. Market

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No matter how valuable your content is, your efforts stand futile if it falls on deaf ears. Ultimately, the channel that you choose should depend on your target audience and where they hang out. This will help you in determining the right channels for targeting your prospects and getting your content consumed.

From WordPress blogs to Apple podcasts to social media channels, there are countless platforms to distribute your content. Broadly, they are classified into paid, owned, and earned channels.

Paid: These are the channels wherein you pay a price to position your brand in front of an audience. Examples: Social media ads and PPC ads.

Owned: These are the channels where you have sole ownership over the audience and channel. This includes your email list and website pages. 

Earned: This refers to the content that others speak of you and create for you. Like customer testimonials, social media shares, blog mentions, etc.

A successful strategy is to use a cohesive blend of all three. 

Pro Tip: Pay close attention to your owned channels and ensure that they are maximized to the limit because this is the channel you have the most authority and control over. 

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Conclusion

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Content marketing isn’t just about churning out one blog post after another. As the digital marketing realm grows and expands, so does the competition. Therefore it’s vital that you come up with creative and interesting ways to educate and offer value to your customers. 

If you’re looking to level up your content marketing but don’t have the bandwidth to do it all by yourself, then reach out to Growthhub.

At Growthhub, we’re obsessed with helping businesses like yours get the growth it deserves. 

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Get in touch with us and we can match you with standout content marketers, writers, and video editors in as little as 24 hrs. We screen and pre-vet the marketers on our platform, so you don’t have to. Book a call with us today!

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