Business Basics: What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on creating useful and valuable content for a target audience. This approach to marketing is quite different to traditional marketing, although they both share the same aim: attracting and retaining a target audience and increasing sales and revenue. Whilst traditional marketing focuses on pitching a product or service to the target audience, content marketing aims to make highly educational, informative, and useful content that it can share with the target audience. Content marketing offers customers valuable information, sharing solutions to a particular problem or demand, rather than simply pitching a product or service.
Content marketing focuses on producing high-quality content. However, content marketing is more than just content; it is, in fact, the result of a more holistic approach to marketing that hopes to attract and engage the right audience.
The act of content marketing can be divided into four parts, starting with brand positioning — which results in a clearly defined picture of the brand and its products.
The second part is value proposition, which is the process of understanding what value the brand offers to its customers and defining its USP. An analysis of what the business wants to achieve as a result of its content marketing is the third part, and the final part is to create a strategic plan detailing how the business will reach its audience, who the audience is, and how to measure the success of the content marketing strategy.
Marketing professionals, such as Chief Creative Officer Ajab Samrai, believe that content marketing offers many advantages and benefits to a business, including lower marketing costs, improved sales, and a higher quality of customer. The positive results associated with this type of marketing are thanks to the truly valuable content that is offered.
A number of platforms can be used for content marketing, and there several different methods, techniques, and approaches. One of the most important elements of a content marketing strategy is social media. However, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimisation, inbound marketing, and public relations are also part of content marketing. Whatever the platform or approach, the key to successful content marketing is consistency, as well as a focus on long-term objectives and goals.
