A Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing

In this digital era, content marketing has become an integral part of businesses. Businesses are increasing their spending on online content marketing and reducing it from traditional marketing.

Content marketing is not limited to online businesses. It is a general perception that offline businesses do not need content marketing, however this assumption is not correct. You must understand the basics of content marketing if you are running an online or offline business.

Many law firms, doctors, and furniture stores are using content marketing to educate customers and motivate them to visit their stores to buy products.

Some offline businesses even started offering purchases online as well. These days, you can buy furniture, cars, etc., online and get them delivered to your doorstep.

At one time, these businesses were using traditional marketing to market their products.

Content marketing is the need of the day and in this blog post we will learn what is content marketing and how it is helpful  for business growth.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is about creating useful content that educates visitors and convinces them to become a client.

In content marketing, you don’t publish content to push a visitor to buy a product; instead, you offer them knowledge and value. It earns you their respect and loyalty.

For example, you can visit neilpatel.com and read his blog posts and listen to his podcasts. They are very useful and give valuable information to marketers, bloggers, and webmasters to grow their business.

He rarely promotes his businesses on these podcasts or blog posts. Though at times, he mentions his products and they can help his audience.

Visitors get value from his content and trust his ability. This trust converts to loyalty, and this loyalty converts them to customers.

Another example is my husband’s blog. He publishes articles on project management topics, and many project managers benefit from his content. None of his blog posts promote his product (except the product update blog posts).

His audience finds his content useful, it builds trust in him, and they convert to buyers.

These are classic examples of content marketing.

Most big organizations use content marketing to promote their businesses. Content marketing is affordable and highly targetable. Traditional marketing is costly, and targeting the right audience is difficult.

Problems with Traditional Marketing

Traditional content marketing has a few inherent drawbacks.

• It is intrusive
• It Provides No Value
• It is Irrelevant to Most Audiences
• It is Very Costly

It is Intrusive

Traditional marketing is invasive. For example, you are watching the news and sudden breaks show advertisements. Now you are waiting for the ad to finish so you can keep watching the news.

This is an intrusion. Either the viewer will change the channel, mute the sound, or will wait for the ad to be finished. Intrusion is not helpful in content marketing.

It Provides No Value

Traditional marketing does not offer any value. Ads are promotional, and the goal is to sell their product to you.

These kinds of ads rarely help in conversion unless you need the product.

It is Irrelevant to Most Audiences

Traditional marketing is not targeted. For example, a television ad is seen by all audiences, regardless of if they are interested in the product. Whoever is watching the television will see the ad.

Showing advertisements to irrelevant audiences is useless, and they won’t convert. For example, selling hair oil to bald men is futile. No matter how hard you try, they won’t convert.

It is Very Costly

Traditional content marketing is very costly, and its duration is concise.

For example, you might pay thousands of dollars for a three-second ad during a prime time show. Also, you don’t know, if after your ad, your competitor’s ad may show up and that may lessen the impact of your ad.

Benefits of Content Marketing

These are the benefits of content marketing:

• It is Affordable
• It Provides Value
• It Attracts an Audience
• Audience is Targeted
• It Helps You Sell Your Product
• It Helps You Resell to Existing Customers
• It Increases Brand Visibility
• It Increases Your Knowledge

It is Affordable

If you are an expert, you can create content for yourself and publish it on your blog. You don’t have to pay a single dime for it. Once the search engines index it, you will start getting visitors.

However, if you are receiving professional help, it is not too costly. You can hire a writer starting at 100 USD to write a 1,000 word article.

You can also get visitors from social media if the content resonates and solves the audience’s problem.

It Provides Value

I have followed the Studio Press for many months and benefited from their content. Then I bought the Genesis framework and became their customer.

By the time I bought from them, I was a loyal visitor to their blog.

Their content made me aware of the problems the blogging industry faces and how to tackle them. During this knowledge sharing, they introduced their products and how they can solve my problems.

Content marketing is very effective.

You can write content about solving a problem and how your product can be of help.

If your content is useful and educates visitors, they will convert to buyers. Content marketing provides value to its visitors. They may or may not buy the product, but they can still benefit from their content, and in the future, they may become your customers. Or at least they might refer someone to your blog, and they may become your customers.

It Attracts an Audience

Content marketing brings traffic to your site for free.

Paid marketing can cost you a few cents to several dollars for a visit and stops as soon as you stop paying.

Content marketing is free. Once you publish your article and search engines index it, you will start getting traffic forever as long as the article is relevant and provides value. A single high-quality blog post can bring hundreds to thousands of visitors per day to your blog.

You can optimize your blog posts for search engines through SEO and can get consistent, high-quality traffic.

Audience is Targeted

Traffic gained from content marketing is highly targeted. You have written content and optimized for your keyword.

When visitors search for this keyword and visit the page, they are more likely to convert. They are highly targeted visitors. Content marketing brings continuous leads to your site.

We published a few articles many years ago on another blog, and we still receive traffic on those pages.

Content does not lose value as time passes. It becomes more and more valuable as it gets more and more backlinks. Search engines give this content more weight and thus more traffic.

Those were pillar posts, and we update these blog posts once in a while. The effort is almost nil.

It Helps You Sell Your Product

There are stages in a buying decision. The first step is the awareness of the problem and its solution. Next comes product research and then buying. Content marketing helps with these stages.

Being a product owner, you understand problems that a user can face. You can use content marketing to increase awareness of the problems that the buyer may or may not be aware of. You have to help them understand the problem genuinely.

Next, you inform them of the possible solutions.

Once you earn their trust, you can guide them to buy your products.

Content marketing helps visitors become a subscriber and then a customer.

It Helps You Resell to Existing Customers

It is easier to sell to your existing customers than bringing in a new one.

With content marketing, you can introduce your customers to your other products and explain how the products can help them in solving their problems.

For example, I subscribed to Thrive Architect from Thrive Themes and was happy with their product and service. Once they sent me an email about how their other product “Thrive Lead” could help me get more subscribers.

I subscribed to the service because, at that time, I was thinking of improving my subscriber rate.

Afterward, I subscribed to their other product and, finally, bought a membership.

This all happened because of their content marketing.

It Increases Brand Visibility

Content marketing helps your content be visible everywhere. Whether it is a search engine, social media, or email, your content will be everywhere.

People will know you and your brand will become famous. Brand visibility is an excellent trusting factor. If you are visible everywhere, customers will trust you and may become your client.

It Increases Your Knowledge

Producing in-depth educational content is not easy.

You research and study many articles. You brainstorm your ideas and then write your content. This process makes you an expert in your niche, and soon your site will be considered an authoritative resource.

So, content marketing increases your knowledge. Many experts agree that educating is the best way of learning.

Examples of Content Marketing

An example of content marketing is copyblogger.com.

They are a multimillion dollar company and do not spend any money on ads except for content marketing. They give free advice, tutorials, and podcasts.

People benefit from their content, trust them, and subscribe to their products.

Another example of content marketing is NeilPatel.com.

Neil Patel is a world-famous marketer and blogger. On his blog, you will find hundreds of useful blog posts and podcasts.

These contents are very useful and help searchers.

His blogs get millions of visits every year. His audience trusts him, and so they use his services.

How Online Content Marketing is Different from Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is different from content marketing.

Traditional marketing includes ads on TV, newspaper, fliers, sponsoring events, etc. All these are very costly, and require a great deal of planning. Conventional marketing is not effective because you target uninterested audiences as well. Targeting an uninterested audience is a waste of resources.

Traditional marketing is very costly and time-consuming, while online content marketing requires less effort, and it is much less expensive.

Traditional marketing is a one-time task. You pay a company for ads, and they run them. Once your ad is shown, it is done. Content marketing is for forever. It brings you leads even several years after publishing.

A Few Drawbacks of Online Content Marketing

Content marketing has the following issues:

• It Takes Time to Get Results
• It is Difficult to Keep the Content Updated
• The Results Are Unpredictable

It Takes Time to Get Results

Content marketing takes time. Unless you are very influential or your post goes viral on social media, it takes time to be successful in content marketing.

However, it is a good approach to build customer loyalty by providing them with value that can help them in their businesses.

Though content marketing takes time, results are long-lasting, with no further effort required from your side.

It is Difficult to Keep the Content Updated

Some of your posts may be evergreen for a longer time and require less monitoring. However, most of your posts may require updates after a certain period. This helps keep your posts updated and fresh.

Search engines love fresh content, and it seems to be a ranking factor for most search engines. Fresh and updated content is a good user experience. Searchers love to read fresh and updated content.

If you have a few posts, you can revisit old posts and update them. But if you have hundreds of blog posts, updating them is very difficult, and sometimes not even possible.

Many posts might have lost their relevance, and you may need to delete them. This is a waste of effort that you have invested in creating the content.

The Results are Unpredictable

Many times it happens that you have invested effort and created a masterpiece, but it did not get the response you expected.

Other times, you have created content with less effort and did not expect a huge response, but it gives you remarkable results.

The results from content marketing are unpredictable.

Moreover, if you review your Google Analytics, you will notice that many of your posts do not receive any traffic or receive little traffic. This happens, and many of your posts do not get the number of visits you envisaged.

Ingredients of Successful Content Marketing

Successful content marketing has only one ingredient: “value.”

Your content should provide value to your audience. If the content has no value, content marketing will not work. It doesn’t matter how large your following is or how much you spend on paid marketing. Without value, content is useless.

You must understand your audience’s pain, and your content should solve the problem. It should not be promotional or self-serving.

Promotional or self-serving content is not useful for content marketing. These contents are helpful, and the user is aware of the problem, trusts you, and now wants to buy.

Find where your audience spends time. If they are active on social networks, you can target them on social networks.

If they like videos, you can create video tutorials. Use the channels suitable for your audience.

Content Marketing Channels

You can market your content using the following channels:

• Blogging
• Social Media

Blogging

Blogging plays a vital role in online content marketing. Blogging includes blog posts, infographics, eBooks, podcasts, slides, and videos.

Currently, the most popular channel for content marketing is text-based posts. However, these days, podcasts and videos are gaining momentum at a faster rate.

Blogging, coupled with the right SEO practice, can give you long-lasting benefits.

Social Media

There are many social media platforms where you can promote your content.

A few popular social platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

In the past, promoting content on these platforms was easy; however, these days, it is difficult. Bloggers with thousands of followers get little reaction to their posts on social media.

Now to get the benefit of these social networks, use social media-specific strategies, and you might need paid marketing to increase your reach.

How to Get Benefit from Content Marketing

Content marketing is useful when you do it the right way. Let us look at how you can get the most out of your content marketing.

Provide Valuable Content Your Audience Desires

Many content writers think they know what the audience desires, and they write content based on this assumption.

Most of the time, you will be wrong.

Do some research, use keyword research tools, visit forums, and popular blogs, and see what they are writing about and go through their comments sections. Visit Udemy and see what course is trending. You can get ideas there.

Validate your ideas before you invest your effort.

Don’t Overwrite Promotional Content

There is nothing wrong with promotional content, but your goal should not be only to write promotional content. You should write educational content, and in between, you can send promotional content.

As a rule of thumb, if you write eight educational posts, then you can write two promotional content posts.

I have been following a blog for a few weeks, and then I subscribed to their mailing list because of their quality content. Once I joined their list, they started bombarding me with promotional emails to buy their course.

In every email, they give a deadline and say it is only a one-time deal. It made me furious, and I unsubscribed.

Think like a subscriber to your mailing list or blog visitor and do what you would expect from the blog or mailing list.

Write an In-depth Guide

Once in a while, you should write an in-depth guide that solves your audience’s problems. This should be your cornerstone article. Spend extra time to promote it on social media and keep it on your home page for more than you give a regular blog post.

This content should provide value to visitors.

The length of these articles is usually over 2,400 words.

These articles are useful for your online business growth and bring many more visitors in the long run. Cornerstone articles get more shares than normal articles on social media.

I notice a trend of writing long-form articles. Most bloggers will do everything to reach some mark to qualify for long-form articles.

They forget that one crucial ingredient of the content, that is, “value.” In their effort to increase the word count, they are diluting the value they intended to provide. Using filler words and repeating sentences with different wording does not help.

This content may trick search engines, but not your audience. They are human, not an algorithm.

If the message is clear in 500 words, keep it 500 words. Don’t expand it unnecessarily for the sake of writing long-form articles.

Content Marketing Strategy

With a proper content marketing strategy, you can continuously bring qualified visitors and leads for a longer run. A few high-quality blog posts will bring constant organic traffic.

This traffic is free and gives you a steady source of income.

Content can be blog posts, podcasts, videos, slides, eBooks, etc. Creating remarkable content requires effort, and so must have a content marketing strategy.

While creating the content marketing strategy, keep the following points in mind:

• Identify the Target Audience
• Identify the Pain Point
• The Content Format

Identify the Target Audience

You have to identify what audience you will target. Every audience has different requirements. For example, if you are a food blogger, your audience will differ from that of the travel bloggers.

Targeting the wrong audience is a waste of effort.

Identify the Pain Point

Content should be unique and specific to an exclusive issue that you will answer.

You are a service provider or a product owner. You should understand a problem better than the customer can envisage. Show the customers you understand their pain points.

Once you educate your audience about the problem, you can explain to them the solution and how you can be of help.

Show them how your services or products are different from your competitors and how they can benefit from it.

The Content Format

The audience has different requirements according to the niche.

For example, in the food niche, the audience may demand cooking videos for a better experience while in travel blogging, text and images are okay.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

You can follow the following strategies for your content marketing:

1. 1Define the Persona
2. 2Define the Goal
3. 3Content Audit
4. 4Keyword Research
5. 5Content Creation
6. 6Promotion

1. Define the Persona

Persona is the perceived character of a person. You should have a well-defined persona of your visitor.It helps you in drafting your content marketing strategy.

2. Define the Goal

Why are you bringing visitors to your blog? What is your goal?For example:

• You want to educate them
• You want to convert them
• You want them to make a purchase

Every post, video, or podcast should have a well-defined scope and be tied to your strategic goal.

For example, you can write a series of posts to educate them and then introduce your services.

3. Content Audit

If your site is new, you can use keyword research to find what kind of content resonates with the audience for the keyword you are going to use to create the content.

If your site is old, you can visit your Google Analytics and find what kind of content is popular among your visitors.

It can be text-based posts, podcasts, or videos.

Try to create more content in the same format.

Neil Patel used to create text-based posts and published a few podcasts. But when he discovered that podcasts are gaining popularity over other types of content, he started producing more podcasts.

4. Keyword Research

There is no use for creating content if no one is searching for the keyword, or the content is outdated.

You must validate your ideas or get an idea that is already validated.

You can use Google Planner or any other keyword research tool such as semrush or buzzsumo to find how famous your desired keyword is.

If your desired keyword has a good search volume, you can use it.

Visit popular blogs in your niche and see what topics they are writing about. Since these are well-known bloggers, their chosen keyword is worth writing about.

5. Content Creation

This is the heart of your content marketing strategy.

Your content should be top-notch. If it is an educational content, make it as deep as possible. Invest time and research on the topic. Answer all the possible questions that a visitor can have.

Searchers and search engines both like in-depth, high-quality content.

The article should have a high enough word count to explain the topic well. Many marketers say Google gives a boost to posts that have over 2,400 words.

Don’t fall for these kinds of traps and use fluff to inflate the word count artificially. Write your content organically and solve the problem.

Google itself has clarified the issue; however, still, many marketers emphasize writing longer articles.

6. Promotion

After publishing the content, you should promote it. You can share your post on social networks, and ask your co-bloggers to share the post.

If you have mentioned any influencers on your post, inform them through email and request to share the content on their social platform.

These days, everybody is very selective to link, and it is difficult to get a link unless you are well known and the content is exceptionally unique or viral. However, sharing on their social network is easy, and they are more likely to accept your request.

What Type of Content is the Best for Content Marketing?

Usually, the following content formats resonate well with searchers’ intent:

• Product Review Post
• Product A Vs. Product B
• How-to Guides
• List Based Posts
• Best Resources
• Case Studies
• An Ultimate Guide
• Update Old Blog Posts

Product Review Post

I always read reviews of products I want to buy.

Anyone who is going to make a purchase searches product reviews. After reading the reviews, they buy the product.

Reviews are so important that if you buy any product from Amazon, they ask you to write a review so others can benefit from your experience.

People are always searching for product reviews. If the product is popular, you already have a popular keyword in your URL, and adding the word “review” increases the weight.

These posts can bring steady visitors to your site through search engines.

Make sure you review products that you have used. Otherwise, you will lose your credibility, and the review will hold no value. If you are using an affiliate link, you should mention it too.

Product A Vs. Product B

These are posts that compare two products and explain which one is the best choice.

Searchers have gone through many review posts and have shortlisted a few products to choose from. Now they will search which product is better by using “Vs.” with both products.

If both products are popular, you will get two main keywords in your URL with “Vs.”

These posts bring consistent traffic. Make sure that posts are always current; otherwise, your comparison post will hold no value, and you will lose searchers’ trust.

How-to Guide

These are in-depth guides that explain the solution in detail.

How-to posts are very detailed and explain the solution step by step with images and illustrations. There are standard formats for creating content, and searchers will appreciate it if it is written well.

These posts bring massive quality traffic.

List Based Posts

Lists posts are very popular. Searchers become curious after reading the title. List posts are easy to write and read, and they are scannable.

Lists posts are the most shareable content on any social media.

An example of a list post can be “9 Ways to Stop Hair Loss Fast.

“Find the list points. Usually, there are around 10. Organize them in order and then explain them in detail.

Don’t overdo it. For example, don’t write all your posts “100 ways…” and then fill them with filler content. Make them short and to the point.

Best Resources

This content is more well-known in the education and teaching niche.

In this post, you can provide the best resources. Ensure that these resources meet the searchers’ expectations. Otherwise, the post will lose its relevance.

For example, professionals who are preparing for an examination and looking for the best resources to help them prepare for the exam.

Case Studies

These are difficult to write. Here you conduct a study or do research, then compile the data and publish it.

Case studies are unique and get traction everywhere. Searchers love to read and share these posts, and search engines love them.

Once in a while, you should write case studies. Very few bloggers write these types of posts. Case studies establish your authority in your niche.

An Ultimate Guide

You may call it a beginner’s guide.

This guide explains the topic with every possible detail and usually has more than 2,000 words.

For example, this post on content marketing is an ultimate guide.

These guides take enormous effort, but the result is pleasant. They rank high in Google search, and bloggers love to link this content.

Update Old Posts

This is the simplest content marketing strategy discussed in this blog post.

If you look at your archive, you will find dozens of old posts that are outdated. You can sort them out and update them to make them relevant. Updating content is much easier than writing new content.

You have the content, and you only have to update it with current information. You can also add more content to make it in-depth.

Searchers love updated and current content and so do search engines. Many studies have shown that updating content gives them a ranking boost.

Summary

Content marketing is about caring for your audience, not selling your product. If you care for them and provide value and solve their problem, they will become your loyal customers. The impact of content marketing is long-lasting.

With effective content marketing, you can increase your conversion significantly with the least investment. Content marketing helps you grow your business, brand, and relationship with customers.

The right content, coupled with the right content strategy, can bring fruitful results to your business.