Content Marketing: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Content marketing is the heart of businesses, it will not only grow your business but increase sales and leads. Traditional advertising is becoming far less effective. People do not want to be interrupted by advertisements that they are not interested in. Content marketing involves online material such as a video, blog, or social media post that does not explicitly advertise a brand but piques the interest of the consumer.

Are you struggling to reach your desired target audience, and grow your business, and not sure how? Content marketing is one of the most efficient ways to get your audience’s attention and make a connection with them. If you are looking to create more leads, sales, and scale your business, stop wasting your time on the wrong content marketing approach. Here is a beginner’s guide that will help you be successful!

Content marketing helps a business achieve a goal through marketing online. Even if someone is just aware that your product exists, or interacts with your website is beneficial in the long run. The recognition of this will resonate with consumers.

Introduction to Content Marketing

Let’s start by breaking down content marketing. Content is things such as blogs, podcasts, videos, and social media posts. Then there is marketing. This is where you give information about your product or service to your target audience in hopes they become a customer. Combining the two of these becomes content marketing and that is what businesses do to reach customers online.

Content marketing creators, share and distribute high-quality content that is geared towards your target audience. Quality content should be relevant to those who are searching for the product or service.

Content helps marketers:

• Turn leads into sales and repeat customers
• Engage with the audience
• Educate customers/consumers

How To Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

Create a Mission Statement

Having a mission statement is important in content marketing. This tells your audience who you are, what they will gain from you, and your content. Mission statements do not have to be long either. It is a great way to attract consumers and get noticed.

When creating your mission statement for marketing try this formula from Optinmonster: “We provide (target audience) with (the type of content) to help them (business goals).great way to attract consumers and get noticed.

Audience is Key

Learn who your target audience is and how you can reach them. What will they gain by going to your site, how will you get them interested? Knowing your audience allows you to market your content properly and efficiently.

One great way to understand your target audience is to learn their demographics. This is where they are located geographically, their age, gender, income, and education. This allows you to market properly to them. Creating a buyer persona is a great way to understand your audience’s wants and needs.

Find Keywords and Utilize Them to Create Content

There are three basic types of keywords to use while creating content. The first is a short-tail keyword’s these are associated with a broad group of things. For example, boots. The second is medium keywords, this is about two or three words more specific. Such as rain boots. You are getting more specific tailored results. Finally, are long-tail keywords. These are longer phrases and much more specific. Such as rain boots for children. This is very specific and the consumer knows what they are wanting to purchase by these keywords.

Once you have identified your keywords include them in your content, multiple times. Most importantly include them in the title. Throughout the blog and even in the description for the content of the blog. The keywords you are using are going to drive more traffic to your website.

Keywords help match your content to what the consumer is searching for. There are four types of search intent that Google uses to match your keywords.

• Navigational
  • Where are people searching? Is it a saved bookmark, or are they typing it into a URL
• Informational
  • Looking for an answer to a question
• Investigational
  • Looking for similar products
• Transactional
  • The consumer is ready to purchase a product

Create Content Such as Blogs

Your blog is unique to you and your company. It is the heart of content marketing strategies. Choosing blog topics that relate to your company and values is important. Using keywords throughout the blog will increase leads. If you are new to content marketing writing information how-to or tutorials are a good way to start. Make your blogs entertaining, but educational. Content marketing is about being unique, creative, and engaging with your audience. The strategies listed above will help beginners when it comes to creating content for marketing.

Content Marketing Tools

Many people who have been creating content for years still struggle, and that is okay! However, you can use different tools and software to help get better content marketing results.

Audacity is a free content tool that allows you to record your blog into a podcast. This is beneficial to a business because it’s another form of content one can utilize.

BuzzSumo is an online tool that allows any user to analyze what content is popular. It also allows you to set up keyword alerts so you can always be updated. Buzzsomo gatherers information from multiple social media sites to give you the best insight into your competitor’s content marketing strategies.

Visual Content

Visual content can make you stand out from your competitors. Content with images are proven to get more views and shares. Shares are a great, free way to get your content to be seen by a wide variety of people.

According to Brightedge, “The human brain can process visuals up to 60,000 times faster than text. Articles with visuals receive 94% more views.” Visuals help the consumer associate your content with your brand.

As you start to dive into content marketing use this guide to help you get off the right track! Content marketing can be creative and personalized to your brand or business. Remember creating content will increase sales, leads, and increase brand recognition. Content can be anything from a daily tweet that keeps the consumer engaged, a weekly recap on an Instagram story, or an informative how-to blog.

We hope this blog is a helpful guide for beginners when creating content. Try combining different strategies and tactics to see what works best for you and your company.

Also, read article on Social Media Guide for Ecommerce Business