Content Marketing. The words sound familiar as if you know exactly what they mean. But, do you?
Usually, content marketing is confused with traditional marketing methods such as adverts and digital marketing. If you thought so too, you are about to get your facts right!
Read on and you will find out what content marketing truly is and the problems or challenges of content marketing.
What is Content Marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute describes content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating in-demand content consistently to attract people. With this, your audience will eventually become loyal to your brand.”
If you read the definition closely, you will understand what makes this form of marketing so unique and different from other forms.
A content marketing strategist creates insightful, entertaining, and catchy content that the public willingly looks for without even knowing that it’s a marketing strategy.
Unlike advertising, you don’t have to persuade them to see it. They will find it themselves!
By providing them with what they really want and enjoy, you will be viewed as a trustworthy brand that cares about its customers.
This trust will be the foundation of a strong and long-lasting relationship. Sounds almost dreamy!
Are you still confused? Well, let’s look at an example.
Examples of Content Marketing
You must have heard about Star Wars, right?
Look at it this way. The creators of Star War sell their action figures. To sell these they used a simple yet effective strategy. They created the Star Wars comics, a rich and thrilling back-story to go with their action figures.
As kids read these comics, they developed a relationship with the story and while there are thousands of action figures out there, it was Star Wars that the kids wanted, right?
Marvel used a similar strategy and was able to increase their action figures’ sales by 70% in 7 years of their comic’s launch!
This tells us another important aspect. That is, content marketing can not only be done using online content such as blogs, Facebook posts, or YouTube videos. In fact, this technique is very old.
Forbes gives the following five different examples of content:
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Books
- Infographics
- Webpages
A content marketing writer can create any of the above to promote a brand. However, a blog or website may be the quickest way ahead! So, this brings us to the question, why should we use content marketing?
Why content marketing is important for businesses?
As Neil Patel says, “content marketing builds a stronghold of trust between you and your customer. This develops into a long-term relationship.”
These lines accurately explain what makes it such a valuable approach!
It introduces people to a need they might not even know they had. It then makes them aware of a solution. With this, they will be loyal to your product over your competitors’.
Why? It is because you provided them with what they wanted. This shows that you care about your customers.
Therefor, we can say that the content marketing is important for following key reasons:
- Content marketing helps businesses connect with customers and create brand awareness.
- It can make long-term relationship with customers
- Organizations that implement a content marketing strategy often see a positive return on investment.
- Content marketing is an important part of inbound marketing.
- Quality content builds trust.
In providing what your customers might need, you may face some problems. But there are ways to overcome the obstacles.
The Challenges of Content Marketing & Way Out
Content marketing is one of the most effective, long-term strategies that you can use to market your business and gain loyal customers.
By creating high-quality, entertaining content that consumers are already seeking out, you are giving them what they need. With this, you gain their lifelong trust. This will make them always choose you over your competitors!
However, content marketing requires efficiency, hard work, and creativity. There are many challenges that come with content marketing. You should put the following content marketing challenges in mind when deciding how you want to go about the campaign:
1. Consistency
Problem:
One major challenge content marketing specialists will always find themselves facing is the need for consistency.
As a creator, you have to ensure that you have a consistent and steady outflow of content. You cannot create a killer video one month and have a poor video in the next release, right?
When consumers love your work, they will want more of it.
Recommended Solution:
The best way to go about it is to create a schedule that you can stick to. Do not release your content too soon because you may not be able to do your next project as quickly.
Release content every week, every two weeks, or every month. No matter how long the break, it should be consistent so that customers know when to expect your content. Ensure that you meet these expectations!
2. Limited Resources
Problem:
Time is what you will always be short of. It is quite clear that the best person to write content about your business is you because you know the most about it!
But, you might not be able to do it consistently while you actually run your business.
Recommended Solution:
This brings you to the alternative that is paid content marketing through another company. Outsourcing, basically. It has its risks but it can be very efficient.
However, the decision to outsource the role of managing content marketing campaign is dependent on some factors like personal preferences, budget, size of the business, etc. You will need to ponder about this carefully in order to know what option is best.
3. Quality Maintenance While Managing Your Time
Problem:
Meeting deadlines and publishing on time is very crucial and delays can be a turn-off for your customers. However, people often lose their content’s quality trying to meet deadlines. The biggest challenge of content marketing is to maintain the quality standards you have set while also meeting your publishing standards.
Possible Solutions:
For example, you have continued to post content on a weekly basis. If you are unable to maintain that, you can do two things:
- Post low-quality content to be on time
- Meet quality standards but post late
Both of the strategies have their disadvantages to your brand image and reputation. Therefore, always maintain a schedule. Do not leave things for the final hour. And most importantly, keep backup content ready. In case of any issues, post them!
4. Creating Unique Content
Problem:
Competition today is very high! There are thousands of companies producing content and hundreds that produce on the same topics as you.
Creating content that not only meets consumer standards but is also unique and exciting is important as well as difficult.
Recommended Solution:
Always try to approach a topic with a fresh mind.
Take suggestions from other people, be it your family, colleagues, or target audience, itself. Finally, do NOT try to copy your competitors. The best content is one that only you, no one else, has produced!
5. Budget
Problem:
Money will most likely be the biggest problem. If you have big budget, you can overcome the challenge of consistency, quality and so on.
Recommended Solution:
Decide a budget for content marketing and hire a professional, good-quality content marketing team. Such teams usually consist of managers, directors, specialists, consultants, and writers. The team can also include your existing employees or yourself.
This would help you spend less money and divide the workload—leading to more efficiency and effectiveness.
5 Tips for Creating High-quality Content & Engaging Audience
1. Setting a content marketing strategy:
Before you begin creating content, you need to do your research and figure out what your target audience wants to read. Figure out what topics they’re interested in and what kind of content they respond well to.
Without a plan for how you’ll approach content marketing, you won’t know what type of content to create or who your target audience is. It’s important to do research before starting any campaign.
2. Write for your audience, not yourself.
When writing content, it’s important to keep your target audience in mind and write for them, not yourself. Don’t use jargon or complex language that your target audience won’t understand.
3. Use a variety of content formats.
Don’t just stick to one type of content format – experiment with different types of content to see which ones work best for your business. Try articles, images, infographics, videos and even memes.
4. Make your content easy to share.
Remember that in order for people to engage with and share your content it needs to be easy and quick for them to do so. Make sure you’re using engaging headlines and images that will entice readers into clicking and sharing your content.
5. Promote your content when it’s published.
After all of this hard work, you want to make sure that people actually see and engage with the content that you worked so hard to produce in the first place! Make sure you promote and share your content over social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook and don’t forget to ask your target audience and their friends and family to like and share it.
How to Learn Content Marketing Skills
Take any of the courses listed below to set yourself on the right path.
- Content Marketing Strategy: Helping you build a content marketing strategy that you can use, scale, and get real results.
- Content Marketing: Get CERTIFIED as a Content Marketing Expert
- Growth Content Marketing Course: Discover how to unlock the potential of your content marketing from content marketing strategy to content production.
What Skills Should a Content Creator Have?
There are several skills that a content creator should have. In fact, the need for new skills is a never-ending quest. The following are the skills that a content creator should have:
- Blogging
- Web content creation
- Content marketing
- HTML (HyperText Markup Language) coding
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) coding
- Graphic Designing
- Social media management
- Social media marketing
- SEO (Search engine optimization)
- Photography
- Video production
- Use of Adobe Creative Suite
- Use of YouTube
What Makes a Good Content Marketer?
Having content marketing skills is not enough to make you see yourself as a good content marketer. There are other criteria involved. You will find them outlined below.
- You need to have goals that you will be determined to achieve with persistence in the absence of procrastination.
- You need to be driven by faith in making an impact and getting great results.
- You should know the area, niche, and so on that, you are good at (specialization with a unique skill set).
- You have to be creative if you want to stand out.
- You cannot do everything on your own, so make sure you hire others for some of the work.
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Conclusion
Content marketing is the use of good-quality, in-demand content to develop customer loyalty and gain lifelong customers.
If you can overcome the main content marketing challenges, then you are on your way to attaining success. Use our helpful tips and be the expert at the table. Know your skill and outshine everyone!