Content and Marketing: Strategies for Effective Engagement



The two main aspects of business are content and marketing

When you couple those together through the practice of content marketing, you get something that seems to be absolutely working wonders in driving customer engagement and building business. This article goes deep into those content and marketing aspects to examine what appears to be an increasingly powerful form of business strategy. Whether you’re uninitiated but curious to know more about the what and the why, or you’re already familiar but looking for the specifics on how to do it effectively and do it well, this article intends to take you through all of that.

Content Marketing Defined

Content marketing is a strategic methodology in which the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant, and consistent content is used to attract and engage a specific audience. The goal is to get that audience to take a profitable action. The profitable action can be anything from purchasing a product or service to becoming more engaged with a company that they already support. What distinguishes profitable actions in the realm of content marketing is that they seldom seem to be “salesy.” Indeed, in many instances, the “content” in “content marketing” can be confused with “advertising.” Yet, this is where content marketing is different: delivering content that is consistently valuable without making a direct sales pitch is a skill that many companies still haven’t mastered.

Key Components and Definitions

Content marketing’s chief purpose is to develop and share content that has a special relevance to its audience. Content that is at least arguably “good” is the starting point for content marketing; good content does not have to scream “buy me!” in order to persuade. But in order to be “good,” content must accomplish three crucial objectives. First, it must be relevant. Relevance means much more than alignment between the audience’s and the marketer’s interests. It means that, at least ostensibly, the audience is primed to pay attention to, and be influenced by, the content. Knowledge of the audience makes relevance possible.

Why Content Marketing Is Important

Content marketing holds a prized position among all business practices today, and its significance is felt across all marketing departments. For the businesses that employ it, content marketing is often associated with reaching measurable outcomes. These outcomes can include or directly lead to benefits such as:

• Greater brand awareness: Businesses developing engaging and brand-relevant content stand to gain far greater exposure than through conventional advertising methods.
• Increased audience engagement: Content marketing gives brands the opportunity to speak directly to their audience; when done correctly, it leads to a conversational kind of relationship.
• Better performance in search engines: Google and other search engines reward websites that consistently publish content.
• Impressive lead generation: Content marketing is a supremely effective way of quietly ushering leads down the sales funnel. (B2B content is often even more effective in this regard than B2C content.)
• Enhanced customer loyalty: Content marketing can be an effective way to convey and maintain a brand’s values over time.

How Content Functions in the Marketing Ecosystem

When businesses grow, they require not just marketing but a coordinated and coherent marketing strategy. By forced necessity, those running the strategy have to pay attention to the not-so-glamorous aspects of integration. Only when the entire set of “sub-strategies” is working in concert can a business achieve not just a higher “top-of-funnel” presence but also an “awareness-to-action” sweep.

The inbound marketing methodology centers on attracting customers organically through valuable content. Content marketing nourishes this model by serving up enticing “hey, would you look over here?” content—solutions and insights that draw users in instead of shoving them into a funnel with the kind of aggressive advertising that seems to interrupt everyone’s life nowadays. In the model’s blog posts, e-books, and giddy webinars, businesses educate people as they sift through their problem space. “Ah, so that’s what you do,” the user thinks.

Content marketing is successful because it touches on the essential issues that our audience cares about, and it does so in a manner that’s almost conversational. When we do content marketing well, we’re doing it right under the principle of “the educational effect.” Sure, we might be marketing a software solution, but as far as our audience is concerned, we could also be “soft selling” ourselves as their preferred choice for IT problem-solvers.

Growing Traffic and Leads From SEO Content

Searchability is crucial for sustainable growth. To achieve this, we must get SEO content to rank on Google. Keywords, backlinks, and multimedia need to be incorporated—but not quite to the extent that one might think. These elements don’t have to factor into each and every piece of content you create, and they should be part of only a select few pieces, if that, to avoid content that lacks quality or isn’t engaging to read.

Content Marketing on Social Media

Content marketing has a key role to play when it comes to the world of social media. This is because content marketing is about reaching your audience with something of value and, in turn, having them listen to you. You may use social media to promote your blog, but if your blog is not up to par and does not adhere to content marketing basics, you are wasting your time—even if you have the infernal “10,000 hours” of practice supposedly needed to reach the mastery of a given skill. Audiences hip to the content marketing game can discern in seconds whether you are just pushing a product or if you are being sincere, and they will value your content accordingly.

The most effective strategies for content marketing ensure that the content they create aligns with the buyer’s journey. This ensures that come what may, the aforementioned buyer receives the correct message at the opportune moment. The journey itself is typically made up of three stages—awareness, consideration, and decision—when the prospect resembles more a buyer at the base of the funnel than the top.

At the very beginning of the customer journey, a large group of potential customers are blissfully unaware of your existence, let alone your offers. This is your chance to cast the widest net and draw in the most people with your content. Chances are that your target audience’s problem isn’t a unique one. So, write about it in a way that addresses a lot of people and floods your funnel with suspects. Who knows? A few might even convert into prospects.

Right in the middle of the funnel, potential customers know what their problems are and are seeking out solutions. This is a blend of an educational and promotional stage, and your sweet spot is showing why your business is an excellent option among the others. You can do that through:

• Comparisons: You’re not necessarily directing prospects to one side or the other.
• Storytelling: You’re better off telling a “problem-solution” story instead of a “we’re better than them” story.

Decision-Making Content

At the funnel’s end, potential customers stand on the brink of making a purchase. They are nearly there but need a bit more convincing to commit. This is where the use of real content—such as your company’s testimonials—becomes vital. Seeing is believing, and prospects love in-depth product videos. If you’re not telling a story with your testimonial, then use the next largest content piece in your arsenal: the buyer’s guide.

Developing a Results-Driven Content Marketing Strategy

A results-driven content marketing strategy starts with a precise comprehension of your people and your purpose.

Understanding your audience is crucial for anything you’re trying to get across. An efficient strategy must have a deep knowledge of that audience, almost to the level of intimacy. Detailed customer personas give us insights into our audience that we can use to strategize better. We can understand their pain points, which is probably the most vital thing to understand. What problems or questions do they have? What keeps them up at night? We can also understand their preferences a lot better than we used to.

Careful planning and consistent publishing are necessary for content to achieve any level of success. Here are some tips for building an efficient schedule.

• First, use an editorial calendar to keep everything organized. You should know what you are going to discuss, when you are going to discuss it, and in what format it will be presented.
• Next, set realistic goals that allow you to maintain a quality standard. Always remember that you can and should “pace” yourself just as you would if you were running a marathon instead of a sprint.
• Lastly, make sure to use the performance metrics that you have at your disposal. Remember that a good tool can make a process seem easy, and a bad tool can make even an easy process seem hard. WoopSocial is a good tool. It is what you might call a “post scheduler.”

Measuring success is essential for improving content marketing strategies. Metrics are linked to specific goals, which could range from creating greater brand awareness to generating more leads and converting them into customers. Key performance indicators (KPIs) content marketers might use include:

• The number of visits to their website and the sources of that traffic.
• Rates of engagement with their content, like shares and comments on social media.
• Conversion metrics that gauge how well their content leads readers to pay for services or products.

Harness WoopSocial’s Power for Content Management

U.S. businesses spent nearly $7 billion on social media in 2018. This figure is sure to rise as companies deepen their investments in both social media platforms and the international population that uses them. With this in mind, managing content across these various channels can be an extremely complex and time-consuming process. WoopSocial offers something of an antidote to that potential pain point, allowing businesses to not only craft but also to schedule and publish posts automatically across all manner of social media channels—be it with text, images, or videos.

To conclude, the integration of content and marketing mandates a well-considered strategy and thoughtful execution to really work and come together. But even more than that, it requires the delivery of value. Only when you understand this principle can you unleash the real power of content marketing. And when you do understand it, here’s what I believe content marketing can then do for you.