Successful Methods of Content Marketing

What is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing refers to a strategy that focuses on the creation of good quality, relevant and consistent content with the aim of attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience. It will ultimately drive the audience to buy the product or service bringing revenue to the company. It is done subtly with the intention of changing or modifying consumer behavior

About Content Marketing Training
Content Marketing course is meant to help professionals in marketing and content creation to understand the concepts of basic concepts of content marketing, their scope, different techniques to use content marketing, the strategies and outcome. It contains nine lectures with two hours of HD Video.

 
Introduction to Content Marketing:
The content marketing course begins with an introduction to Content Marketing: it is a technique that doesn’t involve selling but showcasing the target audience with appropriate, relevant, useful content to attract their interest and attention. It is the art of communication without selling to an audience providing useful information making people more intelligent. Content marketing – an umbrella term for all strategies, techniques, tactics to achieve your business goals by providing relevant content, attract, convert, retain and engage customers.

Some of the leading companies and brands in the world such as Microsoft, P&G, John Deere, CISCO systems use content marketing and it is an effective strategy for small and medium businesses as well.  According to analysts, with the effectiveness of traditional marketing waning, nine out of ten marketing firms are using content marketing to complement their existing efforts.

Purpose of Content Marketing
It aims to provide valuable, connected, personalized, and optimized way across and beyond the customer/audience life cycle. There are broadly seven purposes –Brand awareness or reinforcement-it’s an organic, authentic to get brand engagement- overlapping of content marketing and inbound marketing. Lead Conversion and nurturing- content marketing course helps in converting leads into prospects- who allow themselves to get more information from you- signing up for the demo, registering for events, subscribing to e-newsletters, free trial. Customer conversion- sending testimonials, case studies, why your product or solution is better than your competitors and serve their needs. Customer Service- after sales, beyond user manuals, FAQs, using content to create value for a customer, best practices, how to use product or service, how to get the most out of it, innovative methods and how to extend their use. Customer Upsell- continue to engage with a customer, updates on new products and offerings, give additional value by talking about latest technologies and solutions, and new industry trends. Passionate subscribers- the ultimate goal is to make your brand a passion for the consumers-eg. Apple, they have a loyal following, who create fan sites, groups, write about and share their thoughts about it. Content Marketing is the butter, not the bread.

 
The scope of Content Marketing Course:
It is useful in both Business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C)- both require different content strategies. B2B strategies have to be news, trends, insights, reviews and informative blogs and articles. B2C- creates content that helps the brand, firm to stay ahead of the competition-understanding the needs and wants of the audience- knowing and understanding the prospective audience

Ways of Doing Content Marketing:
Copywriting, Blogs, Podcasts, press releases, case studies, Infographics, Videos, web pages, eBooks, sales sheets. Copywriting-engaging customers encourage them into action, communicates brand personality to consumers, attracts customers and search engines, builds loyalty and trust. Eg. online biographies, product data sheets, success stories. Blogs- identify keywords related to your industry, find topics that are most searched, understand customer pain points, write good quality articles that will be shared and talked about.

Podcasts-help you gain visibility in a totally different world- iTunes- Podcast leads to more sales, more signups, Michael Hyatt, author of Platform-Get noticed in a Noisy World – his podcast- This is your Life –downloaded 250,000 times each month.
Infographics– provides a platform to integrate statistics, charts, graphs and other information, capable of being shared and discussed.
Website content –visitors scan content for hardly ten seconds before deciding to read further- engaging headlines, introduction, and copy are a must for web content. Press Releases- help get noticed by potential customers about new product launches, events and achievements, also help get noticed in online searches.
Case Studies– helps in building credibility, discuss live examples of implementation, success stories, unique approaches, and solutions, they inform and act as a lead generation tool. Data Sheets –provide useful information about the product and service, features, benefits, do’s and don’ts.
Books/ e-books– on a particular industry, company, product or domain can be engaging for the audience, they can be provided as free downloads on registration- they may be of ‘how-to’ category or act as manuals for some new technology or solution. Michael Port uses his creation Book Yourself Solid to market his classes for salespeople and marketers but they are also bought for just reading alone.
Videos– moving pictures and sound has always fascinated people and now with YouTube, its applications have widened. Social media– such as FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn all promote video content over text, images or infographics.
Best and Successful content marketing methods:
In content marketing content is king although design, colors, and fonts do and delivery medium plays a role, it is ultimately good quality content that drives the audience. Best content strategies create awareness of solution to fill their need or address pain points, secondly creates enough material for them to do research on different options and technologies available, before comparing different products and taking the buy decision. Effective content marketing addresses the first two steps in the buying cycle.

– Content should be interactive-likely to be engaging and readers consume more of it. Get more content engagement and interactions-quizzes based on a statistic, incentives for answering (gift cards, discounts), asking an audience to rate content, animations (Cascading Style Sheet).

–Catering to industry requirements– the requirements of each industry is different- an FMCG industry, IT industry, automobile, agribusiness company may have different requirements of content. One of the success stories- IBM- has rich content that is both technical and general- categorized into case studies, blogs, brochures, executive briefs, press releases, infographics and video animation, guides, white papers- they are technically authoritative and trusted by millions- living up to it.

Microsoft– storytelling mode-people love reading to and listening to stories- they are not about software but people-stories connect people in powerful and telling ways.

McDonald’s– customer service through content strategy-it answers a total of 450 questions per day and more than 10,000 in total. It answers all questions good, bad or negative- Content marketing – informing customers.

Visual content– the power of visual content was unleashed by GoPro, the video camera company- having a huge library of videos on its website and YouTube Channel.

More strategies- Differentiation– differentiate your content from your competitors, make it unique and meaningful. Excel in content- invest more in getting quality writers, good designers, quality infographics, and raise the emotional appeal. User-generated content- all content marketing should not be self-generated – it can come from users (reviews, inquiries, experiences) and testimonials, topic focussed landing pages.

Requirements for content marketing training
Content marketing is intended for people with skills in writing, editing, copywriting, blogging, marketing communication principle, awareness of general market trends and principles. Ideally, graduates, post graduates, managers in advertising, sales, marketing, and management graduates in any discipline can undergo this course. Computers with internet connectivity, desire to learn and explore different techniques and strategies in content marketing are desired.

Why learn Content Marketing?
With traditional marketing witnessing huge competition and a fall in return on investment (ROI), a growth of the internet, mobile telephony, videos have created a huge opportunity for marketers to expand their market completing traditional marketing strategies of print, electronic, direct marketing and onsite advertising.

Content Marketing is enabling several content writers, copywriters, content specialists in various disciplines to hone their skills and enable companies to achieve better visibility through inbound marketing as well. The internet being a democratic medium- consumers now learn and research more about new products and services, before committing to buying. This has opened up new opportunities for content writers, marketing communication managers, executives, content marketing managers, content marketing coordinators, SEO specialists, Chief Content Officer, Managing Editor, Chief Listening Officer, Director of Audience, First Responder, HR for Marketing, channel master, chief technologist, influencer relations among others.