What is Content?
Before we define content marketing, it is very much essential for us to define the term ‘content’. A content is anything that can help engage the end users of your product or service. This article is also a content. Content can be consumed both on and off the website, in any medium that is capable of delivering a message. A content can be anything like website articles, news, case studies, white papers, mobile apps, video, blogs, infographics, podcasts, online presentations, e-books, research papers, images, mobile content etc.
What is Content Marketing?
Joe Pulizzi is the god father of content marketing. It consists of a broad spectrum of activities and types of content, including blogging, videos, social media updates, images, and more. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. It is all about creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage the audience.
This marketing always works because it offers value to a potential customers. This provides immediate requirement of information and engages customers. Strategically, it is a very powerful brand-building and business-building tool.
Not all content fulfill the purpose of content marketing. There are quite a lot of content produced fails to perform. Considering this, there are some basic characteristics for content to justify its intend;
- Credible
- Shareable
- Useful
- Interesting
- Relevant
- Different
- On brand
Consideration for Content building and Content Marketing
Content, in itself, is a vague term. Any document, image, video, audio can qualify for a content. Also, there is no hard and fast rule to justify what types of content one should use. Not all the content are useful for the defined scenario. A good content requires various consideration before it reaches to the intended party. There are some general rules or consideration of engagement when it comes to material building and content marketing. Some of such general considerations are:
Target Audience
Every content has some intended audience i.e. it has some target audience i.e. who exactly do you want to consume the content? A baby product promotion targets parents with new born babies or infants. Similarly, a content can have a multiple audience hence, content should follow a different approach.
The purpose of the content is to reach the targeted audience and inform or aware them. A content intended to wrong audience or a wrong content to intended audience result to a failure. It is so powerful that it might take years of promotions to revive the impact of failed content.
Buying Stage
Understand the physical and mental position of buyers i.e. buying decision making stage, is necessary while building a content or strategy to market the content. Brands need to be clear what target they are targeting and how much information should they serve in the content. For the individual, who is in “consideration stage” of buying, content that reflects the features, testimonial content etc. is useful and can add value. Meanwhile, for customers in “decision stage” prefer a detailed review and utility based content which assure their preference for the product or service.
Multiple channel to content
The more of your content is there in different channels of marketing, the better is the credibility of the content. Content Marketing Institute has suggested that publishing a content in your in-house medium is least effective i.e. people get more aware of Coca Cola Campaign from other channels and mediums than their own websites. The Coca Cola Company is considered the best when it comes to marketing. The content of their campaign is made available to each and every medium, from commercial sponsorship to social responsibility events and from newspaper articles to prime time news, their content is everywhere.
Multiple content type
A good content is not limited to one content type. A proposal of marketing campaign is a content for a defined group while a picture illustration of that marketing campaign is another content type. A news about a marketing campaign serves a different purpose. Therefore, while content building and content marketing it is essential to understand the strength of the content and always keep path clear for multiple content type.
This will allow a brand or marketing management team to maximize the potential of the content and serve a better purpose.
REQUIREMENTS AND TYPES OF CONTENT MARKETING
References
- CMI
- Digital Marketing Strategy, Simon Kingsnorth