“Content is king”
– Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.
When you hear “Content Marketing” your mind automatically thinks about Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube videos. However, content marketing and digital marketing, in general, have been around far longer than the Internet.
The concept of digital marketing has been around for hundreds of years but has gained popularity since 2010 with its current definition as we know it now.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the definition of content marketing as well as its types, and how to identify your target audience, and which type of content creator you should be, and which content writing style you should follow with your online marketing campaigns.
Content Marketing
What is Content Marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, it is defined as:
“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Based on the previous definition, content marketing is not only about pitching your service or your product, it is a content strategy to provide relevant and useful content to your potential customers and offering them help to solve their problems.
You can use content marketing to show that you actually care about your customers by focusing on building a relationship with your target audience, not just advertising to them.
Difference Between Content Marketing & Advertising
The difference between content marketing and any other forms of digital marketing is through the content you are sharing, you are not only advertising or trying to sell stuff, but it is also about sharing valuable and relevant content with your customers. That’s what makes it popular nowadays, people want to feel like you care about them not just targeting them to increase your sells.
Eventually, when customers make a decision to buy your products, they will become your loyal customers, as they will prefer your offers over your competitor’s, hence increasing your sell.
So, how can you know that you’re targeting the right audience that will eventually become your loyal customers?
You can know that through creating the right “Buyer Persona”.
What is Buyer Persona?
Buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customers based on data and research.
It will help you focus your time on qualified prospects, and develop products to suit the needs of your target customers.
Eventually, you will be able to attract high-value visitors and customers to your business and increase your sell. And that will make it easier for you to tailor your content, services to meet specific needs and behaviors of your customers.
Creating a buyer Persona will definitely be a great help to your content strategy, so how can you create one?
Here is how.
How to Create a Buyer Persona?
The good news is, it is not difficult to create one, as it is all about how you can obtain your market research and customer data, and then presenting that information within your business.
You may know the age or the demography of your target customers, but do you know what their interests or specific needs are? Do you know what entertains them?
You can easily know more about your current customers and potential ones through:
- Market reaches
- Surveys
- Interviews with customers
- Sales team’s Feedback
Depending on your business, you can have as many or few buyer persons as you want, but in case you are new to personas, start small- you can always develop more personas if you needed more.
After defining your buyer persona and knowing who is your targeted audience, you have to communicate with them through quality content and that is through different types of marketing: online, offline or both.
Types Of Content Marketing
There are three main categories of marketing these days: online, offline, and hybrids (mix of both online and offline).
Offline marketing means talking directly and face to face with your customer to tell them more about your company and your products and how can they buy them and so on.
While online marketing includes sharing content online, which s known as social media marketing and there are many different types of online marketing:
There are different types of Online Content Marketing, including:
- Blogging
- Podcasting
- Emails
- E-books
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Courses
- Social Media Posts
Regardless of what type of marketing strategy you use, quality content should be a part of any of the forms you will use.
By using quality content you will turn your product into something else no matter how common it is.
By becoming a credible resource on topics, your business will get discovered by the right audience who will eventually be your loyal customer, and you can do that easily through choosing content that will fit your brand and your audience.
Because content marketing is all about storytelling, and humans have told stories for as long as they could speak. Our attention will always go to those who tell great stories.
To be a great storyteller you gotta be created and write great content, so what is the difference between creative writing and content writing.
Creative Writing vs Content Writing
What does creative writing mean? Creative writing is basically the type of writing we’re brought up with from school, including Shakespeare, poetry or even creating our own stories.
As the name suggests, creative writing is more on the creative and artistic side, it barely follows the rules of professional writing.
Creative writing is typically read for enjoyment, it is all about storytelling which can be a great use during your marketing campaigns.
As such, you can’t expect to find creative writing in al your next marketing campaigns.
What does content writing mean?
In comparison to creative writing, content writing – also known as copywriting – is used for a particular purpose and goal, and this purpose is mostly about targeting your audience.
Unlike Creative writing, content creation and writing cover a vast range of different types of writing including:
- SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
- Social media
- Blogs
- E-books
- Info-graphics
Generally, content writing is usually used in business and marketing strategy campaigns for your targeted audience.
Integrity Corporation is here to help your business thrive online, if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, don’t waste another second. Contact us now to achieve your business goals.
Sources:
Content Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
How to Explain Content Marketing to Anyone [Fresh Examples
How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business
Creative Writing vs Content Writing
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