Can you imagine the business world without ‘business communication’? There would be no communication whatsoever. There would be chaos. There would be a breakdown in business relationships. But thankfully we do.
Business communication needs good content, and good content needs marketing, to reach your intended target audience.
1. Introduction
Business communication makes use of highly engaging content to get a message across. The strategic placement of business-based content is done through ‘Content Marketing’. It is an appendage of marketing, which envelopes everything with regards to business content.
Through this post, we will gain an understanding of content marketing, its types, and tips. Leave any feedback in the comments section below. Also, I look forward to more standalone posts on content marketing. So, let’s get started…
Introduction to content marketing
2. What is the Meaning of Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the creation, distribution, and placement of content to retain a predefined audience. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic placement approach.
The result of content marketing lead conversion. Content marketing is not looking to pitch a service/product. Instead, useful and relevant content is shown to customers/prospects to solve their problems.
Every business/brand that is confident in making a difference through its content, adopts this marketing strategy. The 3 essential reasons why content marketing is important for every business are:
- Retaining customers & build loyalty
- Saving money & recycle the same
- Boosting sales & build the brand
Content marketing is not digital marketing. It is not the content that is inserted between your video ads or the ones that you see on the right-hand side of your browser. It is not the content that you promptly send to the spam folder in Gmail.
Any form of marketing needs quality content. Whatever marketing tactics you use, content marketing needs to be part of the overall marketing strategy. If its SEO that you want your business to tap on, you need content marketing. You can do this by writing engaging & relevant content on your website, coupled with good SEO practices.
When it comes to social media marketing, you need to have a content marketing plan ready before the social media plan. For successful PR (public relation) to work, address the issues solved for the public, instead of the business.
Paid marketing is useless if content marketing is not thought of first. It’s easy to put up ads and select the target audience demographics. If you are not marketing that content well, the ads will blow a hole in your pocket. The same goes for inbound marketing.
Creating shareable content, is another aspect of content marketing, Blog content, website content, emailer content, printed content, and social media content, are all avenues for adopting content marketing.
Meaning of content marketing
2.1 Which are the Types of Content Marketing?
Content marketing will continue to assert itself as a powerful marketing strategy, for businesses of all sizes. If you are intent of adopting content marketing as a tool to improve lead count, conversion to sales and customer retention, then choosing the right content marketing type is key. The most common content marketing types are:
1. Website Blog
It’s no surprise that website blogging continues to be the most popular content marketing type. They are not just a source for engaging, awareness-creating & decision-inducing content, but they are also one of the best ways to improve SEO.
Maintaining a periodic blog will improve your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which will, in turn drive traffic to your website. Even if you do not wish to spend big on paid marketing/advertising, this content marketing technique will surely suffice.
According to a statistic by Forbes, implementing a blog onto your website can allow up to 400% of pages to be indexed. This means websites that run a blog have the best chance to ranking higher on SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
The number of inbound links increases, which improves your website’s ranking. If you package that same blog articles into a newsletter and send it across to your clientele, you maintain a relationship. The more valuable and unique content on your website blog, the more trust is built. But to run an effective blog, do some keyword research, make a blog plan and publish away on social media as well.
2. Video Content
It won’t take long for your competitors to see how well your blog is doing. With the use of effective SEO tools, such as Ahrefs, Moz, etc. any company’s content marketing effects can be gauged. To stay ahead of your competitors, and to parallelly continue grabbing the audience’ attention; publish video content. Close to one-third of viewers prefer watching video content.
Excellent video content will make a user stay longer on your website. If he/she gets access to appealing content, there is a higher chance for conversion. If you want to make use of an infographic to teach about a topic, try making a video for a change. The results will always be better.
3. Case-Study Content
Case studies are a content marketing type that allows you to showcase how your solutions helped a client/business to get success. Here is a great example of putting up a case study on your website. Highlight any special product/service that was designed/built by your company to serve a client.
Any user who comes to your website will get a better idea of your product/service by reading how it solved a problem. Your business as a brand gains recognition. Real-life examples always strike a chord with visitors who land on your website searching for solutions.
Carefully choose which case study relates to a specific audience. Send out this case study example as an emailer to prospective clients. Use a specific case study within a relevant blog article. Use them in eBooks, social media posts or within proposals.
4. eBook Content
Another effective content marketing type is eBooks. They are a long-form style of content. An eBook should not be a massive page ad. It should not be selling anything. The purpose of an eBook is to provide effective insight into a topic. It should be addressed to your target audience, and how it will solve their needs.
eBooks are a means to build a relationship, instead of selling a product/service. Whenever, somebody from your target audience has a requirement, via the eBook’s content, he/she will know you are the best to solve their issues. eBooks also aid in lead data collection. A user must provide some information first, to then download the eBook.
Types of content marketing
5. Interview Content
Publishing interviews, conducted with industry experts are an excellent type of content marketing. Then some interviews can be carried out with your clients/customers. Publishing interviews are a great way to establish your company’s position as an industry expert. Some modes of conducting interviews are:
- Hosting a live interview through Facebook Live
- Publishing the interview as a webinar on YouTube
- Dedicating an entire blog post for the interview
Ensure the subject of the interview is a relevant one. It should provide useful information and insight to the audience.
6. Social media Content
Social media provides a platform for small businesses to reach out to a wider target audience. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google My Business, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. are all examples of popular social media platforms that can allow your content to reach potential customers.
You can use social media content to alert your target audience about new products, attract them towards discounts/promotions or make them aware of your company. Social media content can directly influence a product/service purchase. The content shared over social media platforms must be a mix of information and promotion.
7. White paper Content
A white paper is similar to an eBook. It is also a long-form content type. The big difference between the two is that a white paper is a bit more in-depth & detail-oriented with its content. For B2B industries, nothing beats a white paper publishing for lead generation.
A gated white paper ensures that any user must firstly, provide some information about themselves to download the white paper. Your company gains a great deal of trust & respect within the industry, thanks to a professionally done white paper.
8. Meme Content
One cannot disregard the power of memes in content marketing. Who doesn’t share a meme? Almost every major brand in India associates itself with ‘minimalistic ads’ (usually a single image, single line creative) to put a smile on the face of the audience.
Memes (and GIFs) are both highly sharable types of content over the web. Make them part of your social media plan to garner excellent numbers of views, likes, shares, and comments. You never know how many potential customers could unearth out of this number. Include both memes and GIFs within your blog posts to make them stand out.
Types of content marketing
“Content Marketing is the only marketing left”
Seth Godin
2.2 What does a Content Marketer do?
The job of a content marketer is to plan, create and share useful content to attract prospective customers. Those same customers are converted and retained via effective use of content. The basic tasks of a content marketer are:
1. Formulates a Content Strategy
This is the first task of any content marketer. He/she must communicate a company’s best feature to garner attention and a possible sale. A content strategy will include, creating a list of features, choosing the right communication channel, setting up a customer journey map and creating user personas. Any broken pieces of content over the website will need fixing. On-page SEO knowledge is a must. Keyword research is also part of this strategy.
2. Engages in Business Storytelling
A good content marketer must have the knack of conjuring a strong marketing story. Uncovering his/her own company’s business story, and helping clients do the same, is a great skill to have. Stories build empathy, which in turn allows your target audience to start relating to your company’s brand better.
It’s not a bad idea to take inspiration from novelists, story writers, authors, and screenwriters. The whole idea is to make the prospect relate to the story and embark on to the company’s journey by becoming a customer.
3. Engages in Content Writing
Content marketers have to be good content writers as well. It’s not enough to optimize a website, make a plan or craft a business story. Writing a periodic blog, creating eBooks and also having enough design skills to create infographics, memes and creatives are essential.
The content writing bit needs to include the mastering of killer headlines, republish older blog articles and reimagining old bits of content into different formats. An editorial tone is perfect for a company blog.
4. Manages Social Media
A good content marketer will need to understand the pulse of social media. Every social media platform will need a different social media plan to tap on to its benefits. Generally, Facebook is used most to engage with an audience through surveys or discussions. Twitter works well for the promotion of new content. Pinterest is a good image sharing platform for infographics or creatives. So, understanding where your target audience spends their time most is important.
5. Comes Up with Techniques to Boost Membership
Building a customer subscription base helps in communicating easily with current customers. A content marketer must identify which technique would work best. Is an email newsletter a good option to share best-performing blog posts? Are eBooks a good option? He/she needs to measure, monitor and manage these avenues as well.
Content marketer profile
2.3 What are Some Content Marketing Tips?
Once you have understood your audience, created useful content for them and selected the best channel to market, make use of the following content marketing tips to stay ahead of competition…
- Always try to answer consumer questions
- Document your content marketing strategy well
- Publish useful & unique content regularly
- Write long-term content, that drives traffic for a longer period
- Re-purpose the same blog content into infographics, video, etc.
- All valuable content must be present on your website & social media
- Build an email list that will admire the content you create
- Be patient. Content marketing needs anything from 3-6 months to show any result
Tips for content marketing
Did You Know?
Only 37% of B2B brands and 38% of B2C brands have a content strategy
2.4 What are Some Content Marketing Challenges?
Content marketing requires consistent delivery of unique content to build a brand. These do come with some challenges. Some common content marketing challenges to keep an eye out for are:
- Struggling to define clear content marketing goals
- Not narrowing down a target audience and staying too broad
- Not able to create enough content during a week/month
- Struggling with the content plan, due to lapses or dependencies
- Not embracing new content marketing tools or latest content marketing trends
- Not being able to generate enough ROI/website traffic
2.5 What are some content marketing benefits?
The benefits of content marketing are immense. It does not matter if your business follows a B2B or a B2C model, some benefits are constant for both. Some content marketing benefits are:
- Builds lasting relationships with your customers/clients
- Brand visibility is increased considerably
- Brand recognition and brand awareness get a front seat
- Your website builds credibility and authority
- Traffic generation and lead generation is bolstered
- Social communication is established through likes, shares & comments
About Synapse.co…
After such a long blog post, we wouldn’t want to harp on about our services. But, for those who want to know what we do;
We are a Goa based, business communication agency that offers the best services for digital marketing, advertising, content marketing, and brand storytelling.
Our copywriters, graphic designers, and project managers provide the best services in content & digital marketing, and business communication.
Synapse’s brand design team works as per your brand guidelines to create an impactful brand identity. We work on crafting impactful brand experiences for every business.
We ensure better internal communication between you, your employees, your clients, your customers & your investors. Improve your company workforce efficiency and grow your profit margin through creative business communication.
Improve your company sales targets by designing marketing collateral that attracts your customers and clients. Increase business sales by opting for effective content & marketing strategies.
We help businesses fix communication problems between clients, prospects & employees. With our bespoke content marketing services, content creation will never be a problem.
If you want to embed business storytelling into your business’ mundane internal or external business communications, then hire us. You won’t regret it…hit the button below to get in touch with someone from our team
