Content Marketing
Conventional marketing has always relied on attention-grabbing words provided by highly creative writers. In the early days of online marketing, this wasn't always the case. Instead, keyword stuffing was widespread. This was the very primitive practice of cramming as many keywords as possible into webpages, often without context or grammatical coherence. In fact, you'll come across sites that still haven't abandoned keyword stuffing even today.
What is Content Marketing?
Google's Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) study in 2011 was the first comprehensive account of the importance of content marketing. One of its key recommendations was that businesses should take control of the stories being told about them and present their own definitive narrative.
At the same time as the ZMOT study was published, Google made the change to its algorithms that rendered keyword stuffing worthless. Instead, they shifted the focus to sites that provide visitors with a positive, helpful, informative and engaging experience. High-quality content became essential to search engine optimisation. A site with unique, authoritative, entertaining content would perform well in response to direct search queries.
Social Media Content
Meanwhile, the meteoric rise in popularity of social media brought with it a need for a different kind of content. Quality remains paramount, but the tone and style are different, since social media users are much more passive consumers. Instead of actively looking for content, these users are being found by it.
The Value of Content Marketing
All of this has created both challenges and opportunities. The indisputable fact is that no digital marketing campaign will get very far without taking content seriously. Great content adds value for the consumer and dramatically increases the credibility of your brand. The search engines understand the importance of delivering the best results to their users, which is why sites with strong, focused content will always have an advantage.
What is Content?
Blogs
Content takes many forms. The most obvious one is the blog. The free-form nature of this kind of content makes it extremely versatile. A blog is a great place to tell a story, express opinions, give advice and generally start conversations. Particularly inpressive blogs are even cited in academic papers and governmental studies.
Webpages
Webpages of every kind require the best possible content. Even those you think of as purely functional need to be optimised to provide the best experience - product pages, contact forms, personnel profiles, even checkouts. Every element of your site can benefit from targeted, persuasive content.
Infographics
Infographics are extremely useful and if they are striking and original enough, they have the potential to go viral. If they encapsulate and communicate a powerful, original or startling idea or set of statistics, people will be compelled to share them. It's worth hiring a professional to create your infographics to ensure maximum impact. Once published on your site, they have to be found, of course, and content-driven SEO will help to achieve this.
Downloads
It's very common to visit websites which offer downloadable e-books, usually but not exclusively consumer guides. These are ideal for making an explicit offer of value. They must live up to their promise and deliver genuinely useful information in entertaining language, but it's worth producing them to the highest standard. Not only are you giving valuable information for free, but you're also enhancing your reputation as a business that goes the extra mile for its customers.
Videos
Videos are highly effective forms of content marketing. They're too often discounted as being expensive and difficult to make but with the falling cost of equipment, it doesn't take more than a modest investment and a rich imagination to create short films that most site visitors find irresistible. Where would the film industry be without trailers? A well-made video, even on a low budget, can sometimes do more for your brand profile than thousands of words and scores of photographs.
Podcasts
Podcasts are even cheaper to produce. They have become immensely popular, appealing to an extraordinarily wide demographic. From teenagers to senior citizens, this is a platform of virtually limitless potential.
How Content Marketing Increases Sales
There are four stages in the average buying cycle: awareness, research, consideration and purchase.
First the consumer identifies a need and becomes aware of a solution. Then they research that solution. The results of that research lead them to consider alternative products to find the best quality and value. Finally, they choose a product and make the purchase,
Conventional advertising is mostly concerned with stages three and four. Content marketing begins at stage one to persuade the consumer of their need and to put solutions in front of them. The return on investment from content marketing can be enormous. It requires only modest financial investment but if executed properly, can transform the fortunes of your business.
Why Use Us?
The answer is simple. We've done this for ourselves. We are qualified to provide winning content marketing because we've learned by our own example. We have worked for years promoting our own brands through content marketing and SEO in some of the toughest industry sectors, including finance, insurance and energy.
We know what works because it's worked for us. Now let us put it to work for you.
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