What is content marketing?
Content marketing is not a complicated idea – the concept behind it is that by creating useful content, a brand can draw traffic to it’s site and engage with the viewer in a meaningful way. This blog is an example of content marketing. By answering questions your clients or potential clients may have you can help draw visitors to your site, keep them on the site for longer, and highlight that your company is an expert in its field.
Why Content Marketing?
Other than the reasons listed above, why would you go to the effort of generating content marketing material? To help your readers make better-informed decisions. You are answering the questions they would ask you, before they ask. This helps your business by building your brand and associating expertise in the field with your company, and it does this while building on your SEO strategy. It also helps to build customer loyalty and establish that your business likes to do things the right way. When you publish a blog post explaining the pitfalls in your industry, it means your prospects are asking the right questions when they do their shopping around.
Content Marketing, Strategy & Calendars.
This is where content marketing gets fun. What events will you build your content from based on the year ahead? How are your competitors using content marketing? What are the trends emerging in content marketing in the U.S and the U.K?
Before you begin a new campaign it makes sense to do some market research and see what’s going on in your sector. This can be a great way to come up with ideas for blog posts or videos. It also informs you if someone you directly compete with has created similar content to that which you were planning on publishing. This should not stop you from creating the content; it will just help to make sure that you hit the right tone. Keyword analysis can be a handy part of this process.
An example of how to use content cleverly to move up the SERPS was employed by a client of ours. He installs guttering and his website has a lot of videos that show his site visitors what to expect when they get someone to fix their gutters and how to do simple fixes themselves. As a result his site is at first place for any number of keywords relating to his business.
The key with content marketing is to answer the questions your clients and prospects are asking.
Gutteman.ie shows us how content marketing should be done: