Content marketing is a type of inbound marketing involving the creation and distribution of content that will attract, engage, and eventually convert your target audience into customers. Content marketing is vital for your company’s efforts in the following aspects:

• Reach your target audience online
• Build your brand
• Establish your brand as an authority in your industry
• Convert prospects into customers
• Improve the ROI of your marketing

The list covers almost everything from website traffic to branding and relationship building. Even though content marketing is a helpful strategy in promoting your business, its user-centric focus makes it a valuable asset in influencing positive customer behavior toward your company.

Content marketing services involve the creation of a content marketing strategy that’s designed to achieve your business’s goals, including the production, distribution, promotion, and tracking of various types of content.

Content marketing services involve:

• Creating a strategy
• Planning a content schedule
• Creating custom content
• Optimizing content
• Distributing content
• Promoting content
• Tracking and reporting on results

Content marketing services usually involve a wide range of content types. Some examples include:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• Infographics
• Videos
• Webinars
• Ebooks
• Podcasts

With content marketing, you do not need face-to-face interaction to encourage and facilitate an online purchase. You don’t even need a sales agent to pitch the benefits of your product or service. Your content will do the work for you and liaise with customers on your company’s behalf.

Credible, truthful, relevant, and engaging content could turn what would otherwise be a disadvantage into a very efficient and speedy “sales call.”

See this example below. An SEO client of ours closed a huge deal with a billion-dollar company in Singapore. The lead came through after a couple of visits to one of their blog posts. Read the full SEO and content marketing case study.

1. Start with the end in mind. What are your goals? Do you want to generate leads or launch an information drive about your company? Specific goals require tailored techniques in content creation and distribution.
2. Identify the needs that your company will fill. What solutions are you able to provide? This information will determine your niche. Once you’ve identified the needs for your product, you can start your topic generation and keyword research. The goal is to produce content that will interest your audience.
3. Use market research to determine what your competition is up to. Competitor analysis will help you respond to market trends too.
4. Consolidate your data and insights to help you decide on crucial content marketing details. These decisions may include several factors such as the content types and distribution channels that are suitable for your campaigns or the frequency of content creation, among others.

Metrics have a direct relation to your goals. For example, you want to know how well you’re using content marketing to establish your brand’s online presence. In that case, you’ll be tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with this goal, such as website traffic, page views, and referral links.

Accurate metrics analysis involves pulling data from every marketing channel and understanding how your content in each platform influences customers toward your desired action.

Customer feedback is another benchmark for your content marketing success. There is nothing more valuable than a customer telling you how to improve your service or product since it’s the best way of knowing if you are truly filling a need of your chosen market.

The cost will vary depending on how much content you’re producing in a week, month, or quarter. As a general rule, content marketing requires a budget that takes into account the time, tools, and human resources you have to put together to develop and implement a strategy where you have the right type of content delivered to the right kind of audience.

What makes content marketing cost-effective is that the cost you spend per lead will keep dropping as time passes. The amount you spend to convert a prospect into a lead could be virtually nil in years. This long-term value in content marketing makes it something worth leveraging.

Accurate metrics analysis involves pulling data from every marketing channel and understanding how your content in each platform influences customers toward your desired action.

Content marketing is a discipline that falls under inbound marketing. The principle behind both inbound marketing and content marketing is to provide your target audience with informative content in a non-obtrusive way.

There is a straightforward technique for content and inbound marketing. You put out content related to your brand, product, or service online and the benefits users can gain from it. You incorporate search words in your content, so people using Google and other search engines can find your content pages.

As your marketing channels propose solutions for everyday problems, customers will seek you and support your company willingly, This show of support for your brand also translates to consent to receive marketing messages, allowing you to serve your audience with content pieces throughout their customer journey.

1. You may opt to use premium content like ebooks and whitepapers as lead magnets, but avoid having to ask for more contact information than you should from website visitors.
2. Keep your audience engaged by educating and entertaining them at the same time with the content you produce.
3. It’s better to work with experts since they have vast knowledge and experience communicating with different types of customers across business industries.