In today’s world, we are surrounded by a plethora of products and services, as well as companies who are looking to distribute them. Companies from around the world rely on a variety of tactics for selling their respective product or service, and the primary means of doing this is often through content marketing. Marketing is the key to spreading the word and enabling potential customers to understand what is being sold. Successful companies like “Proctor and Gamble” rely heavily on marketing. However, what exactly is the best way to market a product? For many companies, the answer comes in the form of content marketing.
Content marketing relates to a company’s efforts to develop and distribute content on a digital platform. This form of marketing can be thought of as another tool that companies can use to attract and maintain customers. The somewhat recent adaption of this method of marketing can be tied to the rise in digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and phones.
This has meant that much of the information that people receive regarding a product or service is through some sort of online platform, and with the added attraction to social media, content marketing has seen an even greater demand. What used to be a world of newspaper advertisements, billboards, and flyers, is now slowly being pushed out by the digital age and content marketing.
Who uses content marketing?
When someone first gains a basic understanding of content marketing, the first thing that may come to mind is its prominent use in social media. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter all use some form of content marketing on a consistent basis. While these platforms distribute content to their users, it must also be understood that other businesses use social media as a way to market their products or services online.
While business’s use of content marketing is quite new, doing so has created an assortment of unique opportunities for long-term growth. Take a family-owned restaurant for instance. In the past, this restaurant likely used the newspaper or simple flyers to market to potential customers. Doing this enabled the restaurant to have a moderate amount of customers, and maybe these advertisements brought in some new customers from time to time. Once the restaurant created a Facebook and Instagram page however, they noticed a significant increase in customers who came to their restaurant on a weekly basis. This example demonstrates the power of content marketing.
Why is content marketing important?
Businesses utilize content marketing to ultimately improve their annual sales. That being said, there are many underlying reasons as to why a business may want to dive in to the world of content marketing. Primarily, businesses often want to not only maintain their current customer base, but also expand it. Content marketing allows businesses to demonstrate what the company is and what exactly it sells, and can subsequently catch the attention of a new customer.
Another reason includes a business’s desire to maintain or even change their own identity. A brand’s identity is how a customer or other business views said brand. Much of a company’s success (or failure) is contingent upon their brand identity. Content marketing provides companies with the opportunity to develop a legitimate platform for which customers and businesses can rely on. In doing this, companies create brand loyalty amongst their customers. For example, customers perceive Pro-Papers as the best educational platform due the fact that company has ideally built educational brand identity.
The future of content marketing
Content marketing is an ever-changing method that thrives on the feedback of customers. Companies focus on many different characteristics of their online marketing to better understand how they can reach their customers. The actual delivery method of an online marketing message is of interest to marketing professionals. Professionals utilize analytics to ask the most basic yet important questions when it comes to their company’s content marketing, such as, “Is the content should be a video or a photo?” If it is a video, how long should it be? Who should see it? What platform is it on? How should the customer feel after seeing this content?
These questions are what ultimately mark the future of content marketing. Companies and their marketing team will have to answer these in order to hold the attention of their desired audience. Additionally, companies will need to improve their forecasting capabilities, as much of content marketing relies on making predictions about the current internet trends. By doing this, a business can understand the choices that a set of customers will likely make.
While the future of content marketing may not be clear, there is one thing that remains the same. Content marketing and marketing as a whole must understand their customer base. Marketing teams that focus on the demands of their customers will ultimately be able to deliver content that users enjoy. Much of this will be through the way in which companies interact with their customers. Whether it be a weekly e-mail or an online giveaway, the most successful companies will excel at interacting with their customers in new and exciting ways.
If a company wants to take advantage of content marketing, they must connect it to the client. Customers want to be sure that the product or service they use is trustworthy. Without this customer relationship, a business will likely fail.
