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Introduction
Content marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on the creation, publication, and distribution of content online. Businesses frequently use it to accomplish the following objectives: attract attention and generate leads, expand customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage an online community of users.
The first step in content marketing is determining the needs of the customer. The information can then be presented in a variety of formats, such as news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, and blog posts.
Many traditional businesses have been transformed into media publishing companies as a result of the rise of content marketing.
Some examples of content marketing campaigns used by companies include the following:
Redbull: The energy drink company has published YouTube videos, hosted experiences, and sponsored events around extreme sports and activities. Red Bull Media House is a dedicated unit of the Red Bull brand that “produces full-length feature films for cinema and downstream channels (DVD, VOD, TV)”
Mint.com (Finance): This business used content marketing to build a following for a product they intended to sell. Mint.com focused on growing MintLife’s audience “independent of the eventual mint.com product.” Content included how-to guides on paying for college, saving for a house, and getting out of debt.
Methods to leverage content marketing
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is a methodology to increase organic traffic from the major search engines and is frequently associated with content marketing.
By creating high quality content that answers user questions and or provides value whist been relevant to a businesses product or service offering increased sales and brand awareness can be achieved.
This can be done through thorough keyword research and an effective blogging/video content strategy. AGR Technology offers SEO as a service and can help you with this. Learn more about our small business SEO and online marketing services & SEO Packages.
Social media & influencers
Another commonly used technique is to leverage influencers on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram or Facebook to generate viral content and buzz around a certain brand or it’s product.
An example of this is a company called Dollar Shave Club which leveraged influencers to promote it’s series of razor blade shaving products to a massive online audience through YouTube along with a viral video.
The video cost approximately $4500 to produce and has received over 21 million views as of November 2015. The video was voted “Best Out-of-Nowhere Video Campaign” at the 2012 AdAge Viral Video Awards and was considered one of the best viral marketing campaigns of 2012.
PR stunts and viral marketing campaigns
Leveraging PR is another way to develop a content marketing strategy by building viral sharable content that is both interesting, funny or extremely unique that is also news worthy for journalists to write about.
When crafted carefully and submitted in a press release it has the potential to be covered by the mainstream media which can garner significant attention.
Other examples of this are TV commercials or online advertisement videos which can be a content strategy in their own right.
Content marketing metrics
When used by a business content marketing efforts are typically tracked by different metrics which include the following:
- ROI (Return On Investment): Did the content provide a return for investment to the business? This is usually the most important metric to ensure content marketing is a profitable exercise that yields results.
- Brand awareness & overall visibility: This measures the overall visibility of a brand which can include amount of website visitors/clicks and searches for the business name which is a measure of the awareness customers develop after finding out about a business and it’s offerings.
- Direct sales: This measures direct sales generated as a result of a campaign and is strictly a financial method, this may involve conversion tracking for eCommerce stores to determine whether purchases were made from traffic as a result of content production.
Conclusion
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Also check out our blog, videos, online tools and software utilities for more.
Other relevant pages from our glossary:
Website Sitemaps – What they are and how they work?
Citation(s):
Feature Films [Online]. Red Bull Media House. Available at: web.archive.org/web/20151120021631/http://www.redbullmediahouse.com/content/moving-images/feature-films.html (Accessed: 8 June 2021).
“Content marketing” Wikipedia, 25 Feb. 2008, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_marketing. Accessed 8 June 2021.