Marketing, apart from content marketing, in the business world, holds plenty of benefits for your venture. In a nutshell, this translates to brand awareness, increased engagement, customer acquisition, and retention. It also takes into account improved sales, and brand promotion, among other elements. These benefits have the potential to drive growth and profits.
Let’s think about marketing as an umbrella term. Now think about it encompassing different factors and strategies. To break it down, we can further segment this into digital marketing, outbound and inbound marketing, and content marketing. For the sake of this article, I’ll focus on the latter, the three core pillars, and how you can use these to create an effective content pillar strategy. Let’s get into it!
Highlight Summary:
- Content marketing focuses on attracting and retaining customers through creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and informative content.
- Communication, experiences, and operations are the foundation of an effective content marketing strategy.
- Incorporating all three pillars in your content strategy will make sure you cover all your bases.
- Correct content marketing builds trust by providing value, which could later convert into sales.
The Difference Between Traditional Marketing and Content Marketing
The biggest difference between content marketing and traditional marketing is how to reach the target audience. Traditional marketing involves the advertisement of products or services through print media and social media. In essence, with traditional marketing, you reach out to the customer.
Content marketing focuses on attracting and retaining customers through creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and informative content. In this case, the customer seeks your expertise on a subject by coming to you. Content marketing material includes articles, blogs, videos, or infographics.
Why is Content Marketing So Effective?
Content marketing is especially effective because it is not trying to sell customers anything. Instead, it aims to improve customers’ lives by providing valuable educational, stimulating, and informative content. Just like I do in this article with my content creation. So, instead of shoving ads in your customers’ faces, you provide content that addresses their needs and concerns or simply interests them.
If you provide valuable content consistently, customers will trust your brand as a credible source of information. This leads to more traffic on your website, and ultimately more sales.
Pros and Cons of Content Marketing
It’s important to understand the pros and cons of content marketing. Let’s have a look at them below.
Pros
- Value-adding: With content marketing, you are not bombarding customers with ads. Instead, you build trust by providing value, which could later convert into sales.
- Lead generation: Content is an effective lead generation tool, allowing businesses to capture contact information from potential customers through newsletter sign-ups, webinars, and more.
- Enhances brand reputation: By constantly creating high-quality content, you demonstrate your expertise in a subject, which improves your brand’s reputation.
- Increases website traffic: Posting valuable content on social media can increase website traffic by redirecting them to your website.
- Enhances SEO visibility: Content marketing allows you to use more relevant SEO keywords, which will lead to higher search engine rankings. The higher your business ranks on search engines, the more leads you will generate.
Cons
- Requires a long-term strategy: Content marketing is a long-term approach. Unless you already have a massive following, you won’t see immediate results. However, it pays off in the long run.
- Time-consuming: Content creation is labor-intensive. It requires brainstorming, resource allocation, and multiple drafts and reviews.
Three Pillars of Content Marketing
Communication, experiences, and operations are the foundation of an effective content marketing strategy. Let’s have a look at each of these content pillars here.
Communication
Businesses communicate with their customers or potential customers through their content. However, communicating with your audience does not guarantee the success of your content marketing strategy. You must also consider how you communicate.
Just like how we do it here at Pugu Digital, ensure that your communication is clear, consistent, and coordinated. Consider the following two factors for coordinated communication.
- Purpose: Besides being a skill, content creation is also a capability. You must assign clear responsibilities to people with the appropriate skills, as well as put processes in place to effectively allocate resources within the marketing team.
- Governance model: A governance model includes the processes, workflows, and policies that drive effective content creation and communication.
Furthermore, content must reflect the brand’s values, goals, and voice. Creative communication is another major point to consider in your content strategy. It not only broadens your reach but also makes you stand out.
Experiences
Experiences refer to the different ways content can be “packaged” to suit different platforms. For example, longer blog posts could be shortened for social media with a link to the longer article or turned into a video for a YouTube channel. When creating your content, think of ways to use it across different platforms.
There are two factors to consider when it comes to experiences: audience and value.
- Audience: Look at content as you would a product. It should be geared toward a specific target audience. Make sure you understand your target audience, do market research, and set goals for each piece of content.
- Value: Providing value is the main goal of content marketing. Before creating any content, you need to determine how, when, and where your content strategy provides value.
Operations
Marketing is an essential part of a business and should be treated as such. Just like financing has standard and replicable processes, so should content marketing. There should be a clear and organized process that can be replicated to ensure the success of your content strategy.
Operations is a combination of communication and experience. It includes the technology, people, and processes that help communicate your message at scale. Today, experts use the help of AI to scale their content marketing operations. It also assists marketers in analyzing customer patterns, to create customized campaigns to target them in the right way.
Why You Should Build Your Content Strategy on These Three Pillars
Incorporating all three pillars in your content strategy will make sure you cover all your bases. You know exactly who your target audience is and how and where to reach them. It also allows you to evaluate how your content strategy is performing and strengthen it where needed.
Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy Based on Three Pillars
Below are six steps for using these three pillars in building an effective content marketing strategy. Here’s an effective content pillar example:
1. Plan and Prioritize
As I did with this article, I started by brainstorming ideas. Then, I selected the best ones and decided which to prioritize. Here, I allocated the appropriate resources for creating the content.
2. Create Content
During this step, I created raw content and edited it. Keep in mind that it is important to create content that can be repurposed for various layouts and platforms.
3. Design & Produce
Once the raw content was created, the different “packages” were designed and produced. A top tip is to create a blog post, YouTube video, TikTok video, or other forms of content from a single idea.
4. Schedule & Distribute
At this stage, all assets are now ready and scheduled for distribution. If you have a proper planning system, this content will be scheduled weeks, and even months in advance.
5. Publish & Promote
Finally, it’s time to publish and promote your content.
6. Measure Performance (Operations)
Once your content is published, you can start measuring performance. Decide what to track, how to track it, and who will track it. What you track will depend on your content goals.
These measurement results will help you adjust your content marketing strategy for your products or brand based on what’s working and what’s not.
Summary
There is no single content marketing strategy that will work for every business. Different businesses require different strategies, which will also change as your business changes. However, having a system for creating online content is essential for the success of your business. Treating marketing like an ad-hoc project will not get you the results you are looking for.
