Why Content Marketing?

Have you ever heard something about Content Marketing? Well to some people I have been communicating with, they seems puzzled about the subject and to a few who seem to grasp it, see it rather as a complicated subject or strategy. I believe you being on social media especially for your business or brand you have been creating content from day one. It ranges from the pictures, voice notes, videos, podcasts, articles, text messages etc. you create and share online. So it basically refers to any piece of content you own and owning it means its part of your brand right? So think about it!

Content Marketing according to Content Marketing Institute( CMI) is referred to as the "Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action."

Instead of just spamming, putting your adverts and fliers you are instead creating relevant content that benefit your consumers, customers and audience and with that in mind it means you have to produce something relevant, quality and informative that they may like it. There are many reasons why you may consider Content Marketing for your brand and I will try to look at some of them below.

1)Establish Yourself As an Expert 

How many adverts have you seen being shared in WhatsApp and Facebook Groups, Twitter, Instagram etc? Have you also checked the engagement? Social media is a game of numbers and engagement and there is one quick and easy way to establish yourself as an expert i your area. I attended one seminar where Divine Ndhlukula, the Founder and Managing Director of Securico Security Services shared how she grew her company to be one of the best security services provider in the country. She talked about how they would always write articles related to their industry in the local newspapers. It was indeed a cheap but rather effective strategy and I always urge our small startups to always take a leaf from these examples. A blog post, short video clip or even audio explaining to people how they can use your product or services or just anything in general will set yourself or brand apart from the rest of others. Think about it today and see how you can create content that is helpful and resonates with your audience.

2) Know your Market

If there is one thing that puzzles most of the companies is consumer infographics. Everyday they trying by all means to get to know their customers, target market and even prospects and they even go to do questionnaires, surveys etc to get as much information as they can get. This is all in the hope to provide tailor-made solutions and products that answer and satisfy their consumers needs and wants. The other challenge that has been witnessed with the traditional marketing, is that people are spending more time online and it does not mean they spending it on everything they find online...No. Thanks to content marketing as it allows you to analyse your audience and market, see what resonates well with them, what type of content they like and engage with and also even which products or services they are using which might be your competitors. You also get to listen and understand what they are saying about your brand measured through various analytics and softwares. With the insights you are able to:

-Create more buyer personas

-Develop more and efficient buyer segments

-Improve Personalization

3)Brand Awareness

Remember I talked something about people spending most of their time online.It means if your business is not online, then you are losing. Again its not just about being online but dominating the online landscape from social media to websites. When someone wants to buy something they might just go on Google to search and just imaging if your products are listed on the internet, then you pose a better chance of having them buy from you. I also have noticed some companies and brands who took up the advice, to be there online but still they are not relevant as their website is not relevant. There are no contact details, detailed information about their services or even an FAQ page and just think about your competitor having his site up to date and resourceful. The quickest way to build your brand is to be where your market is. If they are on Instagram, then be there. Remember again we talking about your brand and in the first paragraph I talked about how content marketing refers basically to anything that you create and own, so be mindful of your branding strategy when you create your content.

4)Searching Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Think about when you trying to type something into google and automatically suggests some phrases for you...that's the power of SEO.  
 Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users; these visitors can then be converted into customers.

 This will help your content appear and dominate the search engine and it also mean that every time you creating content, you should always have SEO techniques in mind. If you mostly using social media like Facebook and Linkedin for your business, it mostly means that your social media pages rank and appear first when someone searches them which should be a work up call to make sure, they are up to date, smart and promoting your brand and meeting minimal customer expectations. Also Search engine algorithms are continuously changing but if you are always creating relevant content you always stand out and win.

5) Generate Leads

This is mostly the main reason we are marketing as we striving to promote leads, attracting people to us and eventually getting them to buy from us and content marketing is mostly the number one lead generating method.Use additional premium content on your site (like ebooks) to draw them in even further.