Content marketing is becoming an increasingly trendy buzzword in the world of digital marketing. But what exactly is it? Can it help you grow your business — especially considering how long good quality content takes to create? These are all extremely pertinent questions when it comes to content marketing — and the reason you might want to seriously consider partnering with a reputed content marketing agency.
The truth is, content marketing is an incredibly valuable and high-value way of growing your business. According to a survey, 27% of marketers noted that using content marketing as a strategy helped them engage newer audiences. Keep reading to learn more about leveraging content marketing as an extremely powerful way of growing your business.
What Exactly is Content Marketing, Anyway?
Content marketing, simply put, is creating and putting out content that can help you acquire organic traffic from search engines like Google. The logic is pretty straightforward: you offer compelling and valuable content to users, and search engines reward you for the great user experience people come away with from your website. Users, on the other hand, gravitate towards your products and services. More credibility, more traffic, more profit!
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Ask any content marketing agency and they can tell you: while channels like email, paid advertising, and social media are valuable in their own ways, there is no replacing the importance of organic traffic from search engines. More often than not, this is how your users will find you: through search engines, which show your content to prospective users precisely when they are looking for it.
The Why and the How of Content Marketing
The ultimate goal, then, of any content marketing agency, is to create great content, which, in turn, is rewarded by high rankings on search engines. This is, all things considered, one of the most reliable long-term ways of acquiring and retaining customers.
There’s a popular misconception about content marketing being all about using keywords enough times on your website so that Google ranks you well. While this may once have been true (in the stone ages of the internet!), it is simply no longer the case. Content marketing involves a considerable amount of both time and work; however, the rewards are truly great in the long run.
Partnering with a content marketing agency, of course, allows you to pass off all the finicky work of creating content that plays well with search engines and users simultaneously to the experts — people with experience and the right know-how to do this with as little pain as possible.
The Basics of Content Marketing
Before you get the pen and ink out to start penning your Shakespearean masterpiece of shiny new content for your website, here are a few things to chart out for your content marketing campaign.
1. Who are you Talking to?
Before you can jump into actually creating content, it’s important to consider who exactly you’ll be speaking to and targeting your content towards. It may be tempting to skip this step — you may think the answer is obvious or perhaps even unnecessary. However, it’s important to know who your content will be targeted toward, so you don’t find yourself screaming into the void. Take the time to build some customer personals to get up close and personal — the right way! — with your customers.
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2. Crack the Books Open — It’s Time for Keyword Research
Once you know who you’re talking to, you need to consider what you’re going to say. If your product is intricately crafted pens, for example, you don’t want to spend your time talking about modern stationery, right?
Keyword research — performed with great expertise by content marketing agencies — will tell you exactly what your customers are looking for when they are looking for you. Keyword research can help you determine what information is most useful and relevant to your users. Think of it like planning a vacation — if you know you love beaches, you will look for properties in coastal areas. And SERP gets you the desired results instantly! In other words: give them what they want!
A top-notch content marketing agency also has some nifty tools up its sleeves to efficiently and accurately conduct a keyword search to help you optimize your content to get the most out of it.
3. Let’s Talk Dates — In the Calendar
A content marketing agency uses a content calendar to great effect since it is an excellent way to plan your content and ensure you stay on schedule when it comes to creating fresh content on a regular and consistent schedule.
With content marketing, it’s important to stay up to date in your niche and post regularly. Even if you produce the most authoritative and well-written content in your niche, if you only post once a year, you’ll inevitably fall off the map. A content calendar can be one of the most important tools in your arsenal if you’re working with content marketing.
4. Time to Get Creative
This is when you crack out the pen and get to creating great content — keeping your users and your keywords firmly in sight at all times. Once you get into the groove of routinely producing valuable and compelling content, you’ll find users flocking to your website.
Of course, even with information like the who and the what answered, creating great content is no walk in the park. This is where a content marketing agency can truly shine. With the combination of your expertise in your business niche and a solid content marketing agency’s expertise in creating and optimizing great content, the right partnership can truly take your content to the next level.
The Upshot
The journey doesn’t end here! Content marketing also involves a lot of tweaking and monitoring the effectiveness of your content over time. Partnering with a reputed content marketing agency like AdLift can help you make the most of the time and money you invest in content marketing. After all, a content marketing agency would make you realize that better content means more visitors, and more visitors mean more conversions, and more conversions mean — you know the rest!
With a solid foundation in technology, backed by a BIT degree, Lucas Noah has carved a niche for himself in the world of content creation and digital storytelling. Currently lending his expertise to Creative Outrank LLC and Oceana Express LLC, Lucas has become a... Read more