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What is content marketing ?
According to the definition of the leading content marketing expert , Neil Patel:
Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by providing them with high-quality content that is relevant and consistently delivered. It also means tailoring your content based on what stage of the sale your customer is at.
Ultimately, when customers make a purchase decision, their loyalty already belongs to you; they buy your product and prefer it over competitors’ options.
“Unlike one-time advertising, content marketing shows that you really care about your customers.”
https://neilpatel.com/training/seo-unlocked/introduction-to-content-marketing
Let’s say that you are a person who has started a new private business, you have designed a product or you are still in the process, and of course, like every seller aware of the needs of the times we live in, you have already created your own website.
You have set the product and prices and a nice design of the page, you are advertising on Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, and similar.
The question is, what else can you do to make your website frequent and attract interested people to become your occasional or even better, regular customers.
The answer lies in regular attractive and quality content known as content marketing .
We can say that content marketing is actually writing content and telling a story.
I guess you still don’t understand what that content should look like. As Mr. Patel said, it is best explained with an example.
An example of successful content marketing
Here is a local example.
With the help of quality and consistent content marketing, the young Croatian company MegaBooker achieved the loyalty of its customers and the increasing interest of the audience in the field of hospitality with an emphasis on hotels and other accommodation facilities, offering software solutions that facilitate the work and organization of work related to accommodation facilities.
What is most prominent in Megabooker, in addition to the quality product, is the informative blog, which is an excellent example of content marketing.
Their customers and all those interested can follow quality and regular content about general matters and novelties in the hotel industry and all topics related to technologies that improve and facilitate the work of accommodation facilities, following world trends in step.
Get recognized on Google search
One important part of content marketing is the positioning of your content on Google.
How is it done?
Every good content contains keywords related to a certain topic, which are marked in order to get the highest possible position on Google search.
This gives you greater visibility and popularity, and this technique is called SEO positioning.
These keywords are usually bolded or marked with a different color in the text and a quality content writer will know how to determine them.
For example, if we search for information about hotel software and type: hotel channel manager, we will find Megabooker’s post in the first place just below the paid ads.
So, with the help of content, you are placed on Google, which has a huge number of visitors, some of whom could be your potential customers. Of course, there are various forms of media technology involved, from videos, photos, newsletters, e-books, etc. with which we attract the attention of the audience.
What you give is what you get
From the idea, from the introduction of new trends, to realization of profit and benefit of every kind
Knowledge is power. One saying says that what we know we are obliged to pass on to another.
We can do exactly that through content marketing, give important information and advice to someone, for example, how to improve your business and be the cause of the progress of that company in terms of earnings or in another way (eg see the picture above). You can thereby improve someone’s personal financial situation, make it easier to take care of their family, improve the situation in the country by providing someone with a job, etc.
You wonder what is there for you…
The benefits of content marketing are as follows:
What you get is advertising, the interest of the audience in the first place, potential and loyal customers. This increases sales and raises the quality of marketing to a modern level.
If you are still not convinced enough, here is what the statistics have confirmed.
Reasons why you should use content marketing:
- Content marketing pays off
Over 80% of brands that use a blog have seen a positive return on their marketing investment.
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and brings 3 times more leads ( DemandMetric )
One out of 10 blogs will grow traffic over time, i.e. will be more efficient ( HubSpot )
- Content marketing is a conversion generator
Conversions achieved by companies and brands that have content marketing are 6x more than those that do not: 2.9% vs. 0.5% ( Aberdeen Group )
- Text length: Longer is better
The texts are getting longer and longer. While in 2014 the average number of blog words was around 800, just two years later it was 1054 ( Orbit Media Studios .)
On average, long texts have nine times more leads than short articles. ( Curata )
The reason for this is that longer texts provide a solution for a specific problem, service or product.
Longer articles over 3000 words get 3x more traffic, while articles over 7000 words attract 4x more traffic than the average 900-1200 word article. ( SEMrush )
- Long titles are better
Articles with long titles (14+ words) get three times more views, twice as many shares and five times more backlinks than articles with titles between 7 and 10 words.
Articles with titles between 10-13 words are twice as read as those with titles under 7 words. ( SEMrush )
- Updated content brings results
Competition is increasing, so almost 2/3 of marketers (60%) create content almost every day ( eMarketer )
If you refresh the old text with new information and date, you get new visits!
- Guides, How-to’s, FAQs and Lists are great traffic generators
Most blogs have different types of content, and the best ones combine guides, how-to articles, Q&A, and listicles. ( SEMrush )
Articles that contain at least one list for every 500 words get 70% more traffic than articles without lists. ( SEMrush )
- Texts with photos double the traffic
Texts with photos attract more text and are shared 30% more and get about 25% more backlinks. ( SEMrush )
- Customers trust content
Almost 95% of buyers of B2B services and products believe that content is crucial when evaluating a company and its B2B offer. ( Demand Gen Report, 2016)
71% of people in the B2B industry admitted to reading a company’s blog during the buying decision process. ( Demand Gen Report, 2018 )
61% of customers bought something because of a recommendation on a blog they read. (socialmediatoday.com)
47% of customers read 3-5 articles before deciding to buy (Demand Gen Report, 2016)
- One good blog generates 38% of the total traffic
Excellent content brings excellent results, so just one blog can generate up to 40% of its traffic to a website. ( HubSpot )
- Video is on the rise
In recent years, video content has exploded. According to data from the Wyzowl study, 86% of businesses will use video in their marketing activities in 2021, while only 61% of them did so five years ago.
Posts without video get 92% less traffic and are shared 24% less than posts with video. ( SEMrush )
Conclusion
Content marketing is therefore a long-term strategy by which, with the help of quality and regular content, you can attract your customers to your website, which will be displayed on a blog, in the form of text, videos, newsletters, etc.
With the help of SEO optimization, you get a higher position on Google’s search engines, and this, among other things, helps you increase traffic and the number of visitors, to whom you simultaneously share useful tips that can help them build their own business, and you also have lower costs and a higher return on investment.
Statistics show that the use of content marketing pays off and in this blog I have listed tried and tested features of content marketing that are proven to attract customers.
Mediha Dubravić
S.O.S English
