If you spend a lot of the time on the internet then you have already come across content marketing and that too on a daily basis which you don’t even notice. It is all about content marketing that you can see on YouTube videos, blog posts, emails, and tons of other content. You encounter this kind of content on the daily basis without even realizing that people are marketing their product or service to you. It is the most convenient way to market your product or service because it is not done directly unlike ads. Ad is the basic way to market your product or your service online where you pay the platform to run your ad that can be viewed by different individuals on different platforms. Content Marketing is unlike ads, you provide content for entertainment or educational purpose where you describe your product or service to the viewer in a fancy manner allowing the viewer to be entertained and get educated about the product simultaneously. This is an inbound strategy where your ideal customers reach you when they require information. Contrary to that, you reach your ideal customers in outbound marketing.
What is Content Marketing?
In a nutshell, content marketing is the practice of developing and sharing great free material to attract and convert your ideal buyer persona. You want to gain their trust and introduce them to your company. And you do it by informing, engaging, and motivating people rather than being overbearing. 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 pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.
One of the finest examples that took the world by storm is by none other than Coke, who has aced their content marketing in each campaign making them the brand they are now. A few months back, Coke started a content marketing campaign where they took the most popular names in separate countries and printed them on the side of the bottles and people went crazy for it. Coke made people feel special by putting their names and people went insane to find their names on the bottles of Coke. It helped them create trust within the customers making them feel that the brand knows and cares about them.
The Importance of Content Marketing
As stated before in the blog, content marketing plays a huge part in creating an awareness of your brand and allows you to create a connection with your potential customers. If the content marketing is done right, there are chances that at least 50 percent of the viewers will convert into your customers which reflects the importance of content marketing. In today’s age, it is all about creating a relationship with a customer through trust and love which will make the customer stick around for years only if your brand is consistent and provides good quality, and maintains the relationship. For instance, McDonald’s Canada ran a campaign by taking up the challenge of answering customers’ questions, all of them, and in that campaign, they answered around 10,000 customer questions on different platforms. Isn’t it astonishing? For a brand like McDonald’s and Coke, you would think what is the need for putting in so much effort when they already have a huge brand running? Well, the answer to it is simple, for a brand to survive they need to stay relevant and attract customers on daily basis by connecting with them and creating a trusting relationship. It will allow them to glue the customers to their brands by just simply triggering the most powerful thing, emotions. Emotions are the strongest feeling in the human and once you trigger that part inside your customers they will stay around for ages. Therefore content marketing allows you to stay relevant and help you glue the customers to your brand.
How does Content Marketing Attract Potential Customers?
It is said that content marketing attracts potential customers and converts them into regulars of the brand. Well, we agree with every bit of it, because content marketing allows you to reach the unconscious part of the brain of the customers. Yes, you heard it right; let me explain it to you. It involves simple biology, when you see a brand or a thing or a person on regular basis you just simply remember them. Similarly, when a customer sees an entertainment video where the service or the product is marketed indirectly and the customer enjoyed the video, then automatically the product or the service will get stuck in the unconscious part which will be remembered for a long time. At the same time, your brand is triggering the emotional side of the human by either entertaining or hitting that sensitive part in your heart which will make them emotional, and automatically they will remember the product or service.
Triggering the emotional part by breaking a stereotype is one of the finest strategies to make brand awareness and to attract customers. For example, in our society, one of the common stereotypes is gender discrimination which has been for years, and to attract customers brands broke this stereotype and many brands worked in this sector to reach the heart of the customers. Like there is a stereotype that women are bound to stay at home, but some brands made content where they showed powerful women achieving many things in life. This way you are not only attracting the customers but also working for a cause. Once you trigger the emotional side and touch the heart of the customer, it is most likely that they will purchase your product or service and that is how content marketing attracts potential customers.
