The Importance of Content marketing as one of the sub-fields of digital marketing cannot be ignored. Of course, we must emphasize that despite the youthfulness of the term content marketing, the use of the content for marketing is not new, and its examples can be found even in the time of the invention of the Gutenberg printing press and before.
But with the development of digital technology and increasing access to information in technology achievements, content marketing emerged as a powerful tool and a specialized field. This was able to occupy a special place among digital activists.
What is the Simplest Definition of Content Marketing?
First of all, let us emphasize that the term marketing in content marketing is a little more limited than what we know in the management space.
Marketing is closer to the concept of selling here.
This problem should be found in the first people who used this term and its family expressions.
Seth Godin and Joe Pulizzi, who are among the first users of the terms introverted marketing and content marketing, do not insist on marketing and sales. As Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars is closer to the business of marketers than marketers.
Although there is not much consensus on content marketing, here we consider a definition as a starting point. Naturally, when you become a content marketing expert and content use strategist, you may find it appropriate to provide your definition and perspective.
Content Marketing Definition by Experts
Another definition of the importance of content marketing is from Damian Ryan, Author of Understanding Digital Marketing.
What is the Difference Between Advertising and Content Marketing?
Based on the explanations we have given so far, you may be wondering if content marketing is not the same as advertising? So now let me ask this question. Suppose a store or a social media company shares a photo and text with its audience on different pages. Is it content marketing or advertising? The answer is that value is vital in content marketing. So any content that is produced if it is valuable and valuable for the user and can turn the user into a customer because of the value it has generated is considered content marketing.
Advertising is expensive. But in content marketing, most of the time, every business publishes its content on its media and social networks. For this reason, it does not cost much.
A Few Examples Of Content Marketing
This section will give some examples of content marketing and the types of content you can produce.
You can provide a small book containing helpful information to the user. You can put a digital version of this book on your site so that more people can use it. It will be cheaper for you too.
- Produce articles with valuable content and publish them on your site
- Review or introduce books in your field
- Produce podcasts
- Produce attractive videos
- Attractive infographics with helpful information
- Content activity and marketing on social networks
- And …
Why is Content Marketing Important For Your Business?
As we said before, content marketing had been around for many years, and this style of marketing has recently become necessary, but why? What made experts realize the importance of content marketing? Here are some fundamental reasons.
1. It Builds Trust in Your Audience and Visitors
The more valuable and informative the information you provide to your audience, the more they will trust you. In this way, they can more easily use your services or products. The important thing is that good content builds trust in the audience and builds interest in the brand over time. Try to make the audience more interested in content storytelling.
2. It Increases Brand awareness
Branding is hard work and requires creativity and even high cost. But content marketing is one of the best ways to promote your brand. You produce valuable content; You attract the audience and measure the audience’s reaction to the content.
This final measurement is a bit difficult to measure brand awareness. Brand awareness has many details, and we will try to address it separately in this article.
3. It Boosts Your SEO
If you constantly produce helpful and valuable content and put it on your site, you will realize that your audience is growing after a while. Quality articles will make your site rank better in the Google search engine. With the change of Google algorithms, there will not be much change in your site ranking, because in addition to observing important points for Google, in the first place, consider your audience satisfaction There are. So generating and updating content is very useful in getting a better ranking for the site.
4. It Generates Marketing Leads
By producing blog content, you can attract an audience and build a sense of trust in them. But it is essential that these audiences, who become more familiar with you through the blog, become customers. The most crucial goal of a business is to produce lead.
5. It Attracts the Audience
Lead indeed plays a vital role in marketing. But poor-quality leads are not useful at all. You need to attract real customers to your business, people interested in your specialty or products, and follow your content. So you have to compile your audience persona.
6. It Converts Audience to Customer
You need to turn your audience into a customer on a journey. The buyer’s journey has three stages. Awareness, considerations, and decisions. It is essential to pay attention to these three steps during content production. Let us explain each step briefly.
Awareness stage:
The user has a problem or question. To find the answer to his question, he starts searching the internet. Then he reaches your site in search results. He starts reading your articles, downloading PDFs, and trusts you if your content is valuable.
Consideration stage:
Now the audience begins to evaluate. Look at the videos you have on your website or read other articles to make sure he finds the answer to your question.
Decision-making stage:
After a thorough evaluation, the user will decide whether your products or services can solve the problem or not! And decides whether to buy from you or not.
7. It Motivates Your Customers to Share and Produce Content for You
Sharing content with your audience or producing their content is very useful and valuable for you. This will make you more visible, and more people will trust you. So try to find an attractive way for your audience to share your content or write their articles, products, and comments on the site and below. It is best to have a content calendar for timely and accurate sharing.
The 10 Essential Content Marketing Tools
1. Ion
Ion is the first tool on our list because it is a great place for your strategies to start.
2. Yoast
Yoast is a favorite tool for many content creators to use when writing SEO-focused posts.
3. ShareThis
When visitors share your content, they are helping your content marketing strategy by referring their friends to our site.
4. Visually
Visually is a tool that creates high-impact visual content that is eye-catching.
5. WordPress
Search Engine Journal reported that the most widely used CMS in the world, WordPress, powers 39.5% of all websites.
6. Pexels
Finding high-quality images for your site can be difficult.
7. Leadfwd
Leadfwd gives you the ability to turn unidentified site visitors into potential leads.
8. Grammarly
If writing and grammar aren’t your strong points, you are not alone.
9. BuzzSumo
Knowing what your competitors are doing is important. And BuzzSumo is a tool that can help you do just that.
10. Google Analytics
You really can’t discuss content marketing tools without including Google Analytics.
We’d love to share your thoughts on the importance of content marketing with us and even share various techniques in this area. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
