Traditional SEO is dead and link building strategy has turned into link earning strategy; link earning achieved through sharing high quality content. Thus, giving a push to content marketing. But what actually content marketing is?
Content Marketing
Content Marketing, also known as inbound marketing, is a marketing technique in which relevant and highly valuable content is created and shared to attract and acquire a targeted class of audience, with the sole aim of driving profitable customer action. It is a continuing process that focuses on owning media rather than renting it.
Content marketing is the best way to communicate with your customers. It is an intelligent marketing technique whereby you don’t throw your products or services on the consumer; instead, make them confident in your brand by delivering quality information. The ultimate result is buyers rewarding us with their business and loyalty.
It is being used by small to highly reputed businesses for marketing and it really works for them.
What Content to Share?
There are many types of content that you can share for the purpose of marketing, like:
1. Blog Posts
2. News
3. Videos
4. E-books or White Papers
5. Infographics
6. Case Studies
7. Photographs or images, and
8. Q & A articles
Realizing ROI of Content Marketing
ROI (Return On investment) of content marketing is not realized immediately. Traditional SEO link building practice has made clients expect a faster return on investment, especially smaller businesses with low budget. But, it should be understood that it is different from other forms of marketing and content stays forever, once it is published and because of this longevity, its ROI is realized to be higher than that of paid search. It’s just a matter of convincing the clients about the true benefits of content marketing now.
There’s more to it
Measuring ROI in just dollars and cents is quite a wrong approach. There are many other results that should be taken into consideration for realizing the true ROI, like:
• Rise in traffic to website or to the place of business
• Enhanced social media presence achieved through well formed posts with quality content, and
• Increased natural inbound links to the website through content marketing efforts
Hurdles to Content Marketing and possible solutions
A smart content marketing strategy requires that you don’t just write relevant content, but make it appealing, by adding catchy headlines and attractive images; so that the user can digest it. Also, no matter how well written your blog is, it can’t get anywhere without improving visibility. Every industry has competitors and competing on content with keywords is very difficult.
The obvious solution to this is sharing on social media, but even that needs skillfulness. Also, the conversion rate is quite low viz. 1 in 100 followers.
For clients with a lot of competitors, the best technique to ensure that a customer finds them is to submerge them with content. In simple terms, if each competitor has 1 piece of content for a keyword, but your client has 10 pieces, their chances to being found increase tenfold.
In the end, it won’t be wrong to say that “Content marketing is the new SEO”. It’s quite evident that there is a major shift in marketing strategy. The early followers of content marketing are already enjoying the advantage of this swing, but there’s still time to join this revolution and reap the benefits. Also, as compared to social media or other online tactics, content marketing better market your products and services to the potential leads.
Although it takes time to get results, it can prove to be a highly effective technique if you share relevant information to your would-be consumer.
