When we log into social media or websites, what we consume or experience is called content. There are many types of content, such as articles, infographics, videos, and photos. We cannot avoid content because it is everywhere and at any time. However, at the end of the day we don’t remember everything we saw online, we only remember the ones that had an impact on us, here’s when content marketing comes into play, as this type of content creation led by a clear purpose strategy will deliver the desired results.

The content can be informative, entertaining, advertising and can even guide us to make a decision. If you want to find a product or a service, you search on Google and decide what content to consume, but how do we differentiate this content from marketing content? The answer is simple. Content-marketing is created for strategic reasons, which basically means that it has a reason for being, it is contained with a purpose. It is content with added value that is part of a marketing plan to achieve the positioning of the company and its products in the market.

What is content-marketing creation?

The Content Marketing Institute defines content-marketing as:

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.

Content marketing searches for ideas for a topic and then begins to create written or visual content around those ideas and make that information accessible to your audience. The goal is to provide the highest possible value from your content marketing to as many of your target audience as possible.

At MediaCenter, we understand the importance of content with a purpose, not to publish something today so that days later it is lost among other publications, but to continue to attract people to the business in the short and long term.

Why content-marketing interests you?

The content strategy seeks the interests of building a “customer – company” connection which its main objective is the customer’s loyalty. For that purpose, you can use different channels of communication as social media, websites, blogs, webinars and other apps or interaction tools. This is why nowadays all companies in the market, should invest in content-marketing strategies. Here are some of the benefits you could achieve:

  • Higher visibility in search engines: People will find easier your brand. You just need target long-tail keywords and topics that your customers frequently search for

  • Improved brand reputation: You need to create useful and purposeful content so people will get engage with your brand. They will think more in possitive about you.

  • Tighter customer relationships: Content marketing looks for loyal and closer relationships, which are based on value content marketing.

  • More social traffic: If you do more content marketing, people see more your brand. People who get engaged with your posts will share them, greatly increasing your circle of followers.

  • Publishing content with purpose: content marketing guides you to know what to publish and what isn´t a good idea, it depends on your brand, goal audience and target.

But the most important benefit is that you are creating a better “Return on Marketing Investment” (ROI) for your company. This will help you to measure the concrete performance of your content marketing campaigns. Both offline and online, which can influence your marketing spend, strategy, and more. With ROI you can recognize some facts like that content-marketing creation generates more leads and it is cheaper. Also companies get more traffic applying this strategy than those who doesn’t.

Some benefits of calculating your content marketing ROI are:

  • You can see what is working: You will know if your tactics are giving good results. Calculating your ROI will allow you to make changes if something doesn’t work.
  • Helps you decide where to invest: Knowing your ROI enables you to determine how to rework your budget and get the best possible return from it.
  • Helps you to compare you with the competition: This information helps you understand how you perform in your industry. You can use this data to estimate your competitor’s ROI.

Tips to create content with purpose

The connection is fundamental, so the customer will remember the content as information and not as an advertising. Although, we are trying to sell a product or a service, we should not show it that way. Another feature of content creation is how to recognize which platform suit best for your company. Each platform has its own target audience and its own tools.

You must define your content goals. Obviously, your goal will be attracting more visitors to your company to increase your sells. A smart content-marketing strategy should be aligned with your goal and help to your desired outcome.

Create a buyer image. The most important thing in creating marketing content is your audience. First you need to know who you are talking to. The audience is people who want to feel connected. A buyer person is the person you want to reach with your content. So, you must know how to connect with each audience, with each buyer. Those people are the ones who will buy your product or service.

Run a content audit. You can’t create marketing content just to create it. You need to organize your content to have an established marketing campaign. Some steps are: develop all your ideas in a spreadsheet. Set a space for target keywords, buyer persona, format, and main topic. Also add space for key metrics, page views, actions, engagement. Finally, categorize each post.

Invest in content promotion. You can create the best maketing content but it will not be useful if no one sees it. You will need to attract people to your brand and guide them to your online space.

Steps to create content-marketing with purpose

  • SEO Research: will show you the search volume of a specific keyword phrase and whether it’s worth the investment of creating a piece of content around it.

  • Ideation: You need to brainstorm some content ideas. The best way to organize content is through topic clusters. The topic cluster model makes brainstorming so much easier because now you have structure to follow.

  • Writing: Be concise and clear. You want your audience to relate to you and derive value from your content. Remember, it is content with purpose.

  • Editing: You have to be very careful with grammar and review what will be the final result.

  • Publishing: deciding in which platform you will upload your content.

Content exists everywhere, but its success and impact is going to depend on whether if is quality content and whether you have a strategy with a well-defined purpose.