Your content are your Brand ambassador?

Introduction

The internet has become a place with endless possibilities. With the internet being accessible to almost every individual in the world, the way businesses run has changed drastically. Organizations are using the internet in multiple ways to promote their business and get more and more customers to buy their products and services through different kinds of marketing strategies over the internet. One such marketing strategy is using informative content, which the users refer to gain knowledge. Organizations are targeting the informative content and using it as a tool to market their business and their services. Let's have a look at how this feature of content works as a marketing tool, what are the various dimensions and how companies benefit from the same. 

Content Development: An important tool for marketing 

Content development is said to be a process of researching, producing, and then publishing the information, to meet a strategic business goal. The goal may either be to create a connection with the audience or to encourage any kind of marketing or sales outcome. 

The aspect of content development is hence a vital part of the content marketing strategy in the present industry scenario. The task of content development is said to be different as it is driven by a cycle of theory, analysis, and execution. The important thing here is that it is a process. This indicates that using the content can lead to a specific outcome. Such a kind of outcome may be joining the lead list or simply buying a product. The more sophisticated the understanding of the sales process is, the better the content development would be. 

Content Marketing: The paradigm shift in the marketing industry

Utility content must be at the center of any marketing strategy. The traditional marketing has become less and less effective by every passing minute. Any forward-thinking marketer would know that there is a better and improved way to make the company and its products and services visible in the eyes of the customers.

Thus enters the dynamic content marketing method. 

The task of content marketing is said to be a strategic marketing approach that is focused on the process of creating and distributing relevant, valuable, as well as consistent content, to attract and also to retain a clearly defined audience. The ultimate aim is to drive profitable customer action at the end of the content. 

Instead of directly pitching the products or the services, the company is providing truly relevant and helpful content to the prospects and the customers, to help them to solve their issues. Regardless of the type of marketing tactics that a company is using, content marketing must be a part of the process and not something separate. The quality content is considered to be a part of all the different forms of marketing. They are explained as follows : 

Types of content 

There is a magnitude of ways by which organizations can create and spread content which can be useful for information generation and spreading of knowledge to the customers. Below mentioned are the different types of content that organizations can use to distribute knowledge and information to help customers solve their problems and ultimately market the business of the company.

1. Blogs

Blogging is considered to be one of the most popular kinds of content marketing for small and medium scaled businesses. Blogs are said to be one of the best ways to improve the SEO and to drive more organic traffic towards the company site from the search engines. It can aid a business to make the most of their limited marketing budget by simply supplementing any kind of advertising with the inbound content. Blogs should contain relevant keywords which attract visitors to the site. 

2. Videos

Today consumers are viewing more video content than before. Almost one-third of all the online activity is simply spent in viewing video content. This makes the videos as one of the best kinds of content marketing to reach and engage the target consumers, no matter which industry a company belongs to. 

3. Infographics

Infographics aids businesses to educate their audiences and also provide useful information which can add value for the leads and the customers. It is a visual content marketing format that helps the viewers to better visualize the data such as statistics so that one can have an idea of why something is of value or how something works. Here the important thing is the selection of the topic that customers are searching for. 

4. Case Studies and white papers

Case studies are primarily customer stories which that illustrate how the business has aided a specific client or a customer to become successful. Businesses can make use of such case studies to highlight the special applications or the uses of their services and products. The white papers tend to be a little more data-driven, information-dense, and detail-focused. This aspect makes the whitepapers as one of the best types of content marketing for the B2B segment as well as the other small businesses who want to build thought leadership as well as gain respect in their industry. 

5. eBooks

 The eBooks are said to be an effective type of long-form content which the businesses can use to offer value for the leads and the customers. The important point to be considered is value. The eBook should provide some kind of useful information or insight into the target audience regarding their needs or challenges. eBooks are typically gated. This means that the visitors have to provide some kind of information regarding themselves in return for the eBook download. 

Building Brand Image via content marketing. 
Creating educational as well as informative content influences the people to think of a brand and also creates an emotional appeal that they associate with it, be it trustworthiness or dishonesty, be it expert or novice or educational or sales. The ultimate goal of any organization is to position themselves through the content as a go-to resource for any kind of solution for any problem or question that the target audience might have.

Today, almost all of the buyers conduct online research at any point in the buying process. Establishing one's organizational website as the “go-to source” during the awareness and the consideration stages of the sales process put an organization in a strong position to be the “go-to” website since they are considering and are also ready to make the purchase. Guest posting as well as syndicating content on the authoritative websites, which the target audience visits attract additional credibility.

Content Marketing helps to Improve brand awareness and recognition that a company has already established in the market. Strong content reflects the credibility and the brand of the organization to the target customers. 

If a company wants the content that it has created to have the most significant impact on the readers and reach out to the maximum possible people in the market, then the brand awareness strategy should be aimed toward the mainstream topics which appeal to the high-authority news sites having large followings. A consumer’s capacity to recognize, to recall and to associate the brand with the critical qualities that they are looking for when they are starting down for the car purchase path and when they move through the sales process, is important into deciding the dealership they select to ultimately purchase the car from. 

The content helps to establish the brand’s identity by utilizing brand-specific language as well as the tone of voice. Content marketing also helps in delivering important messages about the products or services to the customers. 

Effect Of Good Content Marketing
Apart from the creation of a brand image in the minds of the customers, content marketing also helps organizations in several other ways. These are mentioned as Develop

awareness, trust, and loyalty among the customers. The people who are using the content would start to build an impression of trust in the company. Publishing informative and well-researched content reflects that the business is in an authoritative position in the market and it is trustworthy. The more the audience relies on the company's website for the information, the more likely it is that they would come back to buy from the same site.

Helps to reach out to an audience who wants to avoid unwanted ads. By using content rather than traditional advertising can aid an organization to reach the potential customers who might use the adblocking software or choose to actively ignore the traditional advertising techniques.

Allows keeping the costs low. There are almost no media placement costs as most of the work can be done in-house or given to freelance writers so that the spending can be kept low. 

Content Marketing helps to increase traffic and conversions. Good quality content would always draw the audience towards a particular website, thus boosting the web traffic. Once thy customer is on your site, he can be persuaded to register or initiate a purchase (ie convert). 

Content Marketing helps to support other business marketing tactics. Excellent content is required for the success of several other marketing tactics, like search engine optimization, public relations, and social media.

Less Bounceback and more retention of the visitors. The visitor stays for longer periods on the website as they get the information that they are looking out for. 

The number of Quality Visitors along with the Readers involvement in the blogs and articles getting increased over a while. 

In a Multi-Culture, Multi-Religion & Multi-Language country like India, it is extremely important to have multi-language content. This can have a big impact when people are getting the required content in his/her mother tongue. It creates a personal connection with the readers. 

Emerging trends and prospects of content marketing  

There are several pieces of research to indicate that content creation helps generate more traffic on the company's website. Forbes says that the websites who include a blog have 434% more indexed pages as compared to those who don’t. It means that the sites having blogs are at a greater chance of landing on the first page of the search engines when the consumers search for information with relevant keywords. According to Brightcove, those brands who use videos can expect an average increase of 157% of organic traffic from the search engines. The time spent on site is also increased by 105% due to the videos. As per the 2017 DemandGen report, almost 76% of the buyers are willing to share the information about themselves in exchange for a white paper or a case study or an ebook. These findings indicate that the future of content marketing is very bright and organizations can get a lot of business from the same. There are many emerging methods of content development such as social media postings, meme, gif, interviews, etc. which if used appropriately can help the businesses gain a lot mort out of the variety of created content.