What is Content Marketing?
“If you watched the Lego Movie, you saw one of the greatest examples of content marketing to date…that was a 100 minute toy commercial, and rather than using a DVR to skip it you paid good money to watch it…and Lego recently became the largest toy company in the world.”
(Steimle, 2014)
Content marketing is creating and sharing online material in a way that will attract customers to a specific product or company, but that isn’t all. Content marketing is utilizing any form of “New New Media”–media in which the consumer of content also has the possibility and is encouraged to produce that content: YouTube, Blogging, Social Media, etc–in order to draw in customers.
Why use Content Marketing?
While not everyone has the ability to produce a top-grossing film like Lego, content marketing allows producers to advance because they have the ability to target an audience with a specific interest. A hooked audience is one that will continue coming back and searching for more.
How-To: Content Marketing- Blogs, Videos, Social Media Campaigns, etc.
- Identify Target Audience: Who are you marketing to? What does your audience need?
- Topic and Title: Brainstorm ideas. You can come back to the list and choose a topic that can be expanded on and decide on a title from that.
- Valuable Content: After topics have been brainstormed, find content to go along with each. Sort through the lists to find what topic will have the best content for your target audience. Will your audience want to view it? Will they keep coming back for more?
- Keywords: Use specific words and phrases that will relate to your product and/or company and will easily be found by search engines. Do these words or phrases direct the consumer back to your products? Do they describe to consumers what your company represents?
- Planning: Create a calendar or spreadsheet that contains authors and timely due dates and publication dates. Keep this organized so the producers know what is expected of them, when it is due and the editors have time to review the content before the date it goes to publication.
- Architecture: Keep content easy to follow and appealing to consumers. HubSpot suggests A/B testing on color, images, wording, pricing, and layout.
Color– Choose colors that will contrast and be appealing to consumers.
Images– The images chosen will set the tone for the content.
Wording– Make sure word choice is sensitive to the target audience.
Pricing– Does your price fall into the product’s Economic Value? Is your product worth
enough to the consumer that they will pay your price?
Layout– The layout should allow the consumer to simply follow the content. It should be
clean and inviting to the customer.
Steimle, J. (2017). Forbes Welcome. Forbes.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/09/19/what-is-content-marketing/#cd1c96b10b9b
Levinson, P. (2014). New new Media (2nd ed.). Boston [u.a.]: Pearson.