What is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is, simply, marketing your brand through content. It involves creating and sharing material which doesn’t explicitly ‘sell’, but rather provides useful, relevant information to your audience that helps them make decisions. That way, when they are ready to buy, they come to you.
Inbound VS outbound marketing
Outbound marketing is when marketers actively reach out to potential clients. Think trade shows, events, cold calls and emails to purchased lists. This method is like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping some of it sticks. Some of it will, but people are getting better and better at dodging, filtering, and blocking unwanted contact.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is when you work on helping your target audience find you instead of the other way round. How do you do that? With quality content and a solid strategy!
Inbound leads have a 14.6% conversion rate, compared to the 1.7% conversion rate of outbound leads.
What are the benefits of Content Marketing?
- Use it to build out your sales funnel
Creating different pieces of content aimed at people at the various stages of your sales funnel will keep people coming to your site and help move them towards conversion. - Build brand awareness and authority
If you’ve ever wondered how exactly to position yourself as an expert in your field, this is how. Putting out educational content shows your audience you know your stuff, which builds their trust in you and makes it more likely for them to come to you when they need your services. After all, you’ve already shown them you know what you’re talking about! - It’s less intrusive than traditional advertising
No matter how useful, relevant, or important your message is, it’ll only matter if it reaches your audience when they’re ready to listen. Paid ads might pop up more often, but content comes when people search for it, which means they’re ready and open to hearing what you have to say. - It’s great for your SEO
Google is all about helping users answer their search queries. The more high quality content you have out there, the more relevant it’ll be to specific searches your audience make, the more likely you are to be found organically! - It drives sales in the background
See the above point about SEO. Although the people who come to your website might not make a decision straight away, once they’re there they’ll (hopefully) continue consuming your content and shift downwards in your funnel towards the conversion point. For this to work, it’s important to make sure you have content for every stage of the funnel. Keep an eye out for part 2 of this series for a guide on how to make sure your content is ticking all those boxes! - It helps you grow your social media and email list
If your content is useful and resonates, there’s a high chance the reader will want to keep up to date, which means they’ll follow you on social media or join your email list. Maybe your content is helping them achieve something, or they want to keep you in their inbox so when they’re ready to buy they can find you again. Either way, building up your lists means your future marketing efforts have a captive, warm audience ready to hear you!
Why is Content Marketing particularly important in Australia?
A big part of effective marketing is knowing your audience and how they talk. Knowing how they talk means understanding social context and etiquette. As an Australian, if you’ve ever been to the U.S or visited U.S focused websites, you might have been shocked at how ‘pushy’ the sell feels in their marketing.
According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, 98% of Australian B2B marketers use Content Marketing VS only 91% in North America.
Anecdotally, Americans appreciate the honesty of knowing they’re being sold to while Australians prefer to be presented the information and be left to make their own choice. That’s why Content Marketing is even more important if you’re targeting an Australian market. Pushing too hard might lose you clients but demonstrating that you’re the best match for the job and letting them come to you will have a much better outcome.
What are the different types of content?
Content isn’t just blogs! Here’s a quick list of some other types of content you can produce.
- Newsletters
- Video
- Infographics
- Articles
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Case Studies
- Reviews
- Slideshares
- Online polls and quizzes
- Social media
- Podcasts and webinars
- Live and digital events
This blog post is part 1 of a 3 part series. Keep an eye out for Part 2 (Content Marketing Strategy) and Part 3 (Optimisation and Promotion).
Want to know more about the best types of Content Marketing for your business? Contact our team today!