Content marketing guide: what it is, advantages, and how to plan your strategy

What is content marketing?

It has always been said that "content is king", and the truth is that it has been for many years.

More than a decade ago, Joe Pulizzi (founder of the Content Marketing Institute and one of the gurus of this subject) laid the foundations of this discipline and gave a definition:

Content marketing is a technique of attracting potential customers by creating and disseminating relevant and valuable content.

From this definition, we want to highlight 3 points:

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  Attracting potential customers:  as we said before, many people believe that a content strategy only works to gain visits, when it doesn't. The content helps us advance the lead throughout the sales funnel.

  
  


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  Creation and diffusion: this is very important because many companies focus solely on the creation and forget about promotion. In other words, you make an enormous effort to create content, but then you don't get anyone to read it.

  
  


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  Relevant and valuable content: this consists of creating content that is useful for your ideal client. You don't have to write only about what you like (a very common mistake), but about what interests your buyer persona.

  
  

Do not worry, we will see below how to create a content strategy, and we will delve further into these points & writeessaytoday.

Advantages and disadvantages of a content strategy

Although everyone associates creating content with gaining traffic, it is by no means the only thing you can achieve with this strategy (although it is also true that you have to look at everything, including the least good).

We see it.

Advantages of content marketing

1. 
   

   More clients:  yes, the content makes you gain visits, but also leads that thanks to sending them more content (specific to them), you become clients.

   
   


2. 
   

   More leads:  As we have just seen, improving your visit to lead conversion rate is also a goal of content marketing (and there are special contents for it).

   
   


3. 
   

   Organic traffic:  Google likes websites that create content. There's no more. If you want the search engine to send you traffic, in addition to having your website optimized, you must also create posts, videos, images, etc.

   
   


4. 
   

   Qualified visits:  very important. The contents serve us to segment our audience and thus be able to adapt our offer and improve sales.

   
   


5. 
   

   Non-intrusive technique:  content marketing is born from Inbound Marketing, that is, from getting potential leads to come to our website voluntarily (thanks to the content), and not by persecuting them (advertising).

   
   


6. 
   

   Virality: The  Internet is a very fast channel that can boost your visibility in a matter of hours. Create quality content, connect with the emotions of your audience, and who knows if you will suddenly see a post of yours running like wildfire on social networks.

   
   


7. 
   

   Authority (reinforces your brand):  in a blog you show your knowledge about your sector, your philosophy as a company and your way of approaching work, which positions your company as a benchmark in the market.

   
   


8. 
   

   Trust:  to sell through the Internet you need to build trust and the content helps you do it. This is because the person sees in your content how you work and what your values ​​are; so you better understand what are the benefits of working with you.

   
   


9. 
   

   Loyalty (community):  a brand no longer sells just showing the benefits of its products and services, but its values. This makes your target audience create a link to the brand and support it in their projects. But, how to transmit those values ​​or ways of thinking of the company? Indeed, with its contents.

   
   

Disadvantages (although it would be almost better to say obstacles)

1. 
   

   You need to know about SEO: a good content strategy should always be based on an in-depth keyword study of the sector. And this can be difficult if you do not have SEO knowledge & content writing services.

   
   


2. 
   

   It takes time: or money if you hire a professional web copywriter (which is recommended). However, remember the statistic with which we opened the post (it is not an expense, but an investment).

   
   


3. 
   

   You have to know how to write: if you decide to write the contents yourself, you have to take into account that you must know how to write correctly and master SEO writing.

   
   

7 steps to create your company's content strategy

As you can see, there are many more pros of working on a content marketing strategy than there are cons, so now it's time to focus on the most important thing: how.

1. Where do we start (metrics)

If we don't measure, we don't know if the strategy we are applying for works. It's that simple. For example, some basic metrics to control if we set ourselves a visibility objective are:

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  No. of sessions month to month.

  
  


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  No. of page views.

  
  


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  Time on-page.

  
  


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  Track the keywords you attack.

  
  

If for example, you are working more on the conversion to lead, you have to see the number of monthly leads (although here it is also interesting to see which are the posts that convert you the most).

2. Objectives (what are the results we want to achieve)

As you have seen before, the goal of content marketing is to attract potential customers, not just visits.

Of course, it is important to capture traffic, but if you do not have a sales funnel that turns that traffic into customers, all the effort you make in obtaining it will not do any good. It is the same as if you start to cross a bridge that is broken in half: yes, you have advanced, but you have not reached where you wanted.

Therefore, you can focus your strategy according to the moment on different goals:

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  Visibility.

  
  


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  Leads.

  
  


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  Improve your brand.

  
  


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  Activation for sale.

  
  


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  Resolution of objections.

  
  


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  Sales

  
  


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  Etc.

  
  

What you have to be clear about is that your content marketing strategy must always be aligned with the objectives that you have set for your business in general.

3. Your initial client (who turns everything)

The better you know your ideal client, the better your content will be. Remember that it is not about writing about what you like, but about what your client is concerned about (and you can help them solve).

Part of the content you write will serve for your buyer persona to detect that your company can help him with his problem, so he will already value you as a possible solution. Hence also the importance of content being practical and useful, customers want results, and the first thing they will value is whether your content helps them.

So ask yourself:

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  What are the main problems of your ideal client at the moment?

  
  


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  How do these problems materialize in your day-to-day?

  
  


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  What objectives do you aspire to achieve but are stuck when it comes to achieving them?

  
  

These questions will help you reflect on what topics your prospect may be interested in.

4. Define your tone and values ​​(how are you going to count it)

Your brand must permeate your content.

Impersonal podcast posts, videos, or episodes do not work. Think that there are many companies generating the content, you have to differentiate yourself. Therefore, your way of transmitting your knowledge is going to be essential in order for the strategy to work.

Think that this is one of the parts that will make a reader connect with your company or not.

5. Study of keywords (so that everything comes out optimized for SEO)

If you create content you have to optimize it for SEO. If not, it is like having the last laptop that has come out on the market to only write in Word.

SEO is like a snowball. At first it is small, but its growth is exponential. The more keywords you attack and the more authority you collect, the more keywords you will have ranking options. 

Also, keep in mind 3 ideas:

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  Stable traffic arrival: unlike advertising with which when you stop paying, you stop receiving traffic; SEO (although the rankings fluctuate) assumes a "guaranteed" traffic arrival every day.

  
  


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  You must have a strategy to see what keywords to attack before: starting with keywords with a high search volume does not make sense. If your blog has no authority, you will never reach that volume.

  
  


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  Optimize the keywords in relation to your funnel: this is essential to improve customer acquisition. In this post and in this other we talk more about these points.

  
  

We insist, do not start writing without having an SEO strategy behind, you will be wasting your budget and time.

6. What content to create (why can't everything be done)

Before we talked about your ideal client in relation to the topics to be created, but you also have to keep it in mind regarding the format and the channels where it is located (the next point we will see).

What does your buyer persona like best?

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  Read posts.

  
  


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  Listen to the podcast.

  
  


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  Watch videos on Youtube.

  
  

We recommend generating written and video content because they are 2 formats that Google especially likes, but the reality is that podcasting is also having a lot of pull now. What to do then?

Keep an idea: start with one, but what you do is quality.

Then, it is also important that you consider what types of content work best in relation to the objective that you have set for yourself:

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  To gain visibility: SEO articles, infographics, interviews with influencers in your sector, guest posts, etc.

  
  


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  For conversion: lead magnets or white papers.

  
  


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  To sell email marketing, webinars (all content in videos convert very well).

  
  

Remember that your content strategy must be aligned with that of your business. With this clear, choose the best formats in relation to the goal.