In the age of internet, everything is extremely fast and available in abundance. Nowadays even if you have product that can literally solve all the problems in the world, it will go unnoticed if not marketed properly. Marketing a great idea or a product to the right audience excessively is as important as developing a great idea or a product. With the changing lifestyles, there has been an immense change in the marketing and advertisement strategies. One new marketing strategy that has been doing wonders is the content marketing. Here we explain the basics of a successful content marketing strategy.
Successful content marketing had been around much earlier than when the name of the term was first coined. However now as it has been rampant with almost all the big and small brands of products, a special separate line in the field of advertisement has been developed by the name of content marketing.
Before going into successful content market, let us first describe what content marketing is
“Content marketing is creating, managing and promoting content, that will consequently promote your product, services or brand without directly mentioning about the promotion of the brand.” The main difference between a successful content marketing campaign and a non-successful one is the quality of the content. The content created must be original, high quality, relevant to the cause and consistent in generation. Although content marketing have been there before the internet and social media, however today both these agents play a huge role in the field of content marketing.
From the definition it might not be clear but there are thousands of examples all around us.
Using the power of storytelling for successful content marketing
Human beings have always loved stories. Content marketing is basically driven by stories. Stories that will inspire, educate or effect people in one way or the other. However the ultimate goal of successful content marketing stories is to promote the brand name of the creators behind the content.
Just as in the case of stories, people like new and novel ideas and concepts, twists and surprises and lot of suspense, similarly content marketing thrives on the same type of content.
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Examples of successful content marketing Stories
The very first example of successful content marketing is of the year 1985 (Yeah more than a thousand years old) when Jon Deere published The Furrow, providing information to farmers on how to make farming more profitable. The magazine, considered the first custom publication, is still in circulation, reaching 1.5 million readers in 40 countries in 12 different languages. This magazine was created to help farmers making their farming more profitable for them but it actually created a dedicated and large client base for the organization.
In 1904, Jell O salesmen distributed free copies of recipes with Jell O as a part of the ingredients. This in return resulted in increased sales of Jell O.
Now let us look at some examples of content marketing that uses internet and social media.
Neil Patel is a marketing guru, and his organization was stated among the top most successful 100 organisations in the world. His website has over a hundred thousand views every day. In the Google search of term online marketing which is a highly competitive keyword, you can see his name comes just below Wikipedia. According to him he increased his traffic 193% within a year without spending a dime on advertisement. On his highly successful webpage, you will find free of cost blog guides, podcasts and tools about SEO analysis. He is giving out all this content for free but in return he gets web traffic as well as great PR. People invite him to give speeches and ask for his consultancy.
Thus the free of cost content is providing him the publicity and reputation that is proving to be a great way of advertisement of his skills.
History of content marketing
Here is a great video that illustrates the history of content marketing, before and after the advent of internet and social media. It was released by the content marketing institute and has way over hundred thousand views on YouTube. It is not just for your information but also serves as a content marketing example for the CMI. The CMI might have invested some time and maybe a little money on making this a little less than three minute video but the amount of publicity it has given to their institute just explains the strength and power of good content.
There is a brief mention of Hasbro in the video previously presented. It does little justice to the immense success story that is behind the success of the multibillion dollar industry that it has now become. When Hasbro first partnered with Marvel comics to write a comic story about their doll GI Joe no one knew it was setting up a precedence for a completely new and revolutionary way of marketing for toys. After this success story, Marvel used toys as a supporting content to the sales of their comics. Even now most of the official toys and action figures based on Marvel characters are manufactured by Hasbro. Cinema and movies have broadened the borders of content marketing the heights no one imagined and now billions of dollars of merchandise is sold based on the content created by a successful movie franchise. It just shows how far reaching impacts can content marketing have.
Characteristics of Great Content
Not every content advertising campaign is successful. Here are few characteristics of successful content marketing strategies
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Originality
First and foremost come up with something original. There is no use in copying an idea. Nowadays there is a huge trend of copying something that becomes successful. While this may lead to a short span of success, it can never be as successful and great as the original idea. Also due to modern copyrights laws and regulations you might get sucked in the web of litigations and end up spending much more on the legal front than the profits you have earned.
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Quality
Quality is of immense importance too when you are creating content. There is so much variety available now a days that low quality products are easily identifiable. If you plan to make a lasting impact maintain a quality standard in all the aspects of your content. In the beginning it might seem enticing to substitute your work with low costing alternative but suppress this urge for long lasting effects.
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Uniqueness
Go for something novel. An idea that has the element of surprise and suspense. People love a little suspense and intrigue. You can see that the commercials that become viral are those that touch you and are different. Millions of commercials are produced every day, but at the end of the year only a few stand out from the rest. They have the take on an age old issue but in a new way.
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Consistency
If your content is based on blogs or podcasts, make sure there is a consistency in your production. The readership that has taken a couple of years might leave in a couple of months if there is no new content added to your site. Make sure you consistently increase your content library to get a steady stream of traffic.
Successful content marketing mediums
There may be a hundred different ways in which you can create content and advertise about yourself, however here we list some of the most important ones which are widely used nowadays. As new technologies come up so does new content marketing strategies.
Successful content marketing via Webpages
Obviously there is a difference between normal webpages and the webpages that are part of content marketing. The content marketing pages provide you with great free content. It may be guides and how to’s with textual and audio tutorials. It may have any kind of information but there must be quality content that would convince the users to come back to visit.
Consider the example of the famous Moz website. There is a large amount of free materials available so it brings traffic to their website, and an amount of people visiting will end up in becoming their clients also.
Successful content advertisement via blogging
Also Read: How To Select a Niche For Blogging?
Blogging is a great medium to promote content marketing. The best thing about blogging is that high quality blogs and blogging tools are available free of cost for you to start your own blog in a quick and easy way. Through blogging everyone can have a web presence for free. However the success of a blog depends on content and content alone. That is why it is a highly content driven approach towards content marketing also.
Examples of successful blogs may be copyblogger or problogger that provide a huge library of great content for the users.
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Successful content promotion via Podcasts
Podcasts is a great way to talk to the audience. If talking in a magical way is your strength then podcasts is the best content marketing strategy for you. Or you can also hire someone to do a podcast on your behalf to advertise the services or products that you provide.
Podcasts are radio of today. A very popular podcast format is the interviews. People love to hear podcasts from their favorite celebrities and to know more about them.
Podcasts are usually sponsored. There can be a message from the sponsor at the beginning and the end of the podcast that contributes the podcast towards content marketing. Some of the top content marketing podcasts includes the missing link, Marketing over coffee, Marketing Smarts Podcasts etc.
Successful podcasts may be downloaded millions of times and are heard by people from around the globe.
Successful Content publication via Videos
Videos are a great and effective medium for content publication and promotion. It is known that humans are more receptive to audio-visual tools than text based. Nowadays with a deluge of social media available one viral video can make your product reach million to billions to customers. It is a onetime investment of time, effort and money and the end result is the fruitful advertisement and a huge amount of increase in customers.
YouTube is a great way to help you in successful content marketing via videos. The video that you will upload can in itself also benefit you through YouTube’s revenue sharing program that you can incorporate within your videos. Nowadays when even smartphones are providing you with high quality cameras and it is easy for you to create high quality video content, why not utilize the immense potential that the content marketing via videos can provide you with.
Successful Content Marketing via Apps
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Fitness gadgets are a great example of how apps can play a great role in content marketing. Take the example of FitBit, one of the pioneers of fitness gadgets and apps. The Fitbit App is among the top fitness apps that are available in the market. The app has a number of standalone features that do not require you to own its gadgets but of course if you own the accompanying FitBit fitness gadget then the app will give you even more benefit than it does without it.
Game apps and other types of apps play a great role in content marketing. Develop a successful app and you can have dedicated fan base that will ultimately turn towards the product.
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Successful content marketing via social media
This is the era where social media has taken the world by a storm. Successful social media campaigns can skyrocket your content marketing strategy. Here are some great tips as how you can use social media marketing like a pro. Learn To Be A Pro At Social Media Marketing
These are some of the mediums that can be used for successful content marketing. You can use a content management system for organized content generation, management and marketing. Here is a guide that will help you in getting to know about content management systems. Content management systems explained
What do you think is the necessary strategy behind successful content management? Share with us your views on the topic.
