Content marketing has been around for many years but now is used more extensively in business and marketing. Content marketing has become a crucial element of digital marketing today.
With increasing content consumption on different online platforms, it has become an effective medium to increase your brand awareness and communicate your message to your target audience.
Content is everywhere!
But when it comes to online marketing you are obliged to give the best content to stand out and grab the attention of your target audience.
Due to a massive upsurge in online marketing and online ads, people tend to go through ad blindness and content blindness. It is significantly important for you to execute such a content marketing strategy that will not only grab attention but will help you gain trust and build a strong brand image.
Many companies are popularly known for their excellent content marketing activities which have helped them to build an irresistible brand.
What could be a better example than Zomato?
What Is Content Marketing?
What do you think of, when you hear content marketing? You probably must have thought of blogs, youtube videos, viral content on social media, and so on.
However, it is deeper than that.
Content marketing is a strategy used in marketing to grab attention, engage your audience and retain them by producing and distributing various suitable content such as videos, podcasts, blogs, and so on.
It is a marketing approach that is based on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to your target audience. This helps to retain your ideal audience leading to an increase in brand awareness. Hence, when you sell them, your brand is the first thing that hits their minds.
However, consistency is the key when it comes to content marketing. A good content creation and distribution strategy will help you gain authority in your domain.
This will ultimately benefit you by making your audience take the desired action.
How Beneficial is Content Marketing for B2B, B2C, and D2C?
In a survey by Semrush, it was found that 36% of content marketers were focused on generating leads through content marketing.
According to Oberlo, 96% of marketing decision makers say content marketing has been effective for their brand. However, content marketing is effective not only for building a brand but also to drive website traffic.
The marketing strategies for different types of businesses such as B2B, B2C, and D2C are different. Nevertheless, content marketing proves to be beneficial for all these three segments of businesses.
Let’s have a look at how impactful is content marketing for B2B, B2C, and D2C:
B2B:
Content marketing is an affordably excellent way to drive traffic and generate leads.
It also helps to achieve B2B inbound marketing objectives. Unlike the B2C business where there are mass sales done, B2B businesses are niche-oriented and hence the value per customer has been much higher.
Content marketing can largely help you to provide great value to your B2B prospects.
At present, where ads are more of an interruption than ads for the audiences online, content marketing can help B2B businesses to build trust, increase brand awareness and facilitate natural sales.
A good content strategy can help you create valuable collaterals that can be used across all the channels of marketing. Apart from converting leads, content marketing is also helpful to rank your website high in the search results.
B2C :
By creating useful and engaging content, content marketing is one of the most effective practices to promote your B2C products and services.
According to Heidi Cohen, 37% of marketers believe content marketing is effective for generating leads, establishing relationships, and increasing sales.
The main concentration in B2C business is how can your product help the customers to solve their problems. Content marketing can educate your target audience and increase awareness about your products and services for generating interest to buy them.
By increasing your organic traffic, content marketing can help you increase your sales conversions for your B2C business. This all sums up and ultimately helps you build brand awareness and improve ROI.
D2C:
Today the customers of the products are savvier than ever before!
Be it any product, customers will first rush out to their trusted networks to find the reviews about a particular product. After satisfactory research, the customers shall make a buying decision.
Hence, only listing your products online and expecting sales is not just enough to generate sales for D2C businesses. Here is where content marketing can turn the table.
A robust content marketing strategy can help you to reach potential customers and also retain your existing customers.
A good content strategy will not only help you to build brand awareness but also keep them engaged and connected with your brand.
Buying decisions are mostly driven by the customer’s emotions. The more they feel connected with your brand, the higher the chances that they will stay loyal to your brand.
Apart from content marketing and branding you also need to make sure that your products stand out and are made to solve their problems.
Types Of Content:
Incorporating suitably different forms of content into your marketing strategy is significantly essential. Let’s jump on a few of such types of content below that can help you make your content marketing strategy a hit:
1.Blogs:
Blogs are an excellent tool to generate inbound content.
Blogs are one of the best ways to educate your audience and provide valuable and relevant content to them.
This leads your audience to engage with your content and build trust. Eventually, you can provide information about your products and services in your blogs and generate leads.
Blogs also allow you to promote internal and external content.
2.Podcast:
Source: Statista
A podcast is a very popular type of content in this era of digital marketing. Globally, the number of people who listen to podcasts is rapidly rising.
According to a Discover Pods survey, more than 55% of podcast listeners have purchased after hearing an advertisement.
Every year, more people are listening to and creating podcasts.
This creates an efficient path for businesses to launch a podcast and expand their audience through marketing and distribution.
3.Infographics:
Sometimes your brand would want to communicate information that is too complex to explain or can only be explained through detailed content like blogs.
Here’s where infographics can play a significant role. Visuals can effectively explain complete data and information more readily.
It is one of the most persuasive types of content used for content marketing.
4.Videos:
Ever since the increase in internet usage, most of the content that is produced has majorly navigated towards videos.
Who doesn’t want to watch interesting and insightful videos? It is one of the most engaging forms of content that is used for marketing.
A study reports that 86% of marketers have stated that they could generate leads with the help of videos. (wyzowl.com)
5.Ebooks:
As the name suggests, these are electronic books. It is a long-form content type that usually is best to provide detailed and valuable knowledge, information, and expertise.
When it comes to content marketing, e-books usually do not get the amount of attention that is required.
As per Statista, the e-book market could be valued between $15 to $18 billion. Ebooks are a great way to build authority, grow your email list and generate leads.
Companies That Have Aced Content Marketing:
1.Zomato:
Zomato is ruling the content marketing game on social media.
At times, the content is so simple with a touch of creativity, that it’s highly impacting and never disappoints its audience.
With its powerful marketing tactics and great level of creativity, it creates content that is greatly relatable to the audience.
In addition to using content marketing wisely, Zomato has elevated itself to the top in its domain by altering how people view food.
The type of content that Zomato gives out to woo its audience is highly relatable yet funny, personal, and casual too. This helps Zomato create a high brand recall and liking for the brand.
2.Hubspot:
Hubspot tops the list when it comes to delivering valuable, informational, and highly researched content to its target audience.
Hubspot’s growth and reputation speak for itself!
Creating long-form and detailed blog posts for their visitors on the topics which concern them is remarkable.
Not only this, but it also adds content upgrades such as ebooks, short courses, and templates to its blog posts to make them highly reliable.
Another content strategy of Hubspot includes creating videos on Facebook and driving traffic to those videos by using LinkedIn.
Hubspot also publishes informative and knowledgeable podcasts. Hubspot’s content marketing strategy has helped it gain trust, reliability, and authority in its domain.
3.Zerodha:
Zerodha is one of the biggest stockbrokers in India and has done huge content creation.
Their solid content strategy helps them get more than 220k monthly search traffic.
Zerodha not only creates content in English but also gives enlightening and valuable content in Hindi.
With no vested interest, Zerodha’s main goal is to increase awareness and create highly informative financial content for its audience
4.Udemy:
A popular online education platform, Udemy executes an exceptionally well-curated content strategy.
Along with sticking to its mission statement of providing quality education more accessible, the platform is a go-to hub for consuming outstanding content for its audience to improve their lives.
The content strategy comprises highly valuable and informational short and free courses.
Bottom Line
It is enormously true that “Content is king”!
Regardless of your marketing tactics and strategies, your content does hold due importance.
An effective content marketing strategy can help you increase your brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate quality leads.
It also helps you to nurture your leads and customers and keeps them engaged, which is highly important for achieving certain marketing objectives.
Making high-quality content that is useful, relevant, and reliable is highly essential to make the most out of your content marketing efforts.
Also, creating appropriate strategies for marketing your content can thrive your marketing efforts.
Schedule a free strategy call with our content marketing experts today and strive for great heights of success.
