Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
How to Get Started With Content Marketing
Here’s All the GOOD Bits:
- Publishing written and visual content will foster trust and engagement, guide leads to your brand, and lower acquisition costs.
- For best results, do your research: define your target audience, their needs and platforms, and analyse your competitors’ content for gaps and opportunities.
- Choose suitable content formats and channels and optimise your content for SEO and long-term impact.
- Success will depend on consistently providing valuable, audience-focused content.
- And if you need professional help to take the load off your shoulders, The Good Marketer is here to launch your content strategy.
You’ve heard content is important for brand awareness and showing expertise, and that you should be putting it out to make yourself visible, but you don’t really know where to start. Then, suddenly, you’ve postponed posting so much that your website is left empty and outdated.
But where do you even begin? In this article, we’ll explain the basic principles and why it is touted by marketing experts and alike as the number one way to drive traffic, increase conversions, and grow your business.
So let’s see what the noise is all about…
Content Marketing: What Is It & Why Is It Important?
It’s a pretty straightforward definition, really. Content marketing is the publishing of written and visual material online, so that you attract (or retain!) leads to your business.
It may sound simple, but it is still a strategic business approach that can create long-term value for your business by building trust, deepening engagement, and guiding your prospects throughout the customer journey. So learning how to do it right can pay you back.
But why is content marketing important, and why everyone keeps talking about it? It basically improves your visibility. It creates value and meets your audience where they’re already spending time, so they can notice you, engage, and remember you. And when you address their pain points, your customers are all the more likely to convert.
If this doesn’t convince you, here’s a list of some other benefits for your business:
- Builds trust through credibility
- Improves SEO performance and organic visibility
- Lowers acquisition costs through personalisation and reuse
- Deepens post-sale engagement
Identify Your Target & Competitors
Knowing who you’re dealing with in your industry/field—be it your target or competitor—can help you develop a strong content marketing strategy. Chances are you already know who your target is. Make sure you have a clear understanding of their priorities, challenges, and preferences. And on what platforms can you meet them! In this way, you increase the chances of addressing the right pain points and having them actually read what you have to say.
When it comes to competitors, don’t let the word scare you. Having them is good for you and your content strategy. Check on them and what they’re already publishing. You can either add to what they’re saying, or, even better, provide your audience with even more value to find gaps that they haven’t filled.
Here are some steps you can take to research your competitors:
- Make a list of known/potential competitors
- Go to their blog page – (usually in the format of www.thegoodmarketer.co.uk/blog)
- Analyse what they’re talking about. What is their take on it? What is your take on what they’ve written/produced?
- Then ask yourself the question, “Can I provide their audience with a better insight/more value?”
With these two factors taken into account, you’re ready to build.
Build a Strategy
If you think that a successful content strategy happens by accident, think twice. It takes research, structure, consistency, mapping out how your content will support your wider business goals, and many, many other bits and pieces. A strong strategy should be like a lighthouse, showing you the way and keeping you focused, so that every needle of your business is moving in the right direction.
And here are some important pillars that your building should begin with:
Choose Your Content Types & Formats
Not every content type will suit your business. If you’re working with B2B brands, blogs, LinkedIn Posts, and webinars often work best as part of your strategy. For B2C brands, however, short-form videos, Instagram carousels, and how-to blog guides work best.
Simply ask yourself: Where does my audience spend time, and how do they consume content? That’s your clue. Start with 1–2 core formats you can realistically maintain, then expand once you’ve mastered consistency.
But to really hit the nail on the head, run a content audit to fully understand what kind of content is already resonating with your customers, and carry out some competitive analysis to see what competitors are talking about and identify some industry trends. Before you know it, you’ll have a content strategy that will work for your business.
Choose Your Channel
Your content needs a home. This can be your website, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, etc. But wherever content marketing channels you choose to host your pieces, it should reflect your audience’s habits and your brand’s strengths. If your ideal client is a professional, then LinkedIn is likely to outperform Instagram. If your brand is all about lifestyle and healthy living, then Instagram and Pinterest are your winners.
SEO
Yes, you shouldn’t forget this part either if you want to make sure the content you’re creating is actually discoverable. Every blog, video description, image caption and now even Instagram posts and stories, should be optimised with search intent in mind. Your SEO strategy should focus on targeting what your audience will actually look for, use meta titles and headers that answer real questions, and always provide genuine value and depth. Google is smart. It knows how to spot expertise and relevance. Yes, SEO is a long-term game, but on the plus side, this means that your content can still work for you months after publishing.
Create a Content Calendar
So you’ve got an idea of what you want to write/produce, and you’ve seen what other businesses are doing…now what?
Write up a schedule on Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and either make a table for a 5 or 7-day-a-week schedule.
You don’t have to put out content every day or even every week, but you cannot expect to get the most out of content marketing if you don’t publish high-quality content.
We normally opt for two a week here at The Good Marketer as a digital marketing agency in London, so this is a good goal to set yourself.
If you’re passionate about your business/industry, then you should find it easy to create valuable content that helps your audience, as it will come to you like second nature.
Your Content Marketer Sidekick
With the basics in mind, you’re probably guessing already that executing a solid strategy for content marketing is more than just coming up with a plan. The downside to content marketing is that, despite its potential, it is time-demanding and typically pays off way down the line unless you’re first in or your article goes viral. So, more often than not, to be successful, skilled digital marketing experts who can conceive, spread and oversee the life of your content across channels are required.
With a professional team you can trust behind your back, you’ll reach your business goals quickly and take some seriously painstaking tasks off your shoulders, like:
- Content planning, creation and storytelling
- Audience and Competitor Analysis
- SEO Strategy
- Performance measurement
- and more!
If it sounds like something you may need help with, don’t hesitate to book a FREE, no-obligation appointment today with one of our Content Marketing specialists. Let’s get that ball rolling!
Ready to Launch Your Content Marketing Strategy?
If you got to this page, that itself shows the power of content marketing because whatever you typed in on the internet led you to this blog post.
Like us, you no doubt have an opinion about your industry/topic/business, and you should let people know what it is, as long as it is valuable and provides something positive to people’s lives. But as a business owner, you’re going to put much time into content marketing when you have a list as long as your arm to do.
This is where we swoop in here at The Good Marketer as a Digital Marketing Agency based in London, because we know what it takes and can do this for you.