Table of contents
- Introduction: What is the Content Marketing?
- Insights from Marketing Experts: Best Practices of Creating Content for Today’s Market
- The 3 Categories of Digital Media Marketing
- Budgeting for Content Marketing: Creation & Distribution
- Conclusion
Introduction: What is the Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing strategy that revolves around creating and distributing content to attract, engage, and inform your target audience. Content marketing is one of the most important strategies for any company to succeed in today’s connected world. It allows you to connect with your audience by providing them with relevant information that they can use to make decisions on their purchase. The term “content” itself refers to information that engages the customer or audience. Content marketing aims to build brand awareness, create brand advocates, drive traffic, and increase conversions for your product or service.
The key to success in content marketing is understanding the needs of your target audience and creating content that addresses those needs. It can be used as a standalone strategy or alongside other tactics like social media advertising or SEO marketing. Moreover, it is more cost-effective than traditional advertising because it doesn’t require significant investments in time or money and can help drive traffic to a business’s website or increase sales.
Insights from Marketing Experts: Best Practices of Creating Content for Today’s Market
Content is becoming more critical than ever before. It has evolved from being a passive form of information distribution to a valuable asset that can be used as a marketing tool. The content marketing industry has evolved into one of the most lucrative industries to work in. Marketing experts are always on the lookout for new trends and ways to engage with the audience. The article will explore how marketers can leverage their skills to create engaging, interactive, and valuable content that resonates with the target audience.
- Keep it short and sweet: Time is an asset more potent than money in today’s world: While people may have the dollars, nobody has the time. So it is crucial to put forth your opinion in minimum words as possible. Short & sweet!
- Use data to your advantage and know what your audience needs: The use of social media has created the data profile of every human being on the internet. All you need is a keen eye to study it. For instance, many websites keep track of their user activity and later explore consumer behaviour analytics to provide relevant recommendations to their customers. Similarly, you can also analyse the content from your own site or your competitor’s site (with tools like BuzzSumo) and create content that your customer is looking for, incorporated in a content format that they mostly consume. The entire crux of marketing boils down to three words- what customers want! And if you can acquire this knowledge, then your work is done. Using data to your advantage can provide you leverage over your competitors because your content speaks your customer’s language.
- Keep your audience engaged with short videos and infographics: If you must have noticed, lately, short video stories are on a rise. Insta story, Facebook story, YouTube story, and short-form content is becoming the new normal. Get on the train!
- Be consistent with your brand voice: Consistency is the key, and this cannot be emphasised enough! MIA’s recent report discusses what consistency can do for your brand [1]. It should be further reflected in the content that you create. After all, content is also for marketing your brand.
Also read: Strengthening Your Brand Image: Why Consistency Is The Key To Cultivating A Brand
- Be authentic in the content you create: Cut, copy & paste: never use this strategy to make your content. Content directly speaks to your customers and builds engagement; therefore, always be creative, convincing, authentic and relevant to your audience.
Also read: How To Develop Customer Loyalty And Create Brand Loyalists.
The 3 Categories of Digital Media Marketing
Digital marketing has evolved into a more complex industry, with a broad spectrum of digital media that can be used to create and disseminate content and put your business in the public eye.
Image source: Search Engine Journal
- Owned media: This is the traditional marketing approach where the company creates their own content and shares it through its own channels. It is usually done in-house by the company or with the help of a digital agency and typically caters to creating blogs, social media posts, articles, videos, etc.
- Paid media: This is the traditional marketing approach where companies purchase or pay for advertising on other people’s platforms like TV commercials or online banner ads. These are the forms of digital media that you pay to reach your audience. This includes advertising on social networks or search engines like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads to get your brand in front of customers.
- Earned media: Earned media is when people share content from your website or social channels without asking for anything in return. These are the forms of digital media you get for free because someone has shared your content with their audience. This includes articles written about your company or news sites and coverage on social networks.
Budgeting for Content Marketing: Creation & Distribution
Content creation and distribution is a significant task for any organisation, and to top it all off, it is not a one-time thing. It is a routine activity that needs to be repeated depending on a company’s content goals. Therefore, 13% of the marketing budget is allocated for content marketing, with 6% reserved for content creation and 7% for content distribution. Further, 30% of the content distribution budget is allocated for owned media, 21% for paid media and 25% for earned media (MIA research).
Image source: MIA research Optimising The Cost Of Digital Marketing For Businesses
Also read: A Guide To The Cost Components in a Marketing Budget 2022
Image source: MIA research Optimising The Cost Of Digital Marketing For Businesses
Research also shows that amongst the components of owned media, 13% goes to website design and maintenance, 11% goes to email marketing and CRM, and 6% goes to other distribution channels (like mobile apps) of owned media.
Image source: MIA research Optimising The Cost Of Digital Marketing For Businesses
For paid media, 10% is reserved for PPC, 8% for search ads and 3% for display ads.
Image source: MIA research Optimising The Cost Of Digital Marketing For Businesses
Further, our data also indicates that, for earned media resources, 13.7% goes into SEO, 8% goes to social shares/reviews/comments, and 3.3% to others.
Image source: MIA research Optimising The Cost Of Digital Marketing For Businesses
Conclusion:
You can’t be successful with your marketing strategy without knowing how paid, owned, and earned media channels work as a whole. This idea is standard practice even for today’s most basic content marketing blueprints. Even though paid, owned, and earned media have always been separate, rather than embracing that separation, they’ve only blended into a single fluid environment where paid ads can lead to earned media wins.
Convergence marketing might seem “new,” but it’s been around for years. It isn’t always easy to implement, but if you go into this type of marketing strategy with your eyes wide open and are willing to put in the time & effort, you will succeed. Having a robust media mix is imperative for any business that wants to grow. Balancing paid, owned, and earned media depends on your industry, budget allocation, KPIs, and deadlines and understanding the importance of convergence in your promotional strategy is an essential first step. Remember, nothing beats third party validations; therefore, earned media is crucial among the three.
To know more about digital marketing budget optimisation, download the report.
Endnotes
