Chapter 4: Understanding Content Marketing PDF

Chapter 4 Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 An overview  Digital marketing = content.  You are nothing online if you do not create content.  Content = is the currency that digital marketers use to engage, interact, and influence their customers.  Content = Information Content m...

Chapter 4 Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 An overview  Digital marketing = content.  You are nothing online if you do not create content.  Content = is the currency that digital marketers use to engage, interact, and influence their customers.  Content = Information Content marketing is defined as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing Valuable, Relevant, and Effective content to Attract and Keep a Clearly-Defined Audience - and Most Importantly to generate Profitable Customer Action.  THUS, CONTENT IS THE KING OF YOUR DIGITAL ARENA. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  Content is one of the few marketing channels that allow marketers to contact their potential customers at all phases of the customer cycle, during research, purchase, and review.  As any marketing issue, you have to take into your consideration the target customer. Exactly the same within the content marketing, you have to decide your customers(target customers).  Content marketing is important for POSITIONING your brand in the minds of consumers.  Content marketing works and will always work because it offers value to a potential customer; it fills their immediate requirement for information.  It is a very powerful brand-building and business-building tool. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 PURPOSE AND GOALS OF CONTENT MARKETING  Purpose  It's all about providing value, building trust, and establishing meaningful connections with your target audience.  Goals of Content Marketing  Brand Awareness: Expand your reach and make your brand known in the market.  Lead Generation: Attract potential customers and collect valuable contact information.  Thought Leadership: Position yourself as an industry expert and gain credibility.  Customer Engagement: Strengthen relationships and foster loyalty with existing customers. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 BENEFITS OF CONTENT MARKETING 1 Increased Visibility 2 Established Authority Boost your online presence and Become the go-to resource in improve search engine your industry and gain trust. rankings. 3 Enhanced Customer Loyalty Create stronger connections and turn customers into brand advocates.  Brand visibility How your brand is seen by your audience through various marketing channels like social media, search engines, and more. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 WHAT CONTENT SHOULD I BE CREATING?  There are many different types of content that you can create. What content you create will depend largely on your brand, your target audience, resources and your budget.  Types of content:  Create content that your customers will like and then amplify the reach of that content.  News and blog content: this form of content is easy to create and should represent a first tick on your list of content marketing to-dos. It is relatively quick and easy content for almost any brand to create and host on their own website. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 WHAT CONTENT SHOULD I BE CREATING?  A whitepaper A white paper is long-form content that provides an in-depth solution, analysis, or opinion to a complex problem that your target audience faces, backed with charts, data, surveys, and examples  e-books: in a similar way to the white paper idea above, extending that idea and creating a relevant e-book that is of relevance to your customer base can work extremely well too.  Infographics: a graphical representation of data, infographics are useful at illustrating a lot of data that can often be confusing to write down in detail.  Video: video content is increasingly important for digital marketing success.  Photographs: with the increasing popularity of platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest, more digital marketers are turning their attention to the creation of photographic content too. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 WHAT SKILLS DO YOU NEED TO BE A GOOD CONTENT MARKETER?  In order to be a good content marketer you need to have a combination of great organizational skills, careful attention to detail, creativity and analytical expertise.  Essentially you need to be creative enough to develop great ideas.  Have to be able to create that content, and then you also need  To be able to carry out analysis on what works, dive into the stats and use technology to analyze results.  Organizational skills: are your abilities to manage time effectively, prioritize tasks, set goals, and develop systems for achieving those goals. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  CONTENT CREATION is the process of identifying a new topic you want to write about, deciding which form you want the content to take, defining your strategy, and then actually producing it.  Most content creation processes involve detailed rounds of edits with other stakeholders before content is ready for publishing.  A content creator refers to someone who is responsible for the ideation, creation, and distribution of content that connects a brand to its target audience.  The goal of content creators:  Is to create appealing (attractive) content that captures the attention of users to drive website traffic, conversions, and interactions with your brand on external platforms like social.  Digital content creators produce content across any platform or channel.  Having dedicated content creators is a must for any organization. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  Content Management System: is a software application that assists in managing content for the website. It is important because it helps the creation, collection, management and publishing of any material on your website.  Three main types of digital marketing media, Each element is an important part of the whole and all contribute to a complete digital marketing strategy.  Earned media: is essentially online word of mouth, usually seen in the form of ‘viral’ drives, mentions, shares, reposts, reviews, or recommendations.  Owned media: is any web property that you can control and is unique to your brand.  One of the most common examples of owned media is a website, although blog sites and social media channels are other examples of owned media properties too. Channels like social media and blogs are extensions of your website, and all three are extensions of your brand as a whole. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  Paid media: is used to promote content in order to drive earned media, as well as direct traffic to owned media properties, such as (display ads, PPC ads)  Paid media is a great way to promote content in order to generate more earned media and can also be used to drive traffic directly to your owned media properties.  While each element has its own role, using Earned, Owned and Paid Media all together in marketing will make your digital media strategy that much more effective Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  CONTENT STRATEGY  Content strategy is the planning and development of how you plan to attract and engage with your chosen audience via content to achieve business goals.  Content strategy component  Content components  Substance: Who are you trying to reach and why?  Structure: Where is your content? How is it organized? How do people find your content?  People components  Workflow: How does your content happen?  Governance: Politics, guidelines, and standards that your brand operates. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 CONTENT STRATEGY  When planning your content strategy you should ask yourself these questions:  Who do I want to target?  What information are my customers looking for?  What type of content do my customers look for?  How can I keep existing customers happy?  How can I attract new customers?  What do we like/dislike about competitors’ content strategy?  What overall business objective do I want to achieve from my content marketing? Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  What's the difference between marketing strategy & content strategy?  Marketing and content strategies work hand in hand, but there are a few differences.  Marketing strategy is a starting point and a destination, while your content strategy identifies the buyer's journey and maps the route to connect the two points.  The marketing strategy is the primary structure for reaching customers and shapes the steps your business needs to take to your final goals like growth and increasing revenue.  A content strategy defines what content is created to support this marketing strategy and how you'll promote it. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  There are many misunderstandings about who ‘owns’ the content process.  Is content strategy the responsibility of your SEO team? Or perhaps your social media team? Or maybe your PR or corporate communications team?  All of these marketing departments should have input into the process.  Your content strategy is not an advertising campaign, it is more than that. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 Let’s review the various channels in more detail:  Search strategy: content is now at the heart of any search engine optimization strategy. Search engines love unique, quality content that enhances the user experience.  Social strategy: content is the lifeblood of any brand’s social platform. Whether a B2B approach on LinkedIn and Google+, a consumer angle on Facebook and Twitter, or something that incorporates all social platforms.  content is what drives brand engagement.  PR strategy: content marketing is not PR in ‘new clothes’, likewise content strategy is not identical to your PR strategy.  They should share fundamental similarities, such as brand voice, but they differ somewhat, often, with their target audience. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  Public relations (PR) is the set of techniques and strategies related to managing how information about an individual or company is disseminated to the public, and especially the media.  Brand voice is the unique personality that your brand presents to the world. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 STRATEGIC BUIDLING BLOCKS 1- Translate Your Brand Essence 2 - Market Research And Consumer Persona  All content should be created with a strategic outcome in mind, so 3 - Create Content Themes you have to concentrate on the following issues to have a 4 - Matching Content Formats To Objectives successful content strategy 5 - Brand Personality 6 - Content Audit Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 STRATEGIC BUIDLING BLOCKS  The BRAND ESSENCE sums up the unique attributes of a brand and the basis for its emotional connection with customers. Remember your emotional connection with your customer is the thing that differentiates your brand from your competitors. The brand essence can be a useful guide for ensuring that the content you create (and your marketing activity) represents the brand appropriately.  Examples on brand essence:  Mercedes Benz === Luxury and Performance  Coca-Cola === Happiness  Samsung === Innovation and Technology  Apple === Simple Elegance Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 STRATEGIC BUIDLING BLOCKS  Market Research And Consumer Persona  CONSUMER PERSONA is a profile that a writer creates to represent the collected characteristics of the target audience for whom you are writing. It helps to personalize the brand. Personas are based on the profile of users of your content.  CREATE CONTENT THEMES: areas of focus that support the creation of content that matches a consumer’s interest. These themes must be true to the brand essence, not focused directly on sales, and should also speak to the interests of the audience.  For Coca-Cola, for example, consumer interests filtered through the brand essence of ‘Coke brings joy’ could result in the following themes:  Friendship  Spreading smiles. These themes are then used as the basis on which to develop content ideas. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 MATCHING CONTENT FORMATS TO OBJECTIVES  CONTENT FORMATS: Information can be presented through any number of mediums  Content might be:  Emotional content uses calls such as happiness, fear, optimism, sadness, humor and the inherent need to belong to elicit a response from consumers.  Informational content: highlights the features of a product or service, and the benefits a customer will gain when using it. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  MATCHING CONTENT FORMATS TO OBJECTIVES  Understanding the consumer decision journey 1- Need Recognition 2- Information Search 3- Alternatives Evaluation 4- Purchase Decision 5- Post-purchase Evaluation Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 STRATEGIC BUIDLING BLOCKS  The BRAND PERSONALITY is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name.  The personality is a value-add that a brand gains in addition to its functional benefits.  Companies should accurately define their brand personalities so they connect with the right consumers.  A brand personality is something to which the consumer can relate. If the consumer becomes a regular customer, they may start to identify parts of their own personality with the brand personality. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 STRATEGIC BUIDLING BLOCKS  The Brand Personality Framework was developed by Aaker, and these dimensions are:  Sincerity: Tends to be ethical, and trustworthy, such as coca cola.  Excitement: Bold, creative, and spirited, like Tesla.  Competence: Intelligent and reliable. Think Volvo or Microsoft.  Sophistication: These brands, like Chanel or Apple, are often upper-class, glamorous, and charming.  Ruggedness: Rugged brands like Harley-Davidson and Land Rover tend to be outdoorsy and tough. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 STRATEGIC BUIDLING BLOCKS  THE CONTENT AUDIT  The content audit involves an audit of all the existing content supplied by the brand such as the website, articles, videos, and content shared on social media sites can all be considered.  An assessment can then be made of how well these pieces of content match the strategic needs of the brand, its audience and the appropriateness to the chosen channel.  Many practitioners suggest the use of a spreadsheet to achieve this.  Content can be found to be either mismatched to the goals of the organization, or spot on (matched).  Most importantly, you can establish what is missing. Are your customer needs being addressed? Where do the opportunities lie? Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024  A CONTENT CALENDAR  A content calendar is a tool used to organize, simplify, and schedule the publication of social content across media platforms.  This tool is helpful in terms of understanding and organizing the long-term and short-term objectives of your strategy. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024 CREATING A CONTENT CALENDAR:-  Seasonality: think about the key seasons and trends in your business and what content you want to create in the run-up to and during these times of year.  Topics: for each month, pick strong themes that can break down into subcategories. Think about events that you could write about that take place in any given month.  Timing: break down your calendar month by month, then week by week, then day by day. This will increase the structure and regularity to your work.  Share: share your content calendar with your team of content creators, both internal and external, as well as all of your other marketing channels. Dr. Sawaftah 2023-2024