The life and soul of anything that’s successful is essentially a single unit that comprises a blend of two things – form, and content. Form is the aesthetic value that sets your matter apart in the eyes of the recipient. Content is the substantial element that goes into the subject matter at hand. In marketing, content plays a pivotal role. Content-based or content marketing is a mechanism of creating and sharing valuable content to attract and convert customers, and to retain existing customers as repeat buyers or subscribers.
Content is, therefore, your way to converse with your customers and potential customers, and your route to building dialogue around the product, service or solution that you provide. What you share and market as your content depends on what your business itself is. If you’re in the fashion business, content pertaining to dressing, trends and fashion tips are your mainstay. If you’re in healthcare, content centres itself around the industry at micro and macro levels of catering to health needs.
The ultimate aim of any endeavour in content marketing is to educate recipients of information on the one hand, and to encourage them to do business with you. It is about creating a space and platform of acceptable thought leadership, and redefining your own place vis-à-vis the relations with a potential customer at any stage of your business’ existence.
How can it help your brand?
Content marketing is one of the best inbound marketing strategies around. Be it through a blog or a video, or a highly active account on one of the social media outlets, that a brand engages in putting information out there for public consumption, and offers up a space for customers to engage with that information, is one way of creating a prominent niche for the business involved.
Secondly, content marketing creates inroads in personalization of a brand’s message. Every piece of content put out there in the name of marketing a brand’s products, solutions or services is a story being told. In telling that story, it is best packaged for the customer to receive and act upon it in a way that allows the customer to feel one with the brand through its philosophy. Content marketing, therefore, encourages bridging the gap between provider and consumer.
Third, content marketing occupies a space of providing extra value to the target audience. Information, entertainment, advice, opinions and awareness come together in an intersectional cusp of sorts, and unifies with the brand voice and image. The expository nature of a brand helps a customer feel that he isn’t just getting the service or the solution he is looking for – but rather, that he is gaining amply, above and beyond the rubric of the ordinary.
One of the most important elements in the process of putting your business out there is to focus on a way to keep customers engaged with you. Marketing as a brand communication process is no longer one-way or linear – and customers are looking for that space to stay engaged not only as brand subscribers, but also as stakeholders. This is where content marketing puts you a step ahead of your competitors.
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