If you are looking for quick and poor results in digital marketing, aimed at a vague audience, practicing a scorched earth policy, content marketing is not the best path for you. Content marketing is quality marketing, based on knowledge and respectful communication, designed to solve customer problems and establish long-term relationships.
What is content marketing?
What it is: It is a knowledge-based marketing technique that uses high-value content for the prospect, in order to attract a well-defined audience at an advanced stage of the decision-making process, in order to convert it into business leads . Its premises are:
A potential client has a problem that he wants to solve
We know how to solve it competently
By demonstrating our knowledge we can convince you that we are the solution you are looking for.
What it uses: Its working elements are blogs, email , social networks, videos, podcasts, documents, guides, and success stories that are used to offer value to the recipients of that content and demonstrate the value of the brand as a potential business partner. The content is always designed based on the interest of the recipient (not the sender) and must be of high value and excellent quality.
Why it is different: It is different from crude marketing techniques, which france business email list use intrusion and try to convince through saturation. It is one of the most sophisticated techniques and the one that best produces stable, long-term business relationships, while improving brand image, given that its nature is the creation of reputation based on knowledge. Its results are obtained in the medium and long term, and it is more demanding for those who develop it.
Imagine comparing a company that puts advertising leaflets on car windshield wipers to another that gives you a book or document detailing how you can use the technologies they employ, practical case studies of their services and the benefits to be derived from them, and that is also willing to answer your questions. What would you think of each of these companies? Which one would you prefer to work with?
In content marketing, the traditional sales pitch is not used , which focuses on our company, our promotions, our services. Instead, the content revolves around the recipient's interest and is only laterally related to our offer. It is estimated that the optimal proportion of content to offer should be 80:20, which brings echoes of the Pareto Principle .
Who is it aimed at: Content marketing is particularly effective in the B2B ( business to business ) field, where the processes of purchasing goods and services need to be sufficiently informed; decision-making processes are long and involve several people with different requirements; and purchasing decision-makers are more demanding with regard to results. The target audience for this type of marketing is mostly professional, educated and carefully analyses their purchasing decisions; and it is also successfully used in the B2C ( business to consumer ) field when it comes to specific or specialised market niches, in which the target audience can also be precisely characterised.
Why it matters: If your business’s offering is specific and targeted at an audience you can define clearly enough, conventional, mass digital marketing (search engine or social media ads) is an inadequate tool for several reasons: 1) despite all the information that search engines and social media have about users, a large part of the traffic generated by these ads is junk traffic, bots or people with little or no interest in your offer; 2) unlike ads, which appear to interfere with normal user activity, content marketing attracts interested users through organic search engine results or organic social media shares; 3) quality content provides better search engine ratings and therefore better positioning, and more organic traffic, an investment that pays off permanently, unlike ads.
Some examples
Leroy Merlin: Do it yourself is a section of its website dedicated to enabling people interested in carrying out their own maintenance tasks to train and inform themselves on how to carry them out in the best possible way. Products related to the task in question appear linked to the content, so that the distance between advertising and information is as short as possible. Its content strategy is also supported by its own YouTube channel where tutorials on how to do many of these tasks can be seen. Leroy Merlin has been providing brochures in its physical stores for years to inform the public about how to carry out maintenance tasks and (before the pandemic) held free courses, taught by its employees, during the weekends.
