Social media brand management.

A simple content marketing definition is “any marketing that involves content.” Content can mean anything from videos to social media captions. That’s why it can be hard to fully define content marketing, as it covers such a broad range of assets.

So, what is content in terms of businesses?

Content marketers create text and writing, images, videos, and even games that are specifically designed to engage a particular target audience. These types of content are often called “digital assets,” differentiating them from traditional content such as mailers and brochures. It’s a form of inbound marketing: marketing that encourages the customer to come to you.

How does content marketing work?

1. A business defines a target audience.
2. Marketing specialists determine the segment of that audience they want to focus on.
3. Content creators work with marketers to create assets designed to engage that audience segment.

Digital content marketing is the creation and distribution of branded content that positions you as a trusted entity within your field. But why do so many businesses spend at least 25% of their marketing budgets on content?

• Online users spend 20% of their time engaging with content.
• Of those wanting to learn about brands, 80% appreciate content from that brand.
• As much as 70% of potential leads would rather learn about a brand through articles than advertising.

Your potential customers are already online. Investing in a content marketing strategy means you’re reaching out to meet them at their preferred engagement points.

Consumer and even B2B buying habits have changed in recent years. Post-pandemic, people are utilizing new channels to find the goods and services they want. Forbes recently reported that as well as search engines, YouTube and Facebook are also in the top five ways people search for products. It’s essential that you make yourself visible via these channels to leverage the shifting ways people engage with brands and suppliers.

Content marketing allows you to reach more people and bring more value to existing followers. However, most businesses need tangible benefits or motivation to invest in new ways of working. Thankfully, there are plenty of compelling reasons to include content as part of your overall marketing strategy.

When you have a carefully defined target audience, you can create content that resonates with them. Connecting with customers or clients on an emotional level is vital to ensure your brand sticks in their minds. That’s why so many businesses share feel-good stories, contests, and positive reviews. These carefully chosen sentiments become associated with the brand and generate more demand for similar content.

When your brand is in demand, you’re more likely to get leads. People who come for the content may stick around for the sales.

Your content marketing efforts can help encourage people to click through to product pages or sign up for mailing lists. Research shows that 76% of marketers believe that content marketing is vital for both lead and demand generation.

While it’s great to have a clearly defined audience, it’s also good to have ambitions to expand that audience. Scaling your business up is something NEWMEDIA excels at, and we can help you utilize content marketing to achieve your goals.

When you use SEO techniques and focus on quality, omnichannel content, you’ve got the chance to reach so many more potential leads. You may discover, using marketing analytics, that a major segment of your audience is active on Instagram. Publishing content here could be a way to reach those people and more.

Every time your engaging content is shared, it reaches people outside the scope of your target audience. You could even find yourself breaking effortlessly into adjacent markets.

When your clients, customers, and online followers trust your brand, they’re more likely to share your content. Shared content is an excellent way to generate leads because it’s essentially a peer-to-peer recommendation.

It’s like if one of your close friends recommended a restaurant. You’re more likely to try it than if you saw paid ads for the same restaurant online. You trust your friend, so you might book a table this weekend.

Creating a content marketing strategy requires understanding where you are now and where you want to be. You should consider what existing content you already have. For example, have you got blog posts that never get any hits? Expert marketing professionals may be able to edit those to gain more traction.

Start your strategy by performing a content audit, noting what’s generating leads and what isn’t.

Next, define your marketing goals. These should run side-by-side with your organization’s goals and may include growth, increased profits, or sales of a specific product.

Here at NEWMEDIA, we pride ourselves on working with businesses just like yours to level up content marketing strategies. Here are just a few of the services we offer that can optimize your reach and expand your potential target audience.

Did you know your business website is one of the most essential cornerstones of your content marketing strategy? Your site is like your digital shop front. It displays your products or services, your prices, but also your brand and values. Optimizing it is a way to increase engagement and draw more customers in.

Even businesses with a physical store or office need to consider creating or improving their business website. Statistics show that 91% of customers who visit a store do so because they researched it online. A great website encourages leads to engage with you wherever is convenient for them.

Effective content creation for websites requires considering what devices your target audience uses the most. Responsive websites work on all devices, including smartphones and tablets. The NEWMEDIA web design team works from a “Mobile and Content First” approach. We center on the core of your content and mobile use to ensure your customers enjoy the best online experiences.

Your online content marketing strategy isn’t complete without exploring the possibilities of email marketing. Even if you tried and had little success before, the NEWMEDIA team can show you how to achieve growth with emails.

We’ll help you craft ongoing marketing campaigns and grow mailing lister subscriber bases. Our content marketers know how to combine email with other solutions for a complete omnichannel strategy. We look at techniques such as automatic emails triggered by customer actions. And, for ongoing growth, we can provide email templates matched to your own branding.

Monitoring and measuring the success of your content marketing campaigns is the only way to understand the impact they have. Yet so many businesses release their content into the wild and simply hope for the best. NEWMEDIA tracks every aspect of your content marketing efforts. You’ll gain insights into how every aspect is performing, from clickthroughs on blogs to engagement via social media.

Why is this important? Without data to show which parts of your marketing campaigns are seeing the most success, you don’t know what to replicate and what to remove. When you gain access to those insights, you can make even higher-quality content to match and beat your competitors.