No matter what kind of digital marketing you engage in, you are going to need great content. Great content doesn’t involve plugging your products endlessly. Instead, it offers real value to people – and most importantly, it serves a purpose. This is where content marketing principles come into play.

Main principles of content marketing

When you have great content, your customers will look forward to receiving it – whether that’s via a new video uploaded to your website, a funny email, or an informative blog post. They will want to spend time with it and share it with their friends. This positive sentiment, in turn, can be great for your bottom line, as it usually leads to better customers who are loyal to your brand.

So it makes sense to ensure that content marketing is at the heart of all your marketing tactics.

We start with the main principles of content marketing – a definition of content marketing. Content marketing is the creation and sharing of content in different formats such as videos, blogs, and social media posts, to build interest in a product or service.

It is becoming increasingly important for marketers to understand content marketing and to know how to use it effectively. The rise of ad blockers, algorithms, private social, and many other factors is increasingly limiting our ability to reach consumers. However, content marketing cuts through these barriers, because it is centred on creating written and visual assets that have a genuine and intrinsic value to people that are genuinely interested in your product and services.

Purpose of content marketing

The purpose of content marketing is to drive both inbound customer engagement and organic searches (using search engine optimization, or SEO) from a defined audience, which can then be nurtured to convert into valuable customers. Content is strategically created or curated, and distributed in key locations across the internet to attract customers to your website.

What is Inbound marketing?

But what exactly is inbound marketing? Well, it’s a strategy where brands use content marketing to attract customers. The key driver of inbound marketing is consumer intent as potential customers actively seek out the brand’s content. As a result, consumers are more engaged and open to taking action than if the brand were to communicate with them when they are not actively interested.

What is Outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, is when the brand pushes its messages out to as many people as it can within a target audience. The brand believes that this audience is a good match for the product or service being advertised. Of course, consumers might not be interested in the product at that particular time! So outbound advertising is generally less effective than inbound marketing at driving action.

What is a content marketing strategy?

Content marketing drives valuable search traffic and social engagement – and that is the main principle of content marketing. These in turn can increase the number of valuable actions taken by your audience.

To create a successful content marketing campaign, you first need a strategy This sets out the objectives and scope of your project. It keeps everything on track while providing a roadmap outlining the different aspects of your campaign.

Applying sales funnel techniques

You can use the conversion funnel as a guide when planning your content marketing strategy. This enables you to map your content to key decision points in the consumer journey and address their needs. The conversion funnel helps you understand the consumer journey by tracking the different steps a typical consumer would complete on the way to taking a valuable action, such as a purchase, sign-up, or contact request. Content marketers should use funnel insights and knowledge to drive more valuable customer engagement.

In order to apply funnel techniques to your content strategy you should:

• Begin with awareness content for the top of the funnel to get the word out there about your product or service.
• Create consideration content for the middle parts of the funnel, when people are assessing options in the market.
• Produce high-impact conversion content for the bottom of the funnel. This drives people to take action.
• Create retention content for past purchasers to turn them into repeat purchasers, or even brand advocates.
• It might also be worth creating re-engagement content for people who’ve dropped out at different stages of the consumer journey to entice them back.

Where appropriate, marketers can use what is known as hero content as part of the funnel. This is high-value content that aims to drive brand awareness. Although it is created less frequently, it can cause a brand’s message to go viral! Examples of hero content include research studies, high-quality infographics, e-books, and highly unique and desirable audio/video (AV) content such as exclusive videos or podcasts.

Content Marketing is a critical aspect of digital marketing especially when it comes to the strategizing of content which includes, buyer personas, objectives and so on. You can take a content marketing course to be fully equipped for the world of content marketing.