Content creation (Digital content that will engage your audience)

No single marketer can tell you which kind of content will get you the highest engagement with your audience. It is you that knows your client’s current and future needs, and it is through those that you will be able to come up with the stories and images needed to fill those needs.

Even so, creating content that matters to your audience is a challenge in itself, since it presupposes the constant process of defining your audience’s challenges and the creative manner in which to overcome those.

On a sidenote: Content marketing has nothing to do with native advertising and the various sponsored stories or advertorials we often find in digital publications or print which bring together the worse elements of two worlds, advertising and journalism.

Content marketing: lower advertising budget & SEO

A great number of companies have turned to content marketing due to the rapid growth of inbound marketing, the need to claim authority in their field on new markets or because of necessary reductions in advertising budget.

A characteristic example is of companies such as Rental History Records that consulted property owners and had an excellent reputation. Later on, when RHR released its services to the masses the company had to adjust its strategy.

It’s goal was the optimization of its positions on the Search Engine Result Pages, the reduction of its advertising expenses and its establishment as an authority in its new verticals.

With a series of optimized blog posts that offered informative content of high quality on all things related to the lease of real-estate RHR increased its organic traffic by 400%; pages per visit increased 2.5x, while the firm’s advertising expenses halved. As a result, over half the companies conversions are now acquired via organic traffic. (Source: econsultancy)

New verticals and protection from competition via content marketing

An example of a complete content marketing strategy that can truly provide insight on the weight it can have on a firms operations is that of Adobe.
Adobe-Marketing-Cloud
The graphics software development firm, understanding the threats of its ever-increasing competition decided to adjust its business model.

Diagnosing the gap in acquiring analytics and using consumer data Adobe proceeded with acquiring other companies and investing in R&D so it could develop its own analytics platform, the Marketing Cloud.

At that point the content creation and promotion campaign by Adobe begun. A team of experts started blogging, filled a number of threads in online fora and traveled to all data analytics conferences possible.

A few steps later, the company had already convinced all interested parties that it had taken over a leading position in its new field of activity. Today, the biggest stream of revenue for Adobe consists of revenue from its Marketing Cloud.

Entertain your audience with content marketing

oreo_marketing_campaign
Another approach by firms which are interested in earning share of their target audiences mind is the one Oreo followed.

The famous brand wanted to prove it had not lost touch with its age. Having over 100 years in history, Oreo decided to proceed with its Daily twist campaign.

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Publishing a new image every day, based on the brand’s cookie, related to some pop culture milestone, managed to relate with its audience again and to cause engagement under the brand’s umbrella.

The key factor of success was not the un-strategized content creation, but the content and the social channels of promotion constituted the platform on which the whole discussion was set, with Oreo in the midst of it.

The range of promotion that followed as a result of the campaign’s virality grew to a proportion that could not have been bought in any traditional medium.

Content creation and promotion in Greece

The execution of content marketing– and its cost– varies from company to company depending on their size, but the logic remains the same;

Your audience offers you a first chance when it visits your website, when it Likes your Facebook Page, follows your Twitter account or subscribes to your Newsletter.

In order to win that informal competition in the minds, the browsers and their News Feeds you have to convince your clients that you provide valuable content and solutions.

One can agree that continuous spam in social media with plain products and “goodmornings” has to rest. The >80% bounce rates of traffic from Facebook referrals is enough to convince anyone on the aforementioned statement.

And since we are on this issue, lets forget the “Like our Page and win” Facebook competitions. Competitions that fill your social networks with likes from an audience with no intention to buy, a very low engagement rate and various other complications on so many levels, that are beyond the scope of this blog post to elaborate.

Quality content to gain that Share of Mind

Years of low quality TV and print advertising have turned us as an audience to be resentful towards advertising. On retrospect, providing added value to your potential clients via quality content is the fail-proof way to succeed in earning the much desired share of mind.

No more lamps, fireplaces, coffees and other irrelevant images in our blogs and social timelines; educate your audience on their use, teach how it is supposed to be installed, elaborate on their value, hint for more information regarding your product or service, help your audience understand the personalities and the faces behind the product…

It only seems naturals that when one reaches the final stage in the conversion funnel he will choose the brand that has already offered him some kind of added Value, doesn’t it?