One rainy evening in Bangalore, I was on a call with the Co-Founder of TWI, Divyank. While we spoke about the various dosas, gardens, bookstores and cafes that Bangalore had to offer, Divyank had a trip down memory lane to the time when he lived in the city. He pointed out something interesting while we discussed the variety of books that Sapna Book House or Blossoms Book Store had.
That conversation even sparked thoughts about a strong Content Marketing Strategy, much like how diverse stories connect with different people.
I could relate much better with him after we spoke about the things we shared in common: Bangalore and reading! I felt more comfortable talking about the places and experiences I adore about the city. That’s when I understood this; relatability’s comfort level is reciprocal. You communicate better then.
Like how Sapna book house can cater to the needs and fancies of a variety of people, like an 18-year-old college student looking for novels or a 25-year-old person looking for self-help books or even a 60-year-old on the lookout for spiritual books, the needs of different companies and startups are different. Their approach to the audience is much different than other companies, and so is their strategy. Different stories appeal to different people, and Sapna book house has books for everyone’s liking. It is where the writers get a chance to share their stories, a story that sells to its audience.
How your stories and marketing strategies go hand in hand
Just like the writers, each company has a story to tell. Most of us remember our grandmothers telling us stories before bed. Those are the memories that stick with us. Each company communicates its tale about their journey and why we should choose them. These stories stick with the audience and convince them to become loyal, which is why using stories in our marketing strategies is key. This underlines the importance of storytelling in marketing.
You must create a strategy before you can benefit from your marketing plan. And there are different ways to approach strategy. Some believe you must evaluate the present, prepare for change, and make successful plans. Others think it’s impossible to foretell the future; who would have believed the global epidemic would occur in 2020? They, therefore, prefer to let their strategy grow organically. In essence, a well-defined Content Marketing Strategy forms the backbone of this process.
Concentrating on the long term can be difficult when:
- Certain businesses are too short-term oriented from quarter to quarter. Other businesses consider a strategy to be a barrier.
- Some businesses, particularly the smaller ones, have the mindset that they must keep going and don’t have time for planning.
- Companies conflate strategy with objectives and goals. That is not a tactic. Does your business comprehend the purpose of your marketing plan and how it benefits you? Are your staff aware of your strategies to attract new clients and persuade them to work with you?
- Your strategy should highlight the target audience you are trying to reach, the value your goods and services offer, and why you are a better option than your rivals.
One of the most crucial strategic efforts for firms is content marketing.
Since consumers like being informed before purchasing, many people use the internet for information about companies and products. You can contact your audience through the channels they are already using by utilising various digital marketing methods to promote your company and products online. Any marketing tactic that uses an electronic gadget, whether or not it’s connected to the internet, is referred to as digital marketing. Even radio and television commercials are digital marketing tactics; however, the field has developed, and new approaches may be even more successful.
If you want to buy a car, you would read about it, compare it to other cars, read reviews, pros and cons, financial terms, and even pricing for different states. To add, you won’t mind a couple of posts/articles on negotiating when buying a car, or a list of all the free accessories you must get from the dealer.
Why content marketing?
This is the power of content marketing for a digital business. It aids the audience in their user journey and in making the final decision.
Content marketing is crucial to remaining competitive and relevant in your sector. You lose many chances to connect with your target audience if your company has no online or digital presence.
One of the many ways of digital marketing is through content marketing. Why is content marketing a crucial component of marketing? Content marketing is crucial since it answers your audience’s inquiries and aids in developing relationships, trust, improved conversions, and lead generation. Customers now demand constant, high-quality content from their favourite companies.
Blog entries, how-to videos, and other educational resources are examples of informative, valuable content referred to as content marketing. You can interact with your audience and respond to their queries using this kind of marketing. Additionally, it can aid in lead generation and sales closure.
The target audience should be kept in mind when publishing content regularly. In an ideal world, your brand would publish trustworthy, high-quality content to establish itself as a respected voice in the market. You want to be the go-to source for information on the newest market trends among your audience.
Understanding Your Ideal Customer Profile
You would also need to understand your ICP. An ideal customer profile (ICP) is the company that would benefit the most from your product or service. Companies that fit your ICP are more likely to buy and continue to use your product, making them critical for business growth. An ideal customer profile will tell you exactly who you need to target and why by assisting you in identifying important characteristics that your most profitable buyers share (or will share). Your ICP should always be backed up by accurate data and company firmographics, such as technographic data, funding or IPO status, company size, revenue, industry, and location.
That is where the market research comes in. We at The Wise Idiot believe that it is essential to understand the market potential and the business model is like to build our stories for content marketing.
The next step is knowing your audience. It appears simple. However, many writers begin writing before they know their intended audience. It would be great to think about these things before writing your essay, such as ‘Who is my target ICP?’ ‘Will my secondary ICP have an impact on my main audience?’ Alternatively, how could people find my blog online? Understanding your audience is essential if you want to know what they will be searching for online. Then you can use it to incorporate particular keywords into your article’s structure and improve its SEO, but what is SEO?
In the world of content marketing simply refers to making changes to your website to make it more visible when users search for goods or services associated with your company on Google, Bing, and other search engines. The visibility is increased when we provide backlinks to a few things we refer to in our blogs and articles. Backlinks are essentially votes cast by other websites. Each of these votes conveys to search engines the message, “This content is valuable, credible, and useful.” As a result, the greater the number of these “votes” you have, the higher your site will rank in Google and other search engines. A single high-quality backlink can outperform 1,000 low-quality backlinks, and this is a prime example of how SEO helps content marketing.
For instance, if your ICP are millennials seeking to launch a business, you probably don’t need to advise them on how to begin using social media because most of them already know how to do so. However, you might want to advise them on changing their social media strategy (for instance, from a possible casual, personal strategy to a more business-savvy, networking-focused strategy with the right vision, call to action and goal-oriented strategy content-driven marketing). You can produce material about the subjects your audience needs and wants with the help of that kind of tweak.
After understanding the audience’s needs, we deem it essential to share the strategy with our clients and ensure that we see eye to eye. Our content marketing strategy’s “why” is its fundamental component. Who we are addressing, why we are developing content, and how we will help them better than anybody else. Typically, businesses employ content marketing to grow their audience and to accomplish at least one of the following lucrative outcomes: higher sales, organic growth, trust, education, entertainment, engagement and better clients.
The development, dissemination, and control of relevant, usable material, on the other hand, are covered in greater detail by content strategy. Because it assists companies in managing all of their material, a content strategy frequently extends beyond the purview of a content marketing strategy.
We begin working on a content brief when we start putting the strategy and your tale into words. Your article is made alive by a variety of additional factors. Real-world examples, quotes, statistics and survey results, significant images, bullet points, etc., are a few. Returning to the Bangalore story, if you want to eat a Mysore Masala dosa, you must tell everyone how filling it is, focusing not on Mysore but the potato filling. Similar to that is content strategy. Understanding what to include in your material. You then wrap it up and serve it with two chutneys on the side along with that filter coffee after adding all the keywords, structure, and CTAs. These components help your SEO and provide the blog with a more wholesome and comprehensive feel, just like the bite of the dosa with the stuffing and the chutneys. Additionally, they break up the monotony of a long, rambling text and focus readers’ attention on particular sections of the piece.
The two burger buns are the introduction and finish, holding the whole thing together. Burger buns remind me, you must go to Bangalore and try the best Burger in Bangalore at Truffles! Just like the burger pieces all the different flavours together and holds them in place for you to take a good bite from it, we write an introduction that informs your ICP about the subject, support it with data or facts, and summarises the entire piece so that your ICP can decide whether or not the content is helpful to them. In the final paragraph, we write a concise summary of the article’s main points. We do it this way, but there are hundred other ways to do it, too; you can learn more about these and customise them to your needs on a strategy call with us.
We then garnish it with SEO keywords; the more visible your pages are in search results, the more likely you’ll get noticed and draw new and returning clients to your company. Your website’s SEO keywords are the words and phrases that enable people to reach your website through search engines. With SEO-friendly keywords that connect searchers to your site, a well-optimised website for search engines “speaks the same language” as its potential visitor base.
We will share the brief with you and see if you’d like edits or anything to be added to the article. We incorporate the edits and schedule to publish the content on the platforms you would like to post.
How do we ensure that your content is doing well?
We track the clicks, reads and reach and develop a strategy for how your content can fare better. We make use of UTMs to track the effectiveness of marketing. The abbreviation “UTM” stands for “Urchin tracking module.” UTM codes are text strings that can be added to links to provide Google Analytics (and other analytics tools) with additional information about each link. That way, we can track and revise our strategies if there is a need to!
It’s time to rinse and repeat when we have optimised your existing blogs, and things are going well. A never-ending cycle of inquiry, creativity, and optimisation characterises blogging.
For your brand, content marketing works similarly to compound interest. Your field will constantly reward you for each piece of content for years if you make this long-term commitment. With a strong enthusiasm for content marketing, content creation, content distribution, and SEO content for brands throughout the Fintech, Finance, and SaaS industries, we at The Wise Idiot are a dedicated team of marketers on the path to improving excellent things.
After experimenting with various digital marketing modalities, we discovered our competence in long-form content, design, content development, and many more interesting ways to do CM. As a result, we are your ideal partners for business success. With each brand we encountered, we realised that traditional and paid marketing could be too expensive for startups and growing companies. However, content marketing has helped many marketers raise brand recognition and establish credibility and trust. It was clear that content marketing, unlike traditional advertising, continues to provide outcomes over time. Simply your everyday discussions, with love or hate, passion or perfection, are content marketing. It can be both long and short. Sometimes like your favourite Brahmin cafe filter coffee, and other times like Starbucks, pricey, premium, but not superior to filter coffee- still carrying the same warmth and love!
Let us discuss the filter coffee sometime, and we would love to help you get growth for your business. Contact us today, and we shall assist you with your content marketing journey!
