What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a specific marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing relevant and consistent content throughout a business’ digital properties to attract a new audience and maintain an existing one. Whereas in traditional marketing content may play a role as part of a sales pitch, content plays the primary role in this type of marketing and there may not be a sales pitch at all. This content may include anything from an article you share on your Facebook page to a blog post written by one of your employees.
What are the Benefits of Content Marketing?
Content marketing has proven to be more beneficial to businesses than traditional marketing. Since a sales pitch often takes a back seat to building a collection of relevant or entertaining content, content marketing can take a brand much further into a customer’s journey than a traditional ad. Content marketing focuses primarily on digital properties such as social media or websites, and this can make a huge impact; a 2013 study reported 81 percent of shoppers research businesses, products and services online before ever making a transaction.
Some benefits of content marketing are:
- Builds customer trust.
- Boosts brand recognition.
- Attracts new audience.
How can you get started?
Before you run out and begin sharing content on your digital properties, you should have an agreed upon brand or image you want for your practice. Do you want to be recognized as the premium practice in the community? How about being the kid-friendly practice in town? Whatever brand you want to portray, all of your marketing should contribute to that, including content.
Here are some tips for getting started with content marketing:
- Know your brand.
- Share and/or create content with your brand in mind.
- Monitor your content to see which pieces are performing best (i.e., receiving the most engagement or attracting new audiences).
- Repurpose your best performing content on your other digital properties.