How Can You Use Content Marketing To Boost Your Brand?
Content marketing is a highly effective way to strengthen the brand. In today’s digital ecosystems, brands or businesses must benefit from widespread marketing strategies such as content marketing in the competitive and rapidly changing conditions of the market.
The increasing habits of people shopping from mobile devices have made it necessary for brands to be at the top of search engines. In order to be at the top of popular search engines such as Google and boost your brand, you should implement content marketing strategies and projects.
Many large and international brands, despite their high number of existing customers, benefit from content marketing strategies in order to maintain their power in competitive market conditions.
The reason why large companies such as BMW, Apple, and coca cola still invest in content marketing and continue blog projects is based on this motivation.
What Is Content Marketing And How Does It Work?
Content marketing can be defined in its simplest form as a strategy for companies or businesses to benefit from the interactions of content in order to promote their products or services in online media.
Content marketing is almost a mandatory marketing strategy not only for SMEs but also for large-scale businesses.
Content marketing is basically a process that aims to promote the brand in content such as text, video or audio.
For example, when someone who is thinking of buying a piece of clothing types the features of the clothing they want in a search engine, the clothing manufacturers or brands that are at the top of the results are usually those who devote energy and resources to content marketing strategies.
As mobile shopping habits are increasing all over the world in 2024, increasing visibility on online websites or social media platforms is possible with content marketing projects of brands.
Although it used to be a marketing strategy that only worked through blogs, today even video content and podcast recordings can be considered as content marketing material.
How Can You Develop A Content Marketing Strategy?
We said that when we remove the words “valid” and “valuable” from the definition of content marketing, the definition that describes traditional promotion emerges.
So, what are the specific differences between the two types of communication, and what are the harms or benefits they will provide to businesses? To find answers to these questions, we need to take a closer look at both types of communication.
When we say “traditional promotion”, we need to understand; brand and business messages given to us through TV, radio, magazine ads, posters, and billboards.
Traditional promotion tools are messages that are imposed on you even if you do not want them or demand them; messages that you are exposed to even if they do not match your interests.
Instead of teaching you something or informing you about something, they try to create an instant purchase motivation. These messages that catch our eye while zapping on TV or passing by in the car only aim to attract our attention for a short time.
It distracts the attention of customers in various ways and draws attention to itself. It aims to hold attention only for a short time. Instead of offering something of value, it disturbs. It can be quite costly, especially if the campaigns are not successful.
Most of the time, the content marketing examples we are exposed to are a result of our behaviors and interests, and they attract attention because they provide us with relevant and valuable information.
This is the biggest difference between traditional advertising, which draws attention without our consent and provides no value, and content marketing.
What Types Of Content Are Most Effective For Brand Building?
It adds value to customers and increases loyalty to the brand. It informs customers through blogs and videos. Thanks to this information process, it also motivates future purchases.
It is possible to attract the attention of your potential customers and existing customers just by writing on your blog. It allows you to attract the attention of different segments and interact with different segments thanks to multimedia formats. It makes it possible for your content to go viral and spread on its own.
All brands and businesses that want to be successful in the field of content marketing must have a specific content marketing strategy.
Before explaining what content marketing strategy is, it should be noted that content marketing strategy is not the same as content strategy. Robert Rose, in his post “How Content Strategy and Marketing Are Separate But Connected”, has separated the two concepts as follows:
Content marketing strategy: It is the broader story that a business wants to tell, drawn, and developed by content marketers. Content marketers connect with customers through such strategies and use the content they produce to achieve profitable customer action.
Content strategy: Unlike content marketing strategy, content strategy is a strategy that provides a deeper look at the processes of “usable and useful content production, announcement, and management”.
As Scott Abel, known as Content Cowboy, puts it, content strategy helps you manage content as a business value.
How Can You Use Storytelling In Content Marketing?
There are 5 components that a content marketing strategy should have:
Your “feasibility proposal” that will bring innovation to content marketing: This is the component where you convey your reasons for producing content and your vision of success (including risks).
Sharing your reasons and vision of success will ensure that your strategy receives administrative support, and will allow you to make mistakes; thus, it will help you determine the best strategy for your business.
Content marketing business plan: This component, which includes the goals you create for your content program; includes the specific value you aim to deliver through your content and your detailed business model.
Your content marketing plan; should also clearly state the challenges and opportunities you may encounter while implementing your plan.
Your customers’ characteristics and your content map: This is where you define the specific audience you will produce your content for, determine the needs of the said audience, and what the content connection circle to be established with this audience will look like.
Your brand’s story: Storytelling is very important. This is the component where you determine what ideas and messages you aim to convey, how these messages will change according to the competition, and how you predict the landscape will change when you share these messages with your target audience.
Your channel plan: This is the component that covers the platforms you will use to tell your story. This is the element where you determine what your criteria, process, and goals are for each channel and how you will use all of these channels as a whole to create a unified brand communication.
What Are The Best Practices For SEO In Content Marketing?
A content plan (brief) or content calendar refers to a written plan that facilitates the production, planning, and sharing of your content. By creating a content plan, you can more easily reach the content marketing strategy you are targeting for your brand.
Sharing the content plan with all graphic designers, content editors and marketing staff responsible for the creation and control of the content allows for easier planning, production, and sharing of the content to be shared.
For the content plan to be created healthily, all responsible staff can come together at regular intervals, go over the sharing plan, perform final checks, and exchange ideas.
The key elements that must be included in your calendar can be expressed as follows:
* The category, title of your content, the platform where the content will be shared, analyses of the keywords to be used, and hashtags if any.
* The date you aim to finish editing your content.
* The time and date your content will be published.
* Things to consider before sharing content.
* The people the content you will produce targets.
* The success metrics by which your content will be measured.
How Can You Distribute Content Effectively?
Before you start developing an effective content marketing strategy specific to your brand, you should determine your brand’s general goals, marketing goals, target audiences you want to reach, and the needs of your current customers.
By integrating how your brand came to life and your goals into the content you will produce, you can easily convey your brand story and areas where your brand stands out from its competitors.
Spotify’s Wrapped sharing, which we eagerly await every December and brings together all the songs we listen to throughout the year in a fun and interactive way, can be seen as one of the best examples of content marketing.
Similarly, all of Netflix’s different social media accounts around the world shape their content in a way that is compatible with the culture of the country they are in.
With all these content studies, both brands satisfy their current customers and convey the values of their brands to potential customers using the power of content marketing.
What Are Some Case Studies Of Successful Content Marketing Campaigns?
When it comes to brand content creation, Coca-Cola has always been known as one of the leading names in the race. In recent years, the brand has managed to make a name for itself in the content marketing race with its online magazine Coca-Cola Journey.
Some specific points that stand out in Coca–Cola Journey’s successful content marketing approach: The site collects and displays articles, videos, music, and historical fun information in one place.
The content allows the user to choose what interests them and how they want to consume this content that suits their interests (by title, genre, or brand).
Popular and recommended content is compiled for you, making it much easier to find this content. User-generated content also appears in news sources. In this way, two-way communication is established between the brand and its fans.
How Can You Measure The ROI Of Content Marketing?
After sharing your content, evaluating the results will provide great support for you to create more powerful and effective content in the future. You should use the following metrics to measure the success of your content:
To determine your user behavior, the page views your website receives, the number of users visiting your page, the average time users spend on your page, the number of users visiting your site for the first time, the number of users visiting your site again, the bounce rate, the information from which channel users reach your site, the total number of pages browsed by users who reach your site (pages per session).
To measure user interaction, the comments, likes, and shares made by users on your content on social media platforms or content management systems.
The organic traffic your website receives, the ranking of the keywords of your content on the search engine results page.
The conversion, click, sale, ROI, and ROAS rates that your content brings to your company.
You can measure the success rates of your content using tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Semrush.
The Search Console tool belongs to Google and is free. However, Ahrefs and Semrush tools are paid. You can analyze your site for a short time by using their trial versions.
What Are The Challenges In Content Marketing?
We should also mention some of the challenges of content marketing for businesses or brands. The most popular of these is intense competition.
It has become much easier for everyone to develop content marketing strategies within the digitized ecosystem. This causes intense competition in the market.
Another popular challenge is ROI. In short, this measurement mechanism, which means the return on investment, is difficult to measure concretely in content marketing processes.
Increasing click-through rates and building an audience in content marketing strategies can take a lot of effort and time. In addition, it is necessary to master basic SEO rules and have sufficient equipment to ensure SEO compliance. This can be remembered as one of the challenging elements.
What Are The Future Trends In Content Marketing?
As in every field, the most decisive trend of the future for content marketing will undoubtedly be artificial intelligence solutions.
Even today, many content marketing strategies are managed by artificial intelligence tools. However, if we are talking about the future, I should also remind you that content will change the form.
Until recently, people spent less time on blogs and spent most of their online time on video content. This shows that content development strategies should focus not only on text but also on video content shortly. We can see the clear examples on today’s Instagram.
See you in the next post,
Anil UZUN