Content Marketing Explanation: 10 Rules for Beginners
Content marketing is an integral part of successful search engine optimization. So that you can attract more visitors to your website without prior knowledge, I will show you the most important rules.
Successful content marketing strategies form the basis for enabling automatic customer and lead acquisition. You will have already noticed that more and more companies are offering infographics, video posts, blog articles, or studies to reach the target group.
Even this website text of mine is a magnet that attracted you. I share my knowledge for free and I hope that after reading this you will not only understand how successful content marketing works but also contact me if you have any questions or are interested in a professional implementation.
Content Marketing Introduction: Easily explained for beginners
Content marketing enables the advertiser to place their brand positively and get attention from the target group. However, so that you do not take any unnecessary stumbling blocks with you or invest time and money in vain, you should observe the following rules:
- Define clear goals
- Don’t lose sight of your target group
- Customer must be first priority
- Calculate the time and costs
- Work across departments
- Analyze your achievements
- Distribute the content in a targeted manner
- Use inbound links properly
- The content audit
- Rely on a professional implementation
The most important rules for a successful content marketing and SEO strategy
Define clear goals
Set clear goals before starting a content marketing campaign. Don’t start from 0 to 100 to see what comes out. Define short-term and long-term goals. A short-term goal, for example, is more reach and greater awareness of the website and brand. A long-term goal is automatic customer acquisition and lead generation through content marketing. Depending on how you have set your goals, the strategy must be structured. In any case, structured work also leads to better success in marketing.
Define your target group correctly.
Don’t lose sight of your target group
When it comes to content marketing, always think of your target audience first. Don’t lose sight of them, because the content should ultimately convince your customers. Therefore, carry out a target group analysis to find out what your customers are interested in. Look at the search queries on Google or speak directly to your buyers and ask questions. You can only market your product successfully if you know what your target group needs. And only then can you formulate the right approach and develop the right content.
Customer must be first priority
You will not convince prospects if you offer content without added value. You may even worsen your image and end up losing visitors. Therefore, think about exciting content and loosen it up a bit. With pictures, your readers can briefly internalize the information and then have enough attention to absorb the further information. Due to the extensive image databases, you can quickly find and integrate a suitable photo. For example, I always suggest motifs to my customers on request so as not to burden the eye with long sections of text.
If you want to advertise a camera, you could also shoot a video with it and present the different functions. You can create an FAQ and explain questions about the camera. Stimulate the customer’s imagination and deliver appealing material that the prospect only has to consume to understand the added value.
Calculate the time and costs
The time and costs of a content marketing strategy are underestimated, especially at the beginning. Many of my daily requests arise from these two factors.
My clients finally want to be perceived more professionally and exploit their full potential, but they don’t have the experience or the necessary time for the implementation. For an employee who deals solely with content marketing, the budget is often not sufficient.
And if the added value is lost and the content is not convincing, you can save yourself the entire effort immediately. That’s why I always discuss with my customers exactly what content makes sense. Surveys, infographics, studies, video posts, and blog articles can be excellent advertising media, but they also have to fit the target group and be prepared in an appealing way.
Work across departments
Even if you hire me as an online marketer for strategy development and content creation, communication must not be interrupted. It is important to develop a common editorial plan, which topics need to be addressed and when which article will appear. If a department receives more and more specific customer inquiries or requests, you can take them up and develop suitable website content from them. Even with planned campaigns, offers or events, it makes sense to take these into account in the plan.
Analyze your achievements
When the first campaign has gone online, you should evaluate how it was received by the target group. You analyze directly whether the measure has had a positive impact on your reach or your deals. Of course, a campaign doesn’t change the world, but my customers keep telling me that after just 2 weeks a clear effect was noticeable. Therefore, observe the success and draw conclusions to constantly improve the content marketing strategy.
Distribute the content in a targeted manner
Even the best content in the world is useless if nobody can find and see it. Therefore, you should use social media in a targeted manner to spread your content. Use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Xing, Linkedin or newsletters to reach your target group and spread the magnet widely.
Use inbound content marketing properly
The digital term for this art of first impressions is inbound marketing.
This means nothing other than that customers like to actively search for products in the gigantic ocean of the digital market and you have to position yourself in such a way that you can be found optimally.
This is where emotions come into play because in the end, it’s all a matter of feeling. Lionel Richie (pictured above) knows this all too well.
Content marketing is ideal for this. Because with inbound marketing, you can build a real dramaturgy around your product, so that your target group gets the feeling that they have found the product on their own.
A huge advantage, because: It is well known that people trust nobody more than themselves.
This is extremely important, especially in the B2B area, because here products and services are often complex and individually tailored to the customer. This is particularly true for digitally based products.
Basically, this process of building trust consists of three parts
- positioning of the brand
- customer acquisition
- customer retention
Sounds good, but it is also a huge task. So it’s best to start with what you have. This is the first step in your content strategy.
The technical term for this is a content audit.
The Content Marketing Audit
During a content audit, your existing content will be put through its paces. To do this, first determine where you want to go in the future. This is the only way you can compare your plan with the status quo and draw the right conclusions.
So first of all:
- Defining goals and target groups
- Research keywords & topics
This process alone takes time but allows you to determine exactly what type of content is currently missing and where content gaps exist.
This means nothing more than finding topics that your target group is looking for, but that you do not (yet) cover with content.
Existing content can often be optimized with little effort so that the overall performance of your site improves.
Some headings get new text magic through a different choice of words. Or a complicated passage suddenly becomes easy to understand through a list display.
But before you get started, initial data analysis with appropriate tools such as Screaming Frog, Sistrix, or ahrefs is recommended. Roughly speaking, your content can be examined for the following central parameters:
- Keywords – Users tend to use multiple keywords to find what they are looking for. Recently, with improved speech recognition, whole questions like “How healthy is coffee really?” are popular.
Through keyword research and analysis, you can find out what people are actually looking for in relation to your product. You can then incorporate these findings into your existing content.
- Traffic – Using tools like Google Analytics, it’s easy to find out which pages on your website are being visited the most (and which are the least). The content is of course only one aspect. But if the page that took a lot of sweat and tears to create is frequently visited, then at least you know that you’re on the right track.
- Duplicate Content – The nightmare for every search engine! Anyone who has repetitive content on their website will either no longer appear in search engines such as Google or your pages will compete with each other (there is a distinctive word “keyword cannibalism” for this). This is particularly common on large websites. The magic word here is content consolidation.
Rely on a professional implementation
Content marketing and SEO is time-consuming and only brings benefits if the right choice of topic and preparation of the content is made. If you want to achieve more website views and turn visitors into customers, professional implementation is required. I am happy to offer you my experience and use my profitable communication strategies for your company.