According to a recent study, the internet has become an indispensable part of everyday life, with the average user spending almost seven hours a day. There’s no better medium to reach out to people than through the online channels they frequent.
Content marketing refers to the strategic creation and distribution of online material. This approach can help your brand reach heights of reach and relevance you never thought possible when done correctly.
Here are four ways content marketing can boost brand awareness:
1. Solidify your brand identity
Your brand identity is a summary of what your brand is about—the people it aims to connect with and the goals it intends to achieve. Similarly, your identity also contains the very element that will remain as you build awareness among your market. From the colors and shapes you use to the hashtags and slogans that people will associate with your product, these are all magnified in your content marketing efforts.
The importance of a brand identity also explains why some people enlist the services of a brand consultant to craft a unique and impactful image for their organization. Professional branding consultants also guide all online content they publish on their websites and social media channels. Using the same colors or the same hashtags for your post consistently makes the people associate those particular elements with your company and your brand identity.
2. Generate trust with the audience
One of the most considerable benefits for companies engaging with the public through online channels is the opportunity to build trust. Despite brands carefully crafting an identity to work with, the entire social media environment remains associated with raw interactions and unfiltered responses.
By continuing to create online materials that deliver a consistent message, you can draw the attention of your audience. Over time, this builds trust between your brand and your market. Eventually, it translates to an influence over their purchasing decision. Furthermore, the customers’ testimony about your products and services helps increase brand exposure, connecting you to their friends and family. This lead generation cycle extends your reach and creates new opportunities to translate online marketing content into actionable sales decisions.
However, be warned that the raw, unfiltered interactions in social media could get ugly for your brand if not handled well. Once you do something on the internet, it never really goes away. A bad interaction with a client or a post not in line with your branding identity could always create a backlash against you.
3. Create opportunities for organic growth
The internet has changed how people do business. A study revealed that almost all consumers (97%) use search engines to conduct local searches for the goods and services they need. Additionally, about four out of every five product searches are done before making a purchasing decision.
Building your website to be search engine optimized increases your chances of coming up in people’s searches. Say you offer customized cakes for a particular city or state. Building your website to contain SEO articles that use relevant keywords would eventually make you an authority on the subject. The next time someone searches for customized cakes in a particular location, your website would be among the first results.
The same applies to social media platforms. Since businesses are creating their pages and websites like Facebook and Instagram now have a marketplace and business account features, consumers are starting to search for their needs on these platforms. The use of relevant hashtags makes your post easy to find.
You can also tap influencers. These are social media personalities recognized in their niches and have their following. Depending on your budget, you can team up with celebrities or start with smaller micro-influencer marketing strategies.
4. Create informed decisions from actionable data
By investing in a solid content marketing strategy, you are entering a data-driven environment. There are a lot of data analytics tools to help you stay on top of your online campaigns. For websites, there are paid analytical tools that can help you. Web analytics allow you to evaluate the number of visitors you have or the clicks for every link on your website. There is a particular metric called pay-per-click (PPC), which can be used by sales and marketing teams to estimate marketing expenses and gauge investment return prospects.
A great example is Google Analytics, which directly assesses your website’s performance based on different factors, including SERPs.
The same technology is becoming available, with social media analytics helping small businesses and major brands alike. Brand consultants and social media managers can see how many people are reached by a particular social media post and the number of comments and reactions.
Content marketing, like other marketing strategies, is a continuous process. By staying on top of every development, you can keep tweaking and adjusting your efforts. With every iteration, you respond more accurately depending on the real-time attitude of your target audience. You cater to your audience’s needs and promote brand awareness by endorsing yourself as a responsive brand. You can then create a more efficient system for generating leads and influencing buying decisions.
Final Word
Content marketing is an accessible method for businesses to connect with their target market and establish brand awareness. By investing in online campaigns and social media efforts, you can set up your brand to interact with your potential customers on platforms where they are primarily present.
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by Luke Craig