There is a quote that goes “Content is fire, social media is gasoline”. To be able to compete in the digital era, it is necessary to use social media for marketing needs. Many big brands and companies are starting to use content to always connect with their audience and consumers. For example, the e-commerce giant in Indonesia, Tokopedia, uses content marketing to promote various campaigns and promotions that they have. With a mature campaign and interesting content, they are able to continue to exist on social media, and of course, increase awareness in the audience.
Of course, what Tokopedia does requires a lot of money, but you can also take advantage of content marketing to grow your business.
5 important elements in content marketing
clear audience
The success of a content marketing campaign lies in whether or not the audience is able to understand the content or story. Of course, the content you create cannot be understood by everyone, so you need to determine who your target audience is.
Until you know who your target audience is, you can’t know what they like. Before you create a strategy for content marketing, first know your target audience, what their needs are, what their preferences are, what their age range is, and many others.
Give a clear value proposition
With increasingly fierce competition, you need a unique value proposition to stand out. Unique value proposition is an advantage in your product that is not owned by competitors. Make sure the unique value proposition that you offer is clear and easy to understand, define what makes your product superior to competitors, and present it briefly.
Serve varied content
Your content audience also uses multiple social media, relying on one social media platform to reach them will not be enough. Try to present a variety of content types by utilizing a combination of connected social media channels and presenting a variety of content. Examples are displaying product photos and reels on Instagram, creating blog posts to provide information and education to consumers, and presenting videos via YouTube.
Build a brand image
Building a brand image should also be a concern and goal for content marketing. You must be able to build your brand image with the content that you serve to consumers. Did you know that Coca-Cola is just water with sugar, Levi’s is just a pair of jeans, and iPhone is just a means of communication. But many people prefer to buy them compared to other products. Implementing a brand through taglines, logos, and visuals on social media will help build a brand image that will be very useful for your product.
Use metrics to measure campaign success
To measure the success of a campaign, it is necessary to have metrics and KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to show what are the deficiencies and what can be improved from a campaign. You must pay attention to the metrics and KPIs of your content marketing campaign so that you can improve future campaigns and fix existing errors and deficiencies.
How can content marketing help your business?
Drive brand loyalty
Content marketing is a way for brands to promote the message of a brand to their consumers. Content marketing is able to strengthen the relationship between a brand and its audience. If you continuously provide good content to your audience, they will get used to the content you provide, as a result your audience will always look forward to your content.
Bring in new customers
There is a case study in 2011 where Ford will launch their newest car model, the Ford Fiesta, but Ford does not use conventional advertising for promotion.
Two years before the car’s launch, Ford lent its newest car model to several influencers for six months, in exchange for them having to make a video about their reviews and experiences with the car.
At that time, social media was not as popular and sophisticated as it is now, many people thought that what Ford was doing was very unusual, but this campaign managed to give an extraordinary surprise. The video was watched 6.2 million times on YouTube, was discussed on Twitter with 40 million tweets and got 50,000 sales prospects. A total of 6000 people made pre-orders and 97% of them first time buying a car from Ford.
Good content will always provide traffic
When you create content and publish it to the internet, that content will continue to be on the internet and will continue to be seen by many people, intentionally or unintentionally. That’s one of the advantages of content marketing, once you publish content, that content will continue to bring in traffic.
Improve SEO performance
Content marketing can provide huge benefits for your online business. When you create high-quality content with relevant keywords, internet algorithms will help lift and promote your content on the front page and improve search engine results for your business.
Your competitors may also be running paid promotions to do the same. Organic optimization is very different from paid ones, it requires skill and patience to do it. Meanwhile, paid optimization can have an instant impact on a website. It should be underlined that organic SEO optimization can last for a long time. In contrast to organic optimization, paid optimization provides traffic for some period of time.
Increase consumer engagement
The level of consumer engagement will increase if they see good content, not infrequently good content will become a favorite for consumers. Investing in content marketing can provide promising ROI (Return of Investments). Content marketing can turn potential customers into loyal customers.
Conclusion
As an online business owner, you must understand the changes that are happening in the world of marketing. Now, we are entering an era where paid media will be replaced by earned media. Big companies usually advertise their products by spending a large budget to hire brand ambassadors, create advertisements, and so on.
However, all of this is considered insufficient because there is no unit of measurement that can be used to measure effectiveness. Content marketing has changed all that. Now, content marketing has become a powerful channel for marketing products.
