How can Content Marketing help my business?

Hi! In this publication we will understand what and what are the main aspects of content marketing. Learn more about this tool that is becoming more and more popular and that delivers great marketing results for companies.

Throughout this publication we will cover the following topics:

The start of it all: Inbound Marketing
Differences between Inbound and Outboung Marketing
Ads and traditional advertising saturation
Content as a marketing tool
What formats for Content Marketing?
SEO and Content Marketing
Capturing the Lead and turning it into a customer

The start of it all: Inbound Marketing

To talk about Content Marketing, we must first understand the concept of Inbound Marketing. The term, developed and spread by the creators of Hubspot, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, is related to the concept of making potential customers look for the company and not the other way around, which would be the company going to the consumer (with TV or internet ads, for example).

For this reason, Inbound Marketing is also known as attraction marketing, as its main objective is to arouse the interest of the public and literally attract them to the company's environment.

The question that remains is: Why would anyone look for a company of their own free will? What is the reason that leads a customer, without clicking any ad, to go to a certain company's website and close a deal? To answer these questions, we must first contextualize the differences between inbound and outbound marketing.

Attraction Marketing or Inbound Marketing, works as a "magnet" that attracts potential customers.

Differences between Inbound and Outboung Marketing

If Inbound Marketing, as already mentioned, is a way to attract potential customers, Outbound Marketing is a way to get those customers, instead of attracting them. And the most effective way to do this is through more traditional marketing, advertising and advertising tools such as TV, Radio, print, billboard and billboard ads. However, ads on digital platforms are also considered Outbound Marketing actions.

Although there is a perception that Inbound and Outbound strategies are competitors, we should not look at them in terms of comparison. In other words, it is difficult to determine which one is worse and the other better. This is because both Outbound and Inbound Marketing can bring significant returns to companies, as long as they are applied in the correct context and in a professional and structured way.

Outbound, however, has been declining in popularity over the years, precisely because potential customers are saturated with conventional advertising. marketing.

Ads and traditional advertising saturation

This article, published in The New York Times business section, entitled “The advertising industry has a problem: people hate ads”, shows a little of the paradigm, experienced by advertisers and advertising agencies, of the great saturation of the public in relation to traditional ads.

Part of this aversion is due to the large number of ads we are exposed to throughout our day. Whether taking the subway, listening to the radio, watching videos on Youtube, or using our favorite social networks, the truth is that we are “bombed” by ads all the time.

In a study published on the PPC Project website, we can see the numbers are scary: the average person, throughout their day, is exposed to a number between 6.000 to 10.000 ads! No, you didn't read it wrong. That's really a lot of ads!

And that's exactly why Inbound Marketing, together with Content Marketing starts to make more and more sense, after all, when we are passive to communication (when ads reach us, even interrupting our entertainment many times), the The probability of ignoring them is much greater than when we search for a particular topic ourselves.

“Conventional” ads and strategies draw less and less attention from potential customers.

Content as a marketing tool

Now that we understand the fundamentals of Inbound and Outbound, we'll see how content can be a great marketing tool.

In a world where we are “bombed” by information and advertisements, the company that manages to offer content that is attractive enough for the customer to look for what it has to offer, will have many benefits.

But how to do that?

We must understand that the term “content” differs from “offer”. If João offers professional electrician services, there is little point in creating content about his service packages themselves (in an inbound marketing logic). However, if he creates a YouTube channel to teach how to change light bulbs and make small electrical repairs, for example, people who are trying to solve a certain problem, will have contact with his content.

Will they become customers automatically? Obviously not. However, they will have had a first contact with João, they will be able to subscribe to his channel, follow his other videos on the subject, and at some point they may need an electrician. When this happens, if João's content is interesting enough for these people, as well as demonstrates his technical knowledge in the area, they will be able to hire him for the service they need.

The example of a Youtube channel is just one of the possibilities for Content Marketing.

What formats for Content Marketing?

There are many ways to use content marketing, for example:

• Videos
• Podcasts
• E-books
• Infographics
• Freebies (free samples of products or services)
• webnaries
• tutorials
• Among others.

Also, one of the most popular formats is the one you're consuming right now: a blog post. And the main reasons for using Blogs is that they have a low cost and contribute to good indexing in search engines.

It is likely that you came to our site through a search on a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. This doesn't happen by chance. The regular publication of quality and professional content contributes to the site occupying the top positions.

Different types and formats of content can be used in Inbound strategies.

SEO and Content Marketing

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization and is related to the efforts made to make the sites visible in search engines. If there are millions of sites on the same topic, when the user makes a search on this topic, what are the criteria that make site A appear on the first page of Google and site B appear on the eighth page?

The answer is a set of factors that search engines take into account, ranging from the website's architecture, its loading speed, as well as its optimization for mobile devices. Other elements are also analyzed, such as domain relevance, existence of links to the website (and from the website to third-party websites), etc.

Content, however, is one of the main factors considered by search engines and encompasses the relevance of the content, the use of terms and keywords, the authenticity of the content, the regularity of the publications, etc.

Therefore, Content Marketing is one of the main tools to assist in the SEO of websites, as well as blogs are a great way to attract potential customers to the company's website. Remember that this is just the first step. Then, it is necessary to build a relationship with the public to, only after that, “sell” something effectively.

Capturing the Lead and turning it into a customer

In digital marketing, we generally refer to the potential customer as a lead. In the case of Content Marketing, the lead is the user who shows interest in our content and arrives at our website or channel. At this point, it is important to create strategies so that the customer continues to have contact with the company, otherwise he may simply close the browser window and never find your site again.

That's why lead capture tools are important. They are a way to ensure that the user continues to receive content from your company, which makes sense to him, and for the company to continue to build a relationship with the lead (who can become a customer).

Sign-up forms are a good way to have some customer contact and be able to send emails about new content, for example.

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