Content marketing (or “Content Marketing “) is one of the fastest growing disciplines and has attracted the most attention in recent years in the world of digital marketing. The change in consumer behavior has been one of the main reasons for this boom. Nowadays customers have ceased to be inert recipient and are no longer willing to allow medium interruption. The response to these changes by advertisers are new ways of understanding marketing in which consumers are those who find the brands and interact with them in a consented manner without unwanted interruptions. Within this present of consideration they highlight the inbound advertising, permission marketing and the marketing of contents that, although with a similar philosophy, have nuances and differences between them. Connect Pal is a content platform, one where anyone can sign-up and post content. Through ConnectPal’s service a user can set up his own page for readers to subscribe and can get paid for his hard work when a reader subscribes to his page.
What is content marketing?
- It is a digital marketing strategy that consists of creating and publishing quality content and informative (non-commercial) content for our target audience. The objectives are: to generate confidence, to become the authority within the sector, to obtain traffic, to be in the top of mind of consumers and to create a brand.
- It must be understood that from the point of view of the consumer, this is in the early stages of its purchase cycle: it is looking for information and is not yet prepared to create a buy or agreement. Therefore, the communication cannot be commercial and the user will be little prone to content that does not educate and provide value.
Define your Target:
Before writing the first word it is important to define who will consume the content and understand our target. The first step is to create a Person that represents your audience. This is the basis not only for the content marketing plan, but for the entire marketing strategy. It is called “marketing or buyer person” and to define it must take into account:
- Demography: sex, age, geography, income level, occupation, marital status, educational level.
- Tastes and Style: values, interests, concerns, hobbies, lifestyle, personality, etc.
- Interaction with the internet: types of users, what kind of sites they visit use of social networks and which ones, which information sites / blogs they consult, preferred devices, etc.
- Habits of consumption.
Mapping the content in the different phases of the consumer:
The content is a fundamental piece in each of the phases by which the consumer passes from being aware of the need until the execution of the purchase decision. Therefore, if the consumer passes some phases, the content must be planned accordingly:
Top of the Funnel Content (TOFU) or content for the top of the funnel:
- The goal of that content is to reach people at the beginning of the purchase cycle. For the moment of the consumer this content must be 100% educational and 0% commercial and must give answers to the concerns and questions you may have. The objective of this content is to achieve visibility, traffic, generate brand, enter the top of mind of educating consumers and open the door to future interactions between the brand and the user.
- Characteristics: this is the type of content that will bring the vast majority of traffic and that will serve to feed social networks and educational email marketing campaigns.