The Role Of Content In Generating Sales, As Well As Marketing ow To Generate And Distribute High-Quality Materials That Attracts Buyers.
Content marketing improves the customer experience. Here’s why it matters, as well as advice and resources to help you get results.
Jacqueline Dooley on September 16, 2022, at 10:38 a.m. | Reading time: 8 minutes. It’s been said, ad nauseam, that content is king. However, a more appropriate expression nowadays is probably: client experience is king. And, in a hyper-connected world where everyone is fighting for attention, good content is what drives good experiences.
Content marketing tactics are used by businesses to raise brand awareness, educate prospects and customers, and develop credibility. Delivering a strong customer experience increasingly entails providing relevant, personalized material to customers in a way that works for them. Providing the content clients require when they are ready leads to greater results for marketers.
This entails scaling information so that it is continually fresh, relevant, and personalized across the numerous touchpoints that consumers utilize when dealing with organizations.
According to recent McKinsey statistics, 71% of consumers want firms to provide individualized encounters. When this expectation is not met, nearly three-quarters of customers will look elsewhere for whatever item or service they require.
Material marketing is a marketing method or discipline that focuses on creating various forms of content and assets with the goal of encouraging people to act (e.g., sign up for a newsletter, place an order, ask for more information, etc.)
In contrast to paid advertising, content marketing typically employs organic methods to acquire and engage customers. In this sense, content refers to written or visual elements (e.g., guides, articles, blog posts, graphics, videos, social posts, etc.) However, paid content promotion is sometimes used in content marketing, such as sponsored material on publications or gated information that needs a price to access.
Content marketing is closely linked to inbound marketing and other customer experience-based approaches. It’s often used as a top-of-the-funnel tactic to attract prospects and turn them into leads or customers. Still, it can also be used to nurture existing relationships and convert leads into customers.
“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Paid: Content sits behind a paywall or requires some sort of purchase to access.
Owned: Content is produced by a business and published on its own channels (e.g., website, blog, social media).
Earned: Content is published by someone other than the company (e.g., user-generated content, influencer content, media coverage, etc.).
Regardless of where your content lives or lands, there are two unifying features that define a good content marketing strategy — relevancy and quality.
The consumer buying cycle is an increasingly self-serve process scattered across multiple touchpoints. To adapt to consumer expectations and keep up with competitors, marketers must create a large volume of high-quality content that can be effectively shared across many different channels.
Standing out in this cluttered content ecosystem requires producing personalized content at scale. Content automation tools and platforms allow companies to produce, manage, share, and amplify content while facilitating scalability. In short, you need content to compete in today’s customer experience-driven landscape and technology to produce content at the volumes required to make an impact.
According to the Semrush 2022 State of Content Marketing Report, about 91% of firms reported some sort of success with content marketing in 2021. In 2022, the majority of respondents stated they planned to expand content spending and add more content talent.
Currently, content marketers evaluate their success based on traffic, search rankings, and leads. However, this is changing. Other metrics, such as engagement, conversion rates, and ROI, are increasingly important to content marketers. Of course, there are technological instruments that can assist with this.
Customer journey analytics solutions, such as Qualtrics, monitor every customer encounter with a company and analyze how each stage of the journey contributes to an action, such as a sale, conversion, or information request.
Journey analytics evaluates every piece of content a customer interacts with across the entire buying cycle and assesses how it impacts a measurable outcome (e.g., a sale, new customer, conversion, etc.)
The most common teams that work with content marketing tools are those that deal with driving website traffic, engagement, leads, and sales. This includes:
Customer success manager or agent: Uses content to keep customers engaged.
A wide range of tools and platforms exist to help businesses create, distribute, target, and measure the content they create. They include:
Content management systems (CMS) like HubSpot and Joomla let companies create, store and manage website content (e.g., webpages, blog posts, e-commerce product pages, etc.).
Digital experience platforms (DXPs) like Sitecore and Adobe Experience Manager provide robust content orchestration features including digital asset management, customer data management, personalization and testing, and marketing automation.
SEO software like Moz Pro and Semrush provides tools for keyword research, content optimization, link building, and SEO rank monitoring.
Social media sites like Sprout Social and Brandwatch (formerly Falcon.io) include features like social publishing, campaign optimization, and social engagement to improve the reach and impact of posts.
Content intelligence platforms like Ceralytics and Parse.ly help companies track content performance across multiple channels and touchpoints.
Content planning and team collaboration tools like Asana and Trello help content teams manage projects and workflows, share files, create editorial calendars, and assign tasks/to-do lists.
Gartner notes that companies demonstrating success with growth, margin, and profitability typically prioritize the customer experience. These companies are nearly 30% more likely to have higher CX budgets and focus on the entire customer journey, including what happens after a prospect becomes a customer.
Content plays a role in every stage of the customer journey — from attracting prospects to building relationships with customers. The payoff is high for businesses committed to delivering personalized interactions driven by high-quality, relevant content.
Fast-growing companies drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization versus their competitors, a recent McKinsey report revealed.
Consumers respond to this approach. That is, they want personalized, relevant content from businesses. Per McKinsey, nearly 80% of consumers said personalized content was a key factor in their decision to purchase or repurchase from a brand.
Getting it right means creating content at scale. Content powered by AI will be a key driver of personalization. Brands that have fully invested in content marketing are now turning to AI to create more personalized content experiences for their customers.
What is the future of the Role Of Content Marketing
The global content marketing sector is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2023. Oracle, HubSpot, Adobe, and Salesforce are the industry’s leading players, although content marketing comprises various sorts of software and services, including marketing agencies, resellers, and technology suppliers themselves.
As the need for high-quality, personalized content grows, content marketing and the technology required to support it will become increasingly important for businesses of all kinds. The proliferation of touchpoints and devices: the “how” and “where” of the consumer journey: is also a fundamental driver of content marketing growth.
Artificial intelligence and content technology will help marketers keep up with the demand for personalized content, automating many of the tasks inherent in content creation and planning. But human ingenuity — and creativity — remains essential component of effective content creation and strategy. As companies continue refining and improving the customer experience, content marketing will continue to take center stage.
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