The Basics of Content Marketing That You Must Master

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Although content marketing is a large field full of subsets, there are five basics every content marketer must master. The best content marketing strategies start with market research and competition research. You must know whom you’re talking to, which is called the target audience, and you must know whom you’re going up against, which is your competition. Then, you infuse your unique voice into your content for personal branding. Social media marketing and email marketing are essential in content marketing too.

Market Research

Knowing your target audience is a necessity for good content marketing. Would you have better luck trying to sell a baby stroller to a 40-year-old man who doesn’t have kids or a 25-year-old expecting mother? Of course, you would prefer marketing to the woman because she’s already pregnant whereas the man has reached 40 without having a kid. It’s possible he may have a kid at that age, but you would need to know more about him, such as his beliefs about children, whether or not he’s married, and if he wants children.

When conducting market research, you should determine your target audience’s demographics, lifestyle, wants, needs, problems, and psychographics. These factors determine which approach you should take in your content marketing and how to connect with your audience. You’ll also want to discover ways to find the email addresses of your target audience.

Competition Research

After you’ve written a target audience profile, you should research your competition in your niche or industry. Pay attention to the strategies they are using, what they excel at, what their strengths are, and what their weaknesses are. You may find a gap in their approach that you can fill for your audience as well as find good ideas for your marketing plan. Also think about how you can differentiate yourself from others who are already established in your industry. That is called your unique value proposition. By researching your competition, you’ll be able to figure out how you’re different.

Personal Branding

A forgotten, but important, aspect of good content marketing is personal branding. There are hundreds of websites and blogs that people can read in a particular niche. As touched on in the previous paragraph, you need to show how you’re different from others to build an audience. Find your unique brand voice and incorporate it into your content marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is a must-have for businesses of all sizes. It goes hand in hand with content marketing because you need a way to promote your content. Writing SEO-optimized blog posts isn’t good enough anymore. To get the most out of your blog posts, you should post them on social media sites with interesting and helpful blurbs to avoid looking spammy. Another reason you need social media marketing is content is not just articles and blog posts. Infographics and what you write on social media count as content.

Email Marketing

Last, but not least, content marketing should dedicate resources to email marketing. For one, email like infographics and social posts is another form of content. Email marketing is also one of the most effective types of marketing. As pointed out on Campaign Monitor, email marketing returns approximately $38 for every $1 spent. Some businesses see an ROI as much as 3,800% with email marketing.

Conclusion

Market research, competition research, personal branding, social media marketing, and email marketing are the five areas you want to master in content marketing. It’s a lot to handle for one person, so you may want to either hire experts in those fields or pay a content marketing agency to help with your strategy. You don’t want to ignore one of these areas because of how important each is in content marketing.

If you feel overwhelmed by the essentials that should be mastered in content marketing, contact us to handle your content marketing.

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