Content marketing as a guarantee for long-term success

When used correctly, content marketing can quickly become the best tool in a company’s marketing toolbox. However, it requires a certain amount of effort and sometimes a little patience.

Content marketing is seen as a central part of all corporate communication, regardless of whether it is a large company, SME or even a lone wolf. The many different types of content allow everyone to use this tool effectively.

Traditionally, brand building is considered the main goal of content marketing, and customer acquisition and customer loyalty are also the focus of the campaigns. Successful content marketing is therefore more of a long-term strategic approach, although it can of course still be used to generate leads in the short term by increasing awareness of products or companies. Accordingly, somewhat more precisely formulated goals can often be set quite easily based on medium-term and long-term effects. Increasing the number of visitors to an online shop is just as much a medium-term goal as increasing visibility in social networks. On the other hand, developing expert status and continually building a good reputation are classic long-term brand building measures. Building a community, interacting via the website or social media are among the customer loyalty goals.

Content can be more than a blog post

One of the positive side aspects is usually that the different types often strengthen the SEO (search engine optimization) of websites. The typical type of content is probably the classic blog post, which deals comprehensively with a topic that is relevant to the company. Typical types of content include videos, infographics, white papers, e-books, podcasts, surveys or webinars. In the same way, providing (open source) software can be a valuable part of a content marketing mix, or a computer game. These examples alone show that good content marketing is not something that can just be done on the side. But even though today, thanks to smartphones alone, it has become surprisingly easy to produce acceptable video content yourself, everyone should first critically assess their creative talents. Perhaps there are also people among the employees who already work with video production, graphics programs such as Photoshop or have other creativity that can be used. However, for sole proprietorships or SMEs, not everything will often be available in sufficient quantity and, above all, of sufficient quality. This is where agencies that offer content marketing come into play.

Nobody can do everything alone

Professional agencies have a whole range of advantages. On the one hand, they have professionals in the industry with copywriters or designers, and on the other hand, they usually use graphics, editing programs, etc., which require a longer training period for the employee of an SME and are generally anything but cheap. They also often have a network that makes it easier to distribute content. Agencies have their disadvantage when, for example, a customer is a company from a niche industry. It can then happen that the agency workers first have to familiarize themselves with the area, which becomes increasingly difficult the more subject areas they have to master. And in some cases, even the best briefing cannot hide the fact that the content was not produced by the expert, i.e. the customer. The best solution is therefore often a successful mix of internally and externally produced content.

In the end, content marketing also has to prove itself

Once the goals and implementation of content marketing have been regulated, the appropriate success monitoring should of course be carried out. Content marketing is perhaps one of those components of online marketing whose success cannot be measured 100 percent with sales figures or website statistics. Anyone who wins a new customer because they trust the company and sees them as experts will often no longer be able to determine in detail after the conversion which blog post or which infographic was ultimately responsible. Nevertheless, orders won are a criterion that definitely belongs in the success analysis for purely economic reasons.

However, many intermediate goals can be easily measured. The success of a white paper is measured, for example, by the number of downloads, as well as the leads gained and their quality if the interested party had to leave their contact details for the download. Content on social media can be measured by the number of likes, comments or how often it has been shared. Posts in the corporate blog are particularly successful when the website statistics show a high number of readers and a long stay. Or if a call to action that may have been set was clicked.

In conclusion, content marketing is no longer a hype that will disappear in the near future. Online, in particular, it is becoming more and more common to see that classic advertising, which is only aimed at sales, is working less and less. Even if classic pop-up advertising banners are now largely a thing of the past in the serious sector, many users find advertising more annoying than helpful. Successful content marketing, on the other hand, starts at exactly the right point, with the problem of a future customer. It leads to being anchored in the customer’s memory and builds a basis of trust in advance. If the solution to the problem becomes urgent, he comes to the company as if by himself. This may be longer, more complicated and no longer measurable in detail, but it leads to long-term success.