As social media has opened new avenues of news and knowledge and blurred geographical boundaries, people are inclined towards real relevance over glittery glam. There was a gap which advertising alone could not fill. Thus, content stepped in to fill the caveats, and marketing as an ally elevated it as a complete strategy to end brands’ time-induced woes.
HOW CAN CONTENT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Dove conducted an experiment. It wanted to know what the perception of women regarding their own beauty and self-worth is. To their utter shock, only 4% of women thought that they were beautiful; the rest critiqued themselves to the point of believing that they were ugly. To make matters worse, beauty brands didn’t play on the positives. Rather, they used the insecurities of women and highlighted those to sell their products, using the most perfect women in their adverts and setting that as the ultimate standard. Dove, to counter this, came up with the ‘Real Women’ campaign, in which they decided not only to do away with the practice of taking perfect celebs on board, but also to end the habit of highlighting either oily skin, dry skin, acne, or any other skin problems. Their USP was just one: you are beautiful the way you are, and we as a brand offer you a product which will make you feel beautiful inside out, your way.
The result? Dove as a brand has sustained itself in the market over the years with this concept in place. With each new campaign they come up with, in every new survey, or every new content exercise, they never forget to emphasise their core thought of ‘Everyone is beautiful’.
Content today is the most powerful tool that can escalate your brand and your business to new heights. Here are a few good reasons why you need content marketing strategies to up your game in the market.
INVENTION OF ITERATION
You have established a thought. Great. Now, how do you make sure that it remains in the psyche of the audience? The answer is content. And how do you make sure that the content is relevant for a long time and broadcast to the right audience? Content Marketing is the answer. While adverts in the past continued to emphasise the message at regular intervals and at prime times in order to influence the psyches, they became redundant and boring much too soon. Content, on the other hand, comes in such varying forms that there is no one method that will lead to a yawn amidst the consumers. While it might be a video at one point in time, it can be a social media series at another, or perhaps a list of articles being published on various platforms. The key is not only to iterate to form an identity, but also to reinvent to maintain the factor of interest. This will help your content be unique, original and constant in the minds of people, even if the thought behind it may be an inspired one.
TAPPING THE SOCIAL SPIRIT
What is the quickest way to spread information (and misinformation) in today’s world? Social Media. When Mark Zuckerburg invented Facebook and subsequently went on to acquire Instagram and Whatsapp, we bet even he didn’t realise that soon it would become a hub of knowledge, interactions, and even debates. Agreed, social media has its cons too, but that is mostly due to the people and the use they put it to. If used correctly to target the right audience with the help of the right tools, social media is the best way to market your content. Doing so will help you take advantage of the viral space that social media is, and traverse the boundaries of time, demography and geography to reach numbers that may well turn out to be beyond your imagination. Not only that, this kind of traction also keeps on multiplying with time, due to the modifying timelines of Facebook and other platforms. So, the same content can be visible to the audience in various forms at different intervals.
QUICK-FIX PERFORMANCE ISSUES
One of the best things about content marketing is that it is easy to track and analyse its performance. Whether through social media or through tools such as Google Analytics, you can easily gauge which is the thought process that is actually appealing to the target audience and which is not. This will give you ample time to reconstruct your content strategy and slowly retract the non-performing one so that you can come up with a better one. This tactic was not so easy in the earlier forms of marketing when social media and content had not yet appeared.
CHEAP YET NOT CHEAP
Another reason to go for content marketing is that it is extremely cost efficient. A series of articles on a platform, subsequently promoted on social media, or even a web series syncing with the thought process of your brand is more cost effective than the adverts which rope in big stars for their glam quotient. Not only does it leave you with funds that you can use to market your brand via several other avenues, but also opens a plethora of options to choose from. Also, while it is cheap cost-wise, it certainly isn’t cheap in terms of the quality it offers to ultimately attract the target audience.
THE EFFECT OF ORGANIC SEARCH
Another advantage that content marketing lets you tap into is that of search engines and the organic search that they offer. The trend of online is increasing day by day. Search Engines offer knowledge of target audiences’ search habits and what they are looking for. That is extremely useful information to possess while creating content. The presence of keywords in the correct density makes sure that when you search for those keywords, your content will be in the top searches. One thing that you ought to keep in mind while creating your content is to make sure it is engaging. You wouldn’t want the bounce rate to be high, after all. While search engines and keywords can bring audiences to your platform, it’s only your content which can help to retain them.
Content Marketing strategies will you help you stay relevant and stylish in a world that has tastes spinning faster than a spinner.
