As a marketer or business owner, you already know how important it is to run ads on Facebook… do SEO and PPC… send out newsletters, and constantly create content for your social media networks. But what about Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is more than just posting on social media once a week and calling it a day. There’s a lot more strategy involved before the execution. A lack of strategy is why many marketers and business owners give up on content marketing; they don’t get the results they’re after.
If you’re working without a marketing team, chances are you’re creating content without a strategy and just posting whatever comes to mind. But the fact is, you should have a goal for every piece of content you publish.
In this article, we’re going to explain what Content Marketing is, the benefits of Content Marketing, the role Content Marketing plays in reaching new markets, and things you should consider before hiring a Content Marketing agency.
What is Content Marketing?
Hubspot defines Content Marketing as the strategic marketing and business process focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer action.
When done correctly, Content Marketing helps create a trusting relationship between you and your audience. And when your audience trusts you, they’re more likely to do business with you.
In short, Content Marketing is the art of communicating with your prospects and customers without having to sell to them. As opposed to advertising your products or services, you’re creating helpful, engaging content that your prospects and customers can enjoy and learn from.
How Do You Know What Kind of Content to Create?
A good place to start is by mapping out the Customer Journey. The Customer Journey involves every step your audience member takes, from becoming aware of a need they have to ultimately purchase something you have to offer and beyond.
Each member of your audience is at a different stage of the Customer Journey. The goal of Content Marketing is to create content that will help them take the next step.
An Example of a Customer Journey
Say you’re looking for a camera for your next live event. Your journey begins the moment you realize you need a camera. So, what do you do next?
Well, if you’re like most people, you begin with a Google search: something like “best camera for live events” is a good start.
Now, businesses that sell cameras that work great for live events can take advantage of this opportunity by creating content for the keyphrase “best camera for live events.” When you search for that key phrase on Google, their website shows up on the results page.
Okay, now what?
What Other Forms of Content Can This Business Create?
How about an article about audio equipment that works best for recording live events?
Or what about a video recommending the most popular lighting equipment?
Or even something simple like an email discount on their next purchase…
Do you see how that works? The customer journey begins when your audience realizes they have a problem and ends when they solve their problem.
Content Marketing works best when you can map out your customer’s entire journey and create content that helps guide them through each step.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Aside from educating and entertaining your audience, Content Marketing also helps your business by:
- Making you an authority. Having content to publish on your social media sites or your website helps your brand build a strong online presence. The bigger your online presence, the more people will view you as an authority on your subject. And also, the more content you post, the more opportunities you have to engage and connect with people.
- Building closer relationships with potential buyers. If you consistently post valuable content, your audience will grow to know, like, and trust you. This means they will start to look to you for guidance, and if they decide to purchase a product from your industry, you will be first in mind when they do.
- Helping increase your SEO efforts. Search engines rank content based on how relevant and useful it is to searchers. The more time people spend consuming your content, the more relevant SEs like Google view it. Every time someone searches for a certain keyword, your content is more likely to appear first.
- Appealing to different people in different formats. People prefer to consume content in different ways. Some people love reading, so blog posts and articles work best. But what about people who would rather watch a video? Or would people rather listen to a podcast? The more types of content you can create, the more chances you can reach a new audience member.
- Making it easier to sell to people. Content Marketing is a soft sell. You’re not telling everyone how your company is better than your competition. You don’t use Content Marketing to brag about your accomplishments. You use Content Marketing to help facilitate the audience’s success. Because you’re not trying to hard sell your business, your audience has their guard down and is more likely to trust you and what you have to offer.
The Role of Content Marketing in Reaching New Markets
When you identify customers in your new target market, you should follow the same steps you took when you identified your current customers.
You first want to identify markets with the most potential for your business. A good place to start is to review any analytics. To quote management guru Peter Drucker, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
When you figure out what market you’re going to target, you then want to figure out their journey and decide what kind of valuable content to publish:
- Content that resolves any questions your audience has…
- Content that fixes problems your audience is facing…
- Content that keeps your audience up-to-date with the latest industry news…
- Content that delights your audience with entertaining stories and anecdotes…
When Should You Work With an Agency?
The benefits of Content Marketing are vast. The list above is by no means extensive.
Building lifelong trusting relationships is invaluable to your business’s success.
But what if you can’t create all this content? Even if you know you should be…
Another important aspect and one of the biggest challenges marketers and business owners face when creating content, is visibility.
Creating great, engaging content isn’t enough.
To be successful, your content strategy should include a distribution plan that lays out how you will strategically share content with people who will benefit the most from it.
In order to take advantage of all the opportunities that Content Marketing has to offer your business, it’s a good idea to consider hiring an agency to help you develop the best kind of content to publish.
You should hire a Content Marketing agency if:
- Your expertise is limited to one form of content creation. If you’re a writer, you write. Plain and simple. But you know that people like to consume content in more ways than just reading. Hiring a Content Marketing agency to develop different content formats to reach your target market makes sense.
- You need more time. Content creation is time-consuming. Especially if you’re a one-person team, or even if you have a fully-fledged marketing team, hiring a Content Marketing agency can free up hours and hours of your time, enabling you to focus your efforts on other things.
- You’re looking for people with experience in Content Marketing. There are a lot of strategies you need to consider before executing your Content Marketing plan. You should hire a Content Marketing agency that understands the nuances behind Content Marketing and can help guide you to success.
- You’re looking for new perspectives. Sometimes, you’re too close to the content to see things objectively. Hiring an outside agency to review your business can help illuminate new opportunities to reach your audience.
- You’re looking for experts. You want to hire someone who knows and understands the new market you’re trying to reach. In our case, we’re not only experts in connecting brands with the Hispanic Market but also a part of it.
By now, you should have a good understanding of Content Marketing, how it can benefit your business, the role It plays in reaching a new market, and some things you should consider before hiring a Content Marketing agency.
If you’re looking to step up your Content Marketing game, or if you’re looking to expand your reach into the US Hispanic Market or LATAM, you can reach out to us directly here.
Why Should You Consider the US Hispanic or Latinx Market?
Let’s go over a few statistics:
- The buying power of the Hispanic market in the United States has seen significant growth and is expected to reach approximately $2.4 trillion by 2024. This figure indicates a substantial increase from previous years, highlighting the economic influence of this demographic (NIQ) (NIQ).
- Regarding demographics, Hispanics constitute about 19% of the U.S. population. This group has seen robust growth, increasing by 23% over the past decade, significantly higher than the nation’s population growth rate of 7% during the same period (Nielsen). This growth underscores the increasing importance and influence of the Hispanic market in the United States.
The opportunities in these markets are huge. To get ahead in 2024, you must start working on a content strategy to reach them.
