The Importance of Content Marketing and How a Solid Strategy Could Help Your Business Reach New Markets

As a marketer or a business owner, you already know how important it is to be running ads on Facebook… doing SEO and PPC… sending out newsletters… and constantly creating 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. And lack of strategy is where a lot of marketers and business owners give up on Content Marketing because 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. 

Let us give you an example:

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.” So when you search up that keyphrase into 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’re able to map out the entire journey your customer will take 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 in 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 that 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 (SEs) rank content based on how relevant and how useful it is to searchers. The more time people spend consuming your content, the more relevant SEs like Google view it. Meaning, every time someone searches up a certain keyword, your content is more likely to show up 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 for them. But what about people who would rather watch a video? Or people who would rather listen to a podcast? The more types of content you can create, the more chances you get to reach a new audience member.
• Making it easier to sell to people. Content Marketing is a soft sell. You’re not telling everyone how much better your company 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 guards down and are more likely to trust you and what you have to offer. 

The Role of Content Marketing in Reaching New Markets

When you’re identifying customers in your new target market, you want to take the same steps you took when you were identifying your current customers. 

You first want to identify markets that have the most potential for your business. A good place to start is to go through 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. The opportunity to build 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. It makes sense to hire a Content Marketing agency to develop different content formats to reach your target market.
• 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’s 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, we’re also a part of it. 

Content Marketing Agencies CAN Help You Reach New Markets

By now, you should have a good understanding of what Content Marketing is, how it can benefit your business, the role Content Marketing 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 LATAM Markets?

Let’s go over a few statistics:

• The buying power of the Hispanic market is expected to increase to 1.7 trillion US dollars (from 1.3 trillion US dollars in 2015). 
• Hispanics currently make up 18% of the total US population and are the second-fastest growing demographic group. 

The opportunities in these markets are huge. And if you’re looking to get ahead in 2021, you need to start working on a content strategy in order to reach them. 

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