With the development of marketing science, traditional marketing methods have become less effective and impactful. Therefore, modern marketing methods appeared, the most prominent of which is writing marketing content, which is included in all campaigns and marketing ads. There is no advertisement without marketing content, but marketing content can be an alternative to advertising campaigns, and it brings much better results than direct ads, by delivering content. In a natural way for the audience, to gain credibility and acceptance by them.
And 82% of marketers use marketing content effectively during 2021, with a noticeable increase from the previous year, when the percentage was 70% in 2020, according to the annual global report on marketing content . Video also outperformed blogs and infographics in the most popular types of marketing content writing. Blogs accounted for 86% of the marketing content published in 2019 .
table of contents:
- What is content marketing?
- The importance of writing marketing content
- Benefits of writing marketing content
- Types of marketing content
- Marketing content writing strategies
- Marketing content writing tools
What is content marketing?
Marketing content means the process of planning, creating, distributing, and disseminating content through various advertising and media channels, such as: social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, applications, press releases, printed publications, etc.; This is to achieve multiple goals, such as: reaching your target audience, increasing brand awareness, increasing sales, and gaining customer loyalty .
According to the Content Marketing Institute , content marketing is defined as a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and publishing exclusive content that is valuable and relevant: to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, to drive them to take profitable action. Instead of promoting your products or services directly, you provide useful content that is appropriate to the nature of your activity and potential customers. to help them solve their problems.
The importance of writing marketing content
Marketing content writing relies on building a long-term strategy and focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is relevant to them and their needs. In the end, when customers make a purchase decision , their loyalty is tied to you and your brand; So they will buy your product and receive and prefer your service over competitors, according to the strong relationship you have established with them.
Unlike a one-time advertisement, the marketing content shows that you care about your customers, and this is what the audience desires in light of the large number of advertising campaigns they are exposed to and the crowding of different channels with them, and your audience needs to feel your interest; So you get their attention in return. Attracting the attention of the target audience has become one of the most difficult tasks, but it is one of the most basic goals of most marketing campaigns. In order to contribute to achieving the rest of your profit goals.
Benefits of writing marketing content
There are many benefits that marketing content offers and outperforms traditional ads, and here are the most prominent of these benefits:
Provide valuable content
Customers often ignore, mute, or stay away from traditional ads whenever they are exposed to them, especially when they are interrupted by their viewing and following their interests, while they spend hours of their time following content tailored to what they want or need, which leads to developing their relationship with the brand that provide this content, and interact with their products constantly. So, writing valuable marketing content will attract customers to you.
Increase brand awareness
The main motive for buying any product is realizing its value and need for it. Oftentimes, people don’t buy a product because they don’t realize how valuable it is or how much they need it, or they don’t understand how it works and how it will help them overcome a problem.
Marketing content can contribute to educating customers about the degree of their willingness to purchase your product or receive your service, through articles, blogs, videos, infographics, and podcasts, as it will contribute to increasing brand awareness and the importance of what you offer, and the audience will realize the moment they need to communicate with you to receive your services, without You directly invite him to take this action.
Generates a sense of gratitude and return the favor
When you provide continuous free content to your audience and provide them with a real benefit, they will want to return the favor, that is, they will seek to buy something from you or benefit from your paid services. Just as they benefited from what you gave them completely free of charge, this will motivate them to respond to you in kind and help your project and brand, due to the feeling of gratitude they have towards you and your brand.
Attract customers for free
Unlike traditional ads that need to spend a lot of money in order to attract customers, you can win hundreds of customers by writing strategic marketing content that will be published on your blog, such as: a series of educational and service articles related to what you offer. Which results in attracting continuous views, loyal customers, and engagement with your blog. High-quality marketing content and great interest will bring you a long-term return.
Reshare the content
When you provide marketing content that is related to the nature of your business, interests the audience, and meets their needs, this will prompt them to re-share it and spread it among their friends. If you provide 10 pieces of content that attracts their interest, they will publish it every time to share it. Whereas if you ask your audience to publish your website or share your social media activity page, they may post it once, but there is no incentive or new that would make them re-share it again.
So, think about what people are sharing online and provide valuable content. The same customer can share your content for 10 consecutive weeks or more, depending on your ability to keep their interest. Thus, you reach the audience of your customers easily and with their recommendation, and increase the likelihood of re-publishing your content from the audience of your customers, and the possibility of publishing the content doubles with each post, which is ultimately reflected in the spread of your activity.
Achieving marketing objectives
Most of the goals of advertising and marketing campaigns revolve around getting your message to the largest target audience that can be reached, where a large audience means that many people have received your message, and a target audience means that a large percentage of the audience are potential customers and are more likely to make a purchase. By developing content marketing tailored to your customers, some members of the audience will eventually become buyers.
It improves your visibility on SEO search engines
There are two main reasons for improving your visibility on search engines , the first is to provide high-quality creative content on your website or your various pages on social media, which increases visits to your site and increases the likelihood of potential customers viewing and interacting with your content.
The second lies in the continuity of publishing periodically, as the increase in the number of website pages as a result of the continued publication of marketing content contributes to improving your visibility, as a result of the search engines indexing the different pages of content that you publish, so if you publish weekly content, within one year the number of your indexed pages increases to 52 Page, which contributes to increasing the reliability of your site and its ranking in searches, without spending a single dollar on ads appearing at the top of the search results.
Increases audience reach
If you create specific marketing content as a podcast file, when you extract a video from it and publish it on YouTube, and convert it into easy-to-comprehend visual infographic designs, you contribute to spreading your content in a broader way to your audience of different characteristics and interests. Where the content will reach the favorites to watch videos on YouTube, and to the fans of designs, graphics and numbers, and to the audience of original content from the favorites of audio clips and podcasts.
Types of marketing content
Anything you create that doesn’t have an overt selling message is considered a type of content marketing, and it can be broken down into the most popular categories that you use most often in creating your content. Here are the most prominent of these categories:
1. Blogging
Blogs are one of the most powerful and prevalent types of marketing content in the past, and blogs allow you a lot of creativity in presenting and presenting topics, you can share different types of content within a single post, and attach files, multimedia, and links to enhance the content, and you can also add sharing buttons on social networks Social communication, opening the door to public comments and discussions.
Blogs are an ideal option for small businesses with limited budgets, and their value increases when they focus on topics of interest to the audience and meet their needs, answer their questions, reduce their concerns, and provide them with the information they need. Don’t talk about how great your products are, but focus on the content your audience wants to see.
Blogs achieve the ultimate goal when they keep a wide audience watching them periodically, to derive information from them and push them to share content, evaluate it positively, and recommend it to others. You can simply ask your audience for help to help you set the agenda for the content and topics that you will publish, and the Fiverr blog is one of the most prominent Arab blogs in providing articles related to many areas, such as marketing, programming, design, and others.
2. Infographic
An infographic design presents content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand format, by combining simple wording, short phrases, clear images, icons, and numerical data. So it is a great way to communicate content and information effectively, especially when you need to summarize an educational or specialized topic, or summarize a study or survey that you conducted in brief points; So that all members of the public can understand and absorb it.
It can be used to enhance the content of written blogs, or to be presented as standalone content without any additions on blogging and social media platforms. With the necessity of maintaining the simplicity and clarity of the design, choosing the appropriate graphics with the content and adjusting the format to reach final high-quality content, and an eye-catching design that facilitates navigation between its information and data.
An example of independent infographics is what was published by the Fives blog on the pintrest website about self-employment, where the whole topic boils down to designing the infographic and answering all questions, without the need to attach other text content. Another example of infographics supporting the blog can be found in an article on how to use infographics in marketing . You can use infographic designers to quickly complete your project through Fiverr.
3. Podcasts
A professionally composed podcast increases your brand awareness, especially in markets that are difficult to penetrate, and is also a way to highlight your brand personality in a different way, as audio clips allow for a lot of creativity in the content, whatever its topic . You can also adjust other factors related to it, such as the tempo, duration and width of the clip.
A high-quality podcast is complete when you plan it carefully, produce it with the right equipment and the right voices of your brand, and expand its reach with the audience when it is distributed through the podcast networks that are most popular and listened to by your audience. You can also forward it on social networks, repost it in full or in episodes, add it to a video and post it to YouTube; To expand his audience base even more.
You can request various podcast services through Khamasat, from voiceovers, content preparers, editors, sound engineers, and others, to come up with the best podcast clip that expresses your activity.
4. Video
Statistics indicate that 96% of consumers prefer to learn about the product or service through video, and 79% of their purchasing decision is affected after watching a video about the service or product, as marketing content through video enhances the percentage of conversions from customers, improves return on investment and helps you build relationships with audience members.
Video content can cost a lot of money and take a long time to produce, but it gets the most views from consumers and has the strongest impact among other types of marketing content. A well-made video shows a different side of your business, as you can better explain how something is done or how it works, answer customers’ questions about your product through it and show hidden aspects that can influence their decision, and their perception of the importance of what you offer them.
You can use the video to provide service and educational content to your audience. If your activity is specialized in software, you can shoot videos of how to install some complex programs, how to protect your computer from viruses, and other ideas that attract an audience interested in the nature of your activity.
To complement your featured clip, it should include a clear and true title on its topic, with a simple paragraph explaining the contents of the video; To make it easier for the audience to navigate through the video clips and get the information they need clearly. Then you start publishing your clip widely, from your website to your blog and social media pages, or in email campaigns.
5. Social media content
Since there are more than 4.48 billion users on social networks worldwide, providing marketing content dedicated to these platforms has become necessary to keep pace with development and communicate with your customers directly and more effectively without an intermediary, as social platforms offer a large and free space to express you for free.
So it is wise that you make perfect use of it, to gain your audience and maintain their loyalty and interest in your activity and what you publish. If you provide advertising content most of the time, there is no strong reason for the audience to keep following you after they finish receiving your product or service, but when you provide them with useful content and suitable for their characteristics away For direct sales messages, this will prompt him to continue to follow you, support you, and publish about you.
It is not necessary to be present on all social platforms, but it is necessary for you to be present on the platforms on which your target audience is present and concentrated. You are on LinkedIn, and if your audience is broad and includes multiple segments, then your presence on Facebook is inevitable.
Marketing content writing strategies
With the continuous development and expansion of marketing content, there are many strategies for writing marketing content, and no specific strategy is better than others, but you have to try in more than one way; In order to reach the most appropriate strategy for your business, and the types of content that are appropriate for your activity and that your customers prefer.
There is a quick strategy and its steps are simple, and it is called “3D content”, as it is based on three main steps, namely:
- Focus on the pain point or problem that your product or service addresses.
- Use the most appropriate content type for this problem.
- Finally, set your content to reach people with this problem.
This strategy focuses on the person you are trying to reach, that is, your target audience who is concerned with what you offer, as it is the one with the greatest interest and the ultimate goal that you seek to reach and influence. And you need to understand that your content must meet the needs of the people who have the problem that your product addresses, in order for it to achieve its goal.
These steps must be adapted to suit your audience and your marketing goals , and whatever your activity, you must always start with your audience, and you must create content that suits this audience, and only then will the right people pay attention to you. Here is another strategy for writing marketing content with more detailed steps, which you can try and choose the most appropriate for your activity, and its steps are as follows:
First: Set SMART goals
You must set smart goals when writing the marketing content for your business, and they must be compatible with your marketing goals and the goals of the company on a larger scale, and in order to set a smart goal, it must be specific, measurable, achievable, and related to the nature of what you offer and specific to a specific time.
Among the goals that you can define while writing marketing content:
- Improve brand awareness.
- Increase revenue.
- Increase conversions from potential customers.
- Improve brand loyalty.
- Attracting strategic partners.
Second: Define KPI’s
According to the goals that you set in advance, define the main performance indicators (KPIs) for your goals, and they mean specific measurable points, through which you can measure your actual performance against the goals that you set. Have you achieved the goals in full, or exceeded them, or achieved only half of them, or did you not achieve anything? Of which.
Third: Determine the type of marketing content
Choose the type of content that you will create in order to achieve your goals, and you should start by thinking about your target audience and determine the personality of the ideal customer, and divide your audience into different segments according to its different characteristics; In order to address each segment with the most appropriate content for it.
And you need to answer some questions to know your target audience more deeply, and choose the most appropriate content for them, such as: What do they need from you? What are the challenges they would like to overcome? Why do they need your product or service? How can you help them succeed and overcome challenges? Where do they spend their time? What are their interests?
After answering the previous questions, take a look at the different types of marketing content that we mentioned; Determine the types of marketing content you will create that you expect to achieve your goals.
Fourth: Choose the appropriate channels for your content
Once you have decided on the type of content that you will market, this is the best time to choose the most appropriate medium or platform to publish your content. If you create a video, your primary channel will be YouTube, then you can expand the spread by sharing the video again on the various social platforms and on your website and blog.
Fifth: Determine the budget
Now, you have to determine the budget that you need to complete the content creation, publishing and marketing, so think about the type of content you have chosen and the channels on which it will be published, and select the programs or tools that you need to create the content, such as: subscribing to design or montage programs or buying a high-quality camera, and other Tools you may need.
And specify the people who will create the content, are they from the company’s employees, or do you need to request voiceover , writing , editing and design services from Fiverr , and do you need to subscribe to specific tools or resources to improve the content or measure the results later, and determine the necessities and what can be dispensed with and replaced with fewer resources cost; So you don’t find that the required budget is endlessly increasing.
Sixth: Create and publish content
Create and distribute your content so that it reaches, benefits and enjoys your audience, your audience may share your content with their peers and it may result in more conversions in actual customers, or you get ratings and recommendations from existing customers.
And you can allocate content on a monthly or weekly basis and schedule it on social media platforms with fixed dates, so that your content continues to spread and continuity, with the need to pay attention to the results it achieves moment by moment, while continuing to interact with the audience and communicate with them, and put their comments and opinions within your interests.
Seventh: Analyze the results
Finally, analyze your results so you can make any necessary changes to enhance your content marketing efforts and your team; In order to reach more audience. Look at your goals and your KPIs, to determine how successful your content marketing strategy is. Did you achieve your targets according to your KPIs? Were you about to access it? Or are you far from it?
You can follow some simple tips outlined by the Content Marketing Institute while developing your content writing strategy, including:
1. Keep your audience in mind, understand your customers and your audience’s expectations. Once you do, you can create content that solves their problems and helps your business thrive.
2. Don’t get distracted by endless content formats, standardize your content format; Become one-to-one and your audience will know that your content belongs to you before they even glimpse your brand name or logo.
3. Use the type of content and channel appropriate to your goals and audience, and do not waste your effort and money in useless means in order to cover all types of content, and appear in all means.
Marketing content writing tools
There are many free and paid tools that help you follow high-quality marketing content, and here are the top 6 tools you may need:
1. Google Docs
Google Docs is used to plan and prepare for writing marketing content and it is a free tool. It is the place where all the work is done before the final presentation. It is suitable for editing and collaborating between writers to come up with the best texts and ideas that will be used later in marketing content.
It provides a pleasant and smooth user experience, gives you access to edit for specific people, and view their feedback using suggestions, comments, and replies. It also makes it easy to upload Google Docs directly to different content management systems, and easy to share across different platforms.
2. Grammarly
One of the important tools in writing in English in particular, writing that contains spelling and grammatical errors may negatively affect the audience’s interaction with you, so you can use the Grammarly tool to review and evaluate the content you write linguistically and grammatically, and it also gives you an impression about the nature of the content you wrote, and whether it is official or Written in a friendly or semi-formal manner.
The tool works across multiple means of communication, from e-mail to various documents to social media, you can install the tool on Google Chrome browser, and you will be able to use it on any text you write, and enjoy the advantages of the various tool, as the tool protects you from being embarrassed by the public or losing confidence your. The tool includes a large part for free, as well as a bunch of additional paid features.
In the Arabic language, there are tools that offer the same benefit, such as the Sahali tool, which you can install on the Google Chrome browser, and it is characterized by simplicity and smoothness of use, as you add to it the text that you want to check, and it provides you with a full audit with identifying linguistic and spelling errors, and common errors found in Text.
3. Adobe Photoshop
The program for editing and modifying images is the most famous of all, and it is distinguished by its professionalism and the independence of the designs that are created through it. Using Photoshop in image editing will make your images more professional and distinguished, but the program needs a design expert to be able to deal with its various tools and capabilities, and complete the designs in record time. Precisely required adjustments, and Photoshop overcomes the shortcomings of most non-professional software.
Adobe also offers a wide range of other editing programs that you may need when creating marketing content, such as: InDesign for creating designs for magazines, newspapers, desktop publishing, and most printed and online media even, and Illustrator for logo designs, characters, and others.
And advanced video editing programs, such as: Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere , which offer a wide range of video editing tools for professional editing, and Adobe Audition , which specializes in editing audio clips and various podcasts. If you enter the world of writing marketing content, you will use an Adobe program to facilitate your work at least once.
4. Google Sheets
Google Sheets helps you plan your marketing content, as it is divided into vertical and horizontal cells, making it easy to put different links and relationships, and clarify the timing of publication. And being an organized tool, through which you can develop plans and present them to the work team, and it is also easy for you to add your team members, amend and make suggestions to improve the plan.
It is also an ideal tool for tracking the customer’s journey with appropriate content and tools and through the channels on which it is located. Spreadsheets can also be used to collect customer data, and re-target them again with paid advertising campaigns through various social media platforms.
5. Google Analytics
As we previously explained the importance of measuring and evaluating results in developing content and achieving goals, you must use at least one of these tools, and Google Analytics is one of the best of these free tools, as it is easy to use, obtain information and data and filter it, as it tells you how visitors can access Your website, providing accurate tracking of user traffic and behavior on it.
It also provides a set of tips to improve performance and develop it later, to provide a better and smoother user experience, and to maintain the interest of the audience within the site for as long as possible. It also offers a wide range of advanced options that the programming expert can benefit from, so the marketing specialist and the programming specialist can cooperate together to improve the user experience and improve the appearance of the website.
In conclusion
Remember, educating customers about the products and services you offer is much more important than inviting them directly to buy, and may result in increased customer conversions in the end. So, start building a strong relationship between your customers and your activity, to increase loyalty and trust, and provide them with messages that they want to hear and complete, and stop making annoying advertisements that cut off their interests, but rather be one of their main interests in writing marketing content.
Finally, you can seek the help of experts in writing marketing content of all kinds and in various fields through Fiverr, the largest Arab market for buying and selling microservices, to provide you with high-quality marketing content, and you can also seek the help of training and consulting experts , to improve the level of your services and evaluate your marketing content, and train you on some content writing skills catalog Plan and create your own content.