Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing: Two Complementary Strategies – Page 6

Is content marketing the same as inbound marketing? The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. In fact, they are closely related but have very distinct roles.

While content marketing focuses on creating content, inbound marketing is about targeting the right people, determining the type of message they need, determining the best medium, and distributing it at the right time.

In this article, we will take a closer look at inbound marketing and content marketing and examine how they are similar, how they depend on each other for success and results, and how they are complementary marketing strategies.

What is Content Marketing?

The term “content marketing” was coined and popularized by Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute website, in 2001.

While the term “content marketing” was coined nearly 20 years ago, its practice goes back even further. In fact, one of the earliest examples dates back to 1732 when Benjamin Franklin first published Poor Richard’s Almanac to promote his printing business.

Content Marketing Institute, a leading organization in the field of education, training, research, and content marketing defines content marketing as:

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

What Are the Objectives of Content Marketing?

From the above definition, it can be concluded that the main objectives of implementing a content marketing strategy are:

Generate traffic and quality leads on your website
Increase your notoriety and credibility
Establish a relationship of trust with your community and build loyalty
Engaging your audience

As more and more consumers disdain invasive marketing methods and ignore sales pitches, content marketing has emerged as a preferred way to slowly build relationships with potential customers, and it is these relationships that lead to sales.

So content marketing is a great strategy for building trust and awareness of your brand which allows you to gradually build and maintain relationships with prospects.

The implementation of content marketing allows your company or brand to have full-fledged media to engage in dialogue with your prospects.

So, successful content marketing will allow you to broaden and diversify your user base, increase sales, and enhance brand recognition and credibility.

To get started in content marketing you need to put a plan in place and take the first step. It’s easy to experience sensory overload when thinking about the huge amount of information available on content marketing. It is helpful to start with a few goals in mind to streamline your plan.

To be successful, it helps to set a defined goal for your marketing. Content should never be created for the sake of creating it. Each piece of content should help you provide the answers your ideal customers are looking for and achieve your goal.

To be successful, it is useful to set a defined goal for your marketing. Content should never be created just for the sake of creating it. Every piece of content should help you achieve your goal.

For example, you may want to build a list, convert a prospect into a customer, or make your brand or product known and more credible.

Before, during, and after creating your content, ask yourself if this content will help you achieve the goals you have set for your marketing campaign. If the content does not, it should not be included in your plans.

Once the goal is defined, the next step is to create a mission statement. Your mission statement explains the purpose of a site or company.

It identifies your target audience, what you intend to convey to them, and what you expect to achieve once your message is disseminated. Remember that it is important to have a clearly defined audience in mind.

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What is the Content Marketing Process?

The content marketing process has six steps.

Research

The research includes knowing your audience, exploring new platforms, and discovering new tools, and the latest industry trends to create content based on your target audience.

Determine a strategy

This step involves using a content marketing strategy to attract the right audience to your site. It is essential to determine your goals and target audience, the content you will write – in other words, a list of keywords for your content, and where you will distribute it.

Content creation

At this stage, you need to create interesting and engaging content that provides value and answers your consumers’ questions. These can be guides, infographics, or ebooks, to name a few.

Content Distribution

After publication, distribute it on different social media channels and platforms and email newsletters to reach your target readers and convince them to be active members of your community by asking them to sign up for your newsletter so you can engage with them regularly using valuable content to build a relationship.

Measure and Evaluate

At this point, you will collect data to measure the performance of your content. With the help of many online tools, you can collect data on the performance of your content like the number of views, email data, etc. to evaluate their effectiveness.

Repurpose

Repurposing is all about enhancing your existing content to give it more value. Add information such as graphics, update facts and figures, and make it more engaging so that your readers and followers take more desired actions and turn them into qualified leads.

Content Is King

“Content is King“. In fact, it was the title of an essay written by Bill Gates in 1996 that was published on the Microsoft website. In it, he describes the future of the Internet as a content marketplace.

“Content is the area where I expect a lot of real money to be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. “

Content is king, but since Google wants to see the most informative and well-founded texts that offer added value to readers, content marketing is increasingly linked to SEO. Content marketing then implements all the necessary means to improve content quality and SEO.

What Is the Role of SEO In Content Marketing?

When it comes to SEO, there are several specific ranking factors to consider. According to Google, there are over 200 criteria that the search engine considers when crawling and indexing your content.

The most important SEO ranking factors for Google are:

A secure and accessible website
Page speed
Mobile-friendliness
Optimized content
Domain authority
Technical referencing
User experience (RankBrain)
Links

As you can see content is one of the most important ranking factors. And SEO is also a fundamental part of content marketing. Just as if you create content while neglecting SEO, your content won’t reach your target audience, you can’t do SEO without content, the two are linked to each other.

When it comes to optimizing content for SEO, Google’s search algorithm is keyword-based. In other words, to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to know which keywords to target and create quality content around those keywords.

These are the words and phrases that people use when searching for information, as well as latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords, which are words and phrases that describe the topics covered in your content in an organic and natural way.

Content length is also a factor in search engine ranking. Indeed, Google wants the content to be of a certain quality and length but not to write more words just to make the content longer. But if a topic needs depth, you need to give it depth.

What Are The Benefits of Content Marketing?

The impact of content marketing as part of your marketing strategy is significant. The main benefits of implementing a content marketing strategy for your business are:

Increases site traffic

Publishing content that provides value to your readers increases traffic to your site and makes your readers and potential customers look forward to receiving your content and promotions. They will be motivated to enjoy the content they love so much and share it with their friends and family.

More referral traffic

Contributing to external publications as a guest allows you to link to your site.

More social traffic

Sharing your content on social media platforms makes more users see and read your content. Organize your content, so your reader can quickly find something that catches their attention. Bold, eye-catching headlines, bullet points, and italics will help you achieve this goal.

Lower marketing costs

Content marketing is cost-effective but time-consuming

Improved search engine visibility

Indexing more quality pages can give you a better chance of ranking for more search queries. Search engines, other websites, and, most importantly, your visitors will reward you for consistently publishing quality content.

Improve lead generation campaigns

Creating quality content will attract and engage more visitors. The key to successful content marketing for better lead generation is to target each subset of your audience with specific types of content.

Increase customer retention

Successful content marketing involves thoroughly understanding your potential customers’ wants and needs. By identifying your target audience and a particular problem or issue you can address, you can begin to create your content. Doing so will help you build customer loyalty.

Increases brand awareness

By writing more and better content, you will increase your site’s perceived expertise, authority, relevance, and trust, which generates more inbound links from external sources.

Successful content marketing will create many excellent opportunities for your business. You will be able to increase your brand awareness and reach new customers. You’ll make a diverse user base, contacting potential customers.

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What Are the Types of content marketing?

The most common types of content are blogs, ebooks, and newsletters. Content marketing is not limited to text; it is possible and highly recommended to consider other formats such as graphics, videos, podcasts, webinars, and any other type of content that is likely to interest the audience relevant to your business.

Regardless of the medium, all content must communicate with an audience and inspire them to action.

Choose the type of content you feel most comfortable working with as a blogger. You’ll be able to get the best response from your potential customers.

Below are some of the most popular forms of online content that experienced marketers focus on.

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Blog

Blogging is a popular type of content marketing for small businesses because it’s a relatively inexpensive way to build credibility for your site in the eyes of search engines.

Writing relevant and newsworthy blog posts, coupled with an effective SEO strategy, gives your site a better chance of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), which means more people will find your site.

You can think of blogging as a place to tell your company’s story and show your thought leadership or industry expertise. If done well, regular blogging gives people a reason to return to your site.

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Ebooks

eBooks are a longer form of content marketing. They are usually detailed, in-depth, and much longer than the average blog post.

eBooks and white papers are a common technique known as “gated content” or “premium content.”

This content does not directly sell your product but provides valuable information to your target audience. Ebooks are also a great way to generate an email list.

As they are precious, white paper and ebooks are perfect for gathering information about prospects.

You can request basic information through a form, such as an email address, which is most often needed to know where the premium content should get sent.

While a blog post is free for everyone, an in-depth report that took much work may require the visitor to give information about themselves in exchange.

A freelance artist can design a cover for your eBook inexpensively, but it gives your eBook a professional touch and makes it stand out.

Include high-quality images, references, and links to your website and other authorities.

If you do it right, this kind of content will help you get better quality leads, better understand your audience, and identify and create the most relevant content for your audience.

EBook benefits twofold: you give your customers a helpful resource, and by adding them to your mailing list, you can market them repeatedly.

Checklists

Checklists are worksheets that outline the steps or skills needed to achieve a result.

Checklists are great content for small businesses because they are easy to make and offer great value to your potential customers.

Infographics

An infographic takes standard text information and creates a creative and visually appealing graphic. Computer graphics are perfect for getting your audience’s attention.

They are helpful because they quickly present relevant and valuable information. In addition, you can link to your website or an offer you are promoting, which is beneficial for SEO.

One of the main reasons why infographics are so powerful is due to social media. An interesting visual or image is more likely to be seen, loved, and shared.

A good infographic presented to the right audience has a chance to go viral. Your content could completely change your business.

Case Studies

A case study examines a customer’s specific problem and how your company helped solve it.

Case studies attract potential customers and help you gain their trust when presented and promoted correctly. You can present case studies as downloadable PDFs, infographics, or web pages.

Videos

Probably the most engaging medium, video is one of the best forms of content you can create. It’s scalable and ideal for desktop, mobile, and tablet users. Video is also great for social media.

They’re easy to share on social networks and offer better interaction than plain text. Upload your video anywhere: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

Some users are only present on one platform, and by excluding one, you risk missing out on some viewers.

When creating a video, it is crucial to tell a story. Use all the standard components of storytelling – introduction, conflict, climax, resolution. It will take time to build a script and some writing and editing.

The end of your video should create suspense for other content or entice your viewers to become customers by promoting an offer or leading them to a sales page.

As with ebooks, the time it takes to acquire an attractive thumbnail for your video is worth it. A thumbnail serves as a preview and, in some cases, is your best method of getting someone to click on your video.

This image must be convincing. Downloading in HD is also very useful for increasing the number of views.

Creating video content may require a more significant investment, but with the increasing popularity of visual marketing, this is an essential aspect of many content marketing plans.

Webinars

Webinars are online events that can be live or pre-recorded professional presentations to a pre-registered audience.

Webinars are popular for B2B marketing, allowing hosts to present live slides or videos of their presentations.

Webinars typically include interactive elements for the audience, such as polls and Q&A.

Podcasts

The secret of podcasts is that your content should be more than informative; it should also be entertaining. Listeners don’t listen to podcasts for advertising, so offering them added value is of utmost importance.

It is important to note that podcast listeners are not the same as your average audience. You will not target the same customers with a three-minute YouTube video and a thirty-minute podcast.

But podcast listeners tend to be loyal and will invest time in a show, listening to it regularly if the content provided is of high quality.

Podcasts have some unique advantages that make them perfect for content marketing. They are convenient to consume. Since a podcast is audio-only, you can listen to them while you do other tasks, such as driving or cleaning.

Your podcast can enrich your listeners while they go about their daily business. They are also much easier and cheaper to produce than a video. All you need is the right microphone and recording program to get started.

One of the best ways to add value to your listeners is to involve guests and experts in your podcast. It’s great to connect with your audience and create authority in your niche.

Finally, many of your competitors probably don’t offer podcasts. Although the popularity of podcasts has increased dramatically, there is still plenty of room for shows. Some niche markets may have little or no competition in the podcasting sphere.

A dynamic content marketing plan will include all of the above and more. Different media types are best suited to each audience. Study and listen to your audience, then target them with relevant content.

There are many other forms of content like: Tool reviews, giveaways, memes, listicles, interviews, definition articles, guides, FAQs, illustrations, book summaries, white papers, and more.

Inbound Marketing

What Is Inbound Marketing?

HubSpot defines inbound marketing as:

“Inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. While outbound marketing interrupts your audience with content they don’t always want, inbound marketing forms connections they are looking for and solves problems they already have.”

From this definition, we can conclude that inbound marketing is the set of techniques to attract qualified visitors, generate leads, convert them into customers, and build loyalty. The objective is to move the prospect through the sales cycle progressively.

Inbound marketing is, therefore, about developing a strategy by which you propose targeted offers to customers through social media, search engines, promotions, and other relevant content, consistently and sustainably aiming to make your company a reference for all its targets let the customers make the decision themselves. This methodology can work for all types of companies: start-ups, B2C and B2B…

Inbound marketing also relies on a social selling approach, customer relationship management throughout the buying process, lead conversion tools (landing page, forms, conversion funnels, etc.), and any other brand promotion lever.

In short, inbound marketing is the more global and systemic approach into which content marketing must integrate.

What Are Inbound Marketing Methodologies And Strategies?

Inbound marketing methodology is about attracting prospects to your website and starting to help, support and empower them at each stage of engagement until they have become customers.

The Inbound methodology moves the buyer, not through a funnel but a flywheel.

The flywheel is a business model adopted by HubSpot unlike the sales funnel, a perpetual, never-ending cycle of customer satisfaction that contributes to business growth and consists of three stages: Attract, Engage, and Delight.

Let’s take a closer look at how these three stages work:

Attract: it’s about attracting the right people, i.e., people who are most likely to become prospects and ultimately satisfied customers, through relevant content at the right time and quality conversations that make you a trusted advisor they want to engage with. To attract target audience and buyer personas, you need to:

Create and publish content on your site and social media that provides value that your prospects can share with their friends and family using a variety of content formats like a blog or video that your chances prefer.
Optimize all content with an SEO strategy that will allow your content to appear organically on the search engine results page (SERP) on the topics that matter most to your prospects.
You are creating ads to increase your brand awareness with your target audience.
Attract: it’s about attracting the right people – those most likely to become prospects and ultimately satisfied customers – with relevant content at the right time and quality conversations that make you a trusted advisor they want to engage with.

Engage: this is about presenting ideas and solutions that fit their problems and goals, making them more likely to buy from you. To engage prospects in this marketing approach, you must:

Communicating with prospects and customers using conversational tools such as email, bots, live chat, or messaging apps in a way that makes them want to build long-term relationships with you by providing information about the value your company will bring them.
Use conversion tools like CTAs, forms, and lead feeds to capture information from prospects who visit your site.
We use all lead and customer information in CRM to personalize the website experience with relevant content and the buyer’s journey with emails and workflows.
You create brand loyalty by targeting specific audiences with your social content or ads.

Delight: this is about providing help and support to enable customers to make a successful purchase for which they become advocates and promoters of a brand. According to the inbound marketing methodology, to delight customers, you must:

Act as advisors and experts who help customers at all times using automated messaging and marketing in conjunction with chatbots and thoughtful and timely surveys to provide the correct information at specific times throughout the customer journey to ensure they have meaning and value.
Conduct satisfaction surveys and social media listening.
Respond to interactions with information that helps, supports, and encourages followers to show you are listening and care.

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What Are the Advantages of Inbound Marketing?

Is sustainable
Generates relevant leads
Strengthens brand position
Builds trust
Increases brand visibility
Is cost-effective

Inbound marketing is, above all, a methodology that will allow you to make the most of your content strategy.

Let’s look at some strategies used in inbound marketing:

Personas Marketing:

From a precise knowledge of the core target audience, you will be able to define a content strategy perfectly adapted to your customers’ problems.

Purchasing Path

The purchase path is the way to represent the steps and actions taken by a customer who is considering buying a given service or product. The content strategy must be based on your persona’s buying journey, hence the need to create content adapted to each step of the conversion funnel (awareness, consideration, and decision making).

Call-to-Action

Call-to-action buttons will convert visitors into leads. Indeed, we can retrieve our readers’ contact information by offering, for example, high-value-added content for download at the end of an article.

Marketing Automation

If you start generating many marketing leads, you won’t have time to process them all. Marketing automation allows you to send content automatically to your prospects based on predefined criteria to move them through the sales cycle. You will only have to contact the “hottest” prospects.

Social Selling

It is necessary to set up a strategy involving all the company’s employees to encourage them to share corporate content with their network.

Indeed, social selling does not only consist of using social networks (Facebook, Linked In, Twitter). It is an approach based on the notions of personal branding, storytelling, networking, and content marketing.

To do social selling, you must first create high-value-added content so that your brand can arouse emotions and “tell” a real story. Then it is a question of massively sharing this content on social networks to reach the maximum number of targets.

SEO

SEO is considered in inbound marketing, as the content is written must be optimized for search engines.

Thus, combining SEO and inbound marketing ensures that your content marketing efforts are as effective as possible. Even with excellent quality content, it is necessary to carry out specific actions to improve its referencing in search engines.

A clear SEO strategy allows authors to write content corresponding to the right target audience.

Thanks to the data, they can determine the topics that arouse consumers’ interest, improve their publications’ position in search engines, and thus increase their conversion rate.

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What Are the Similarities and Differences Between Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing?

Similarities:

– Content is the central element and ingredient of both content marketing and inbound marketing strategies.

– Both strategies are non-interruptive and practice a more customer-centric marketing approach that considers customer needs and satisfaction above all else.

– Both strategies rely on the slow building of a relationship between a company and its target audience to generate leads and convert customers.

Differences:

– Inbound marketing addresses specific buyer personas, while content marketing focuses on a broad target audience.

– Inbound marketing focuses on developing a website and its content, encouraging readers to act such as inquiring, buying a product, or filling out a form.

– Content marketing, on the other hand, focuses on the specific methods of creating and distributing content across multiple channels.

-Inbound marketing covers other strategies that contribute to organic SEO, website creation, maintenance and optimization, ad serving, and online reputation monitoring, which does not include content marketing.

Inbound Marketing: A Complementary Strategy to Content Marketing

Content creation alone cannot optimize content for SEO. Of course, before measuring the results of content marketing, the content must reach its targets and be read by the right audience.

Inbound marketing encompasses all marketing activities that bring site visitors in organically by aligning original, quality content with your customers’ interests.

In this sense, content marketing can be considered an element of inbound marketing.

Because content marketing rates with other inbound marketing techniques like technical SEO and paid advertising helps fuel your inbound marketing engine.

On the other hand attracting is not about attracting everyone and anyone – you want to attract people who will become prospects and eventually customers.

You can attract them with relevant content, like blog posts. In the next step, you need to convert them into leads. Content is also crucial at this stage.

Using inbound marketing methodology can influence your content marketing strategy to help you attract the right audience, convert leads, close deals and delight your existing customers.

Content marketing, as its name suggests, focuses on creating and distributing unique and relevant content. In contrast, inbound marketing focuses on distributing content to attract and retain a targeted audience to generate a profitable action from the customer.

We can therefore say that these are two complementary strategies, one focused on creating and distributing premium content and the other on prioritizing the customer experience to maximize its effectiveness.

Regular content production can effectively attract prospects looking for answers and generate traffic, but it is not enough to capture customers. And that’s where inbound marketing comes in and uses content to attract and qualify prospects, move them along the buyer’s journey and convert them into loyal customers.

Inbound Marketing focuses more on building relationships and implements a process using marketing automation tools to acquire leads and convert them into satisfied customers.

Inbound marketing, with automated workflows, allows you to schedule emails focused on valuable and relevant content to build trust with a prospect and get them to see you as a partner or thought leader.

If your customers are happy, they will stay longer and be so glad to recommend you to their colleagues.

This methodology can work for all types of companies: start-ups, B2C and B2B…

Inbound marketing relies on a social selling approach, customer relationship management throughout the buying process, lead conversion tools (landing page, forms, conversion funnels, etc.), and any other brand promotion lever.

Conclusion

Content marketing and inbound marketing are two non-disruptive marketing methods with the same end goal. Both strategies aim to attract targets to raise awareness of your brand and build long-term loyalty.

Content marketing focuses on a strategy of creating compelling, helpful, and unique content and sharing it on various social media channels to build relationships with potential customers.

Inbound marketing uses a variety of strategies to target prospects, provide them with the right type of content in the right places, and encourage them to respond to specific calls to action and convert.

Inbound marketing is a more holistic approach that covers the entire marketing-to-sales process, from the first contact with a prospect to the one that re-launches the buying process.

However, a successful inbound marketing strategy cannot stand apart from a base of relevant content covering the different stages of the buying process.

Therefore, content marketing can serve as a foundation for the inbound marketing strategy to optimize content.

It would, therefore, not be wrong to say that these are two complementary marketing strategies that should both be part of your online marketing strategy to generate more leads and increase the chances of success for your brand.

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