Durex is one of the many companies who utilizes content marketing very effectively. And it’s not Durex alone who is leveraging on content marketing.

The question is why are these big businesses doing content marketing? Does that also mean startups and smaller businesses should  look into content marketing?

Why Do Content Marketing?

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Here’s what content marketing mean, according to Wikipedia.

Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. Content marketing is also defined as 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.

The answer is simple then to why businesses are doing content marketing.

To drive profits. 

Content marketing is communicating with your potential customers without actually selling. It’s done by creating and sharing media to prospects & potential customers. Ultimately at the end of the content marketing funnel, your prospects trust you better, like you more and eventually buy from you.

Content marketing is said to be the future of marketing and it’s true. With the vast ocean of competitors offering the same types of services/products, one way a business can stand out is to give extreme value to their customers.

Take a look at big companies such as Coca-Cola, Redbull, Durex, Vaynerchuk Media (I’m sure you’ve heard of Gary Vee), Apple and Microsoft. These companies are using content marketing to drive their business. Why would businesses spend on content marketing? Because done correctly, it works.

The Misconceptions Of Content Marketing

Many people have misconceptions on content marketing and here are few of them.

1 – Writing Articles is Content Marketing

A way to do content marketing is by creating article content. But content marketing means so much more. Some types of content formats include articles, videos, infographics, how-tos, news, Snapchat videos, facebook live, photos, podcasts & more.

It is really any sort of marketing medium that enables you to deliver content. Some forms of content will work better for certain businesses. For example, a photo or video content marketing format will work well for a hair saloon business, but not so much if they were to do a podcast.

Then again it’s all very subjective to the creativity of the business.

3 – Put Up A Blog Post And People Will Rush To Buy From You

Many businesses create good & helpful blog content, giving value to their prospects. Creating blog content also improves the SEO and searchability of their website on Google as well, because the more website pages you have indexed online the more searchable the website is. No wonder many business and marketers are preaching about writing blog articles.

But while blogs are great for content marketing, but don’t expect customers rushing to buy from you after you publish your first blog post.

First of all, SEO takes some time to show results. There’s many factors to why a website ranks on the top page of Google even with a lot of content creation efforts poured in, it’ll take some time for your website to rank. Secondly, it also takes time to win the trust of your potential customers. Content marketing is about building a relationship with your prospects, and that takes time.

Too often businesses want to do this. They creep their prospects by selling too fast!:

Too many businesses do this. They jump to selling too fast!

3 – Content Marketing Is Only About Creating Helpful Stuff

People often think that content marketing is only about creating helpful stuff, tips & guides. But that’s not all. Content can also be funny, witty, stupid, remarkable and more.

Some brands (like Durex), don’t only come out with tips, guides & tricks type of content. They also invest time and money into creating funny content, awareness videos and more.

Watch: Durex #Connect Content Marketing Video

This is an example of a video content created by Durex. It’s an interview style video created to be sharing worthy by people who watched it. The video has received over 37,000,000 views and that number will be good for any business.

Note that the video is not exactly ‘helpful’. It simply reminds couples to disconnect from technology to connect with each other. You could say the video is a PSA or public service announcement. So content marketing is not about creating ‘valuable tips & tricks’ all the time. It’s okay to create fun, funny, witty or socially valuable content as well.

Start Here – How To Do Content Marketing

Content marketing can be an expensive depending on the format and medium you plan to go for. Copywriters charge starting from $100 just to write a blog post. There are companies who specializes in creating infographics and some focuses on creating videos.

Here I’ll briefly explain how to start doing content marketing at the lowest budget & time investment possible.

1 – Choose A Platform To Publish Content

You need a platform to publish content. This can be a blog on your website, a Facebook page, a YouTube account or even a Snapchat account.

Any platform will do but you’ll need to be able to consistently push out content, keeping in mind that content marketing is a long-term project.

Here are few content platforms I’d recommend

• Blog
• Facebook Page
• Instagram
• YouTube Channel
• Snapchat

Each platform will vary for different business but here are some guidelines.

Using a blog like WordPress would be really ideal for content marketing. It’s the easiest platform to start blogging and best of all it cost near to nothing. In fact, most of the blogs I run is on a WordPress platform. Make sure you choose a SEO-friendly and readable WordPress theme.

Publishing content on your Facebook page is also recommended. Why? Because people averagely spend at least 50 minutes on Facebook every day. It makes sense to publish content on where people hang out at.

Instagram works wonders for some businesses especially businesses who can publish picture-worthy photo content. An example of business types that do well on Instagram is fashion, food, lifestyle businesses and entertainment.

The top performing content genres on YouTube are product reviews, how-tos, and comedy. So depending on your business and the type of content you plan to create, YouTube can be a great platform for you.

The reason I included Snapchat here is because of the attention Snapchat videos get. The 10 seconds recording time limit Snapchat has means whoever watching your videos will be FOCUSING on the video. You get better engagement from your viewers.

2 – Creating Content

Next, it’s time to create content.

The best person to create content is you. Not only you know your business better than anybody else, it’ll cost you nothing except your time.

All you have to do is to put time each week to create content. It could be writing a blog post, recording a video, broadcasting a Facebook Live video or even creating some nice shareable graphics.

So how do you start to create content?

1 – Keyword & Market Research

The first step is to do a keyword or market research. I personally think it’s not enough to only a keyword research for content anymore. You’ll have to add in market research as well.

What type of content would your prospects like? What type of content makes your prospects smarter? What type of content can relate to your prospect?

Use Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner for some basic keyword research. To find content in your niche that is doing well, use BuzzSumo. I also like using Google Trends to find out what’s trending. And sometimes I turn to apps like Flipboard to find out which topics are trending.

2 – Create A Schedule

Many marketers swear by creating a full-fledged content marketing calendar before you start creating content. A calendar is a great way to make sure you’re consistent in content creation. However, some people (like me) find it harder to follow a full-fledged calendar.

Download a sample full-fledged content calendar

You can use Trello as an editorial calendar too. Link here: http://snip.ly/0vu1i

If you find it hard to plan & follow a full content calendar, I suggest that you simply take time off from your schedule for content creation. Simply block time slots out from your schedule each week to sit down and create content. I do this with a simple Google Calendar Schedule. Here’a simple Google Calendar content schedule you can use.

It’s best to post about once a week as a start. As long as you get content moving, it’s a good start. Don’t worry about having to create too much. Remember, it’s never about setting a goal when it comes to content marketing. Rather it’s about setting a system.

3 – Speeding Up Your Content Creation 

The best way to take time off creating content would be to hire someone to do it for you. When hiring a content creator, make sure he or she knows & understand your business. When working on a clients content projects, I sometimes come across businesses which I don’t understand. Here it’s very important to make sure your content marketer is someone who is willing to learn and understand your business.

Don’t have a budget to hire a content marketer? Here are some software that will help you.

Piktochart – Easy to create infographics, but again, time-consuming to create something nice.

Grammarly – This is an amazing tool for grammar corrections. Write better and cut proof-reading time.

Canva – Not good at creating graphics for your content? Use Canva.

Spinrewriter – Article spinner. I wouldn’t recommend spinning content and using it 100%. Instead, use this as a tool to quickly get ideas and create new content articles.

3 – How To Promote Your Content

Nobody will see your content unless you promote it. If you spend lots of time creating your time, you should spend even more time promoting your content.

Here are few of the sites I go to and things I do to promote content:

Facebook – You can promote your content to groups. Make sure you don’t link back to yourself too often without participating in the groups, or you’ll be seen as a spammer.

Facebook Ads – Pay for some ads to get your content moving. Usually, your budget does not have to be any more than $50, if you target your ads correctly.

Pinterest – Pinterest is a great place for how-tos, recipes and picture worthy content. There are more females users on this platform compared to men.

Blog Commenting – Comment on blogs and leave a link for readers to check out your content.

Email List – Send an email to your newsletter and inform them about your new content. You’ll need an email list for any blog you run.

Submit to A Community – You can submit your content to content sites such as Reddit, Quora or Medium.

Repurpose your content and post on different platforms – If you have an article content, repurpose it into different formats and post it into other social platforms such as Slideshare, YouTube, Linkedin, or Scribd.

4 – Collect Your Visitor’s Contact Information

So you got your readers pouring into your content. Whether it’s an infographic, blog post, video, Facebook Live or podcast, you must find a way to collect your visitor’s contact information. You can use email marketing software like Getresponse to collect your visitor’s contact information.

If your content is not based off your website, say like Snapchat video, you could always ask your visitors to go to your website to leave their contact information. Of course, you’ll have to offer something in return before they’ll leave their contact information with you. I like using Groupon as an example. As soon as you land on their website, you’ll be greeted with a pop-up asking you to enter your contact details to earn yourself a discount.

Visit Groupon and notice the pop-up!: https://www.groupon.com/

Another tool which is amazing for collecting emails from your visitors is SumoMe. It’s also free to use.

Conclusion – What’s Next With Content Marketing?

I hope the brief guide above is helpful for you to begin doing content marketing for your business. I use content marketing for few types of businesses including online and offline ones.

Content marketing is the future and I promise you’ll see the ROI when you constantly put effort into it.

Here are some additional content marketing tips before you head off:

• Share your content everywhere. Be everywhere. I mentioned choose a platform to publish your content, but ideally, you want to be everywhere.
• Diversify your content. Don’t just write blog posts. If you observe companies like Durex, they create and market a few types of content format from blog posts, videos, comics and more.
• Build a mailing list. You can constantly promote new content to your mailing list.
• Be generous. Everything can be found online. It’s okay to give away free resources, ideas, and ebooks to gain a mailing list.

What type of content marketing strategies are you currently implementing for your business? Comment below.

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