What is content marketing?

Content marketing differs from traditional advertising methods in some important ways. The purpose of content marketing is not to sell products or services directly.

What is content marketing?

As people are now confronted by so many different brands countless times every day, brands need to distinguish themselves from their competitors and establish their own audiences. For this goal, a concept called content marketing is often used, which we are now hearing more and more about. Content marketing differs from traditional advertising methods in some important ways. The purpose of content marketing is not to sell products or services directly.
Rather, it aims to familiarize customers with the brand identity over a longer period of time using carefully prepared content. Content marketing differs from traditional advertising methods in some important ways. The purpose of content marketing is not to sell products or services directly. Rather, it aims to familiarize customers with the brand identity over a longer period of time using carefully prepared content.

This marketing content serves functions such as informing customers, responding to their needs, and finding solutions. Rather than trying to sell a specific product, as traditional marketing does, content marketing ensures that your customers are focused on the brand rather than the products. It does so by using pre-prepared content to portray the identity of the brand or the principles that it champions. In this way, it helps to create stronger ties with both current and potential customers.

How is this different from traditional promotional methods?

Using communications to influence the audience is a very important issue in content marketing. The content should be designed in such a way that it is informative without disturbing the customer. This is precisely the difference between traditional promotional methods and content marketing. Traditional ads are prepared to appear suddenly in media outlets like radio, television, magazines, or billboards and directly stimulate people’s desires to make purchases. In contrast, quality content marketing is a method that will indirectly steer customers to make purchases of their own accord.

Which tools can be used for content marketing?

Content marketing is not a new idea, although we have recently been hearing this term more and more often. This method has been used for many years, but the applicable marketing formats of the past were quite limited for it. Content marketing began with printed formats such as newspapers, magazines, and comics, but today many different formats can be used, including vlogs, interviews, podcasts, webinars, surveys, photographs, question and answer sessions, product reviews, videos, and mobile applications.
While the use of printed formats continues, the popularity of these newer formats is quite high. Of course, social media is the most preferred tool for delivering these forms of marketing to customers. As people spend many hours daily on social media platforms, these platforms can help businesses and small enterprises advertise their brands or products and make these advertisements continuous. In short, content marketing is a marketing method that does not adopt direct sales as a principle; it aims to direct the focus to brand presence and identity with carefully prepared continuous, useful, interesting, and customer-relevant content.

Why should we use content marketing?

One of the most important elements in creating content marketing for a brand is the ability to communicate with customers directly, avoiding any intermediaries. It will become very easy to connect with both current and potential customers using content marketing, as you can directly convey your brand’s ideas, products, and messages to your customers with the help of creative formats.
Since you are promoting the general identity of the brand, not focusing on one single product or service, the bond that you create with your customers will not be dependent on a single product. Thanks to the connection established with the help of content marketing, customers will be more likely to purchase each new product or service that you release. Content marketing allows you to communicate directly with your own customer base. First of all, analyzing your audience and planning content based on what they will or will not like gives you the opportunity to address an audience directly related to your brand, services, or products. Interacting directly with your potential audience is important in increasing your sales.

Secondly, if you maintain continuity in content marketing, awareness of your brand will start to increase. If your target audience is exposed to regular content, your brand name or logo will stick in their minds. Thus, when your customers need a relevant product or service, your brand will be the first one that they think of.
The platform that you use for content marketing allows you to create shareable content, which needs to be creative, new, and catchy. With such content and the shares that it gets, it becomes easier for your brand to stand out. Shareable content will cause more interaction and traffic on your social media platform or website with increased sales as an expected outcome. Content marketing is the most preferred method of small enterprises and nonprofit organizations, as it helps reach new customers directly, adopt a brand identity, and increase sales and click traffic, all of which serve to develop the brand.

How are content marketing strategies formulated?

Content marketing may deviate from its intended purpose if it is applied without adopting a good strategy. The first step in a good strategy is to determine the target audience. Asking yourself who you want to inform with the content will bring you to your target audience. After determining the target audience, you then need to determine which formats and platforms are effective for that audience.
In this way, it will be possible to convey developments faster by focusing on a single tool or platform instead of using many different tools. Another step done after determining the audience is identifying the problems or needs of that audience. Many consumer purchases center around solving needs. If you present the content that you have prepared for your products and services in accordance with the problems and needs of your customers, you will be more likely to see a significant increase in both your sales and ideas.

The answer to how your brand can help the audience will also help you determine what content to share. Furthermore, getting to know your competitors and keeping close tabs on what they are doing is also important for a content marketing strategy. By following them closely, you will avoid repeating what rival brands have done before. Finally, a content marketing strategy must be planned for the long term. After a while, if the content, creative ideas, and information fizzle out, the strategy may turn into simple social media usage. To prevent this, the strategy needs to be planned and implemented for a long time frame.

How are content ideas generated?

Although the popular content appreciated by customers is different every year, the first step in generating content ideas is always analyzing the audience. Observing which content was followed by increased sales or which shares were followed by page traffic increases is necessary in deciding what direction to go in with new content ideas. Here, it can be suggested that you create content that will get people talking or offering their own ideas.
In this way, you will reach more people by ensuring that sharing occurs, and you will also have the opportunity to learn what your potential customers think in more detail. Conducting trials like this, you’ll be able to see which content ideas for brands and products are more effective than others. In addition, a purpose for the content ideas should be determined.

Deciding whether you are producing content to appear more frequently in search engines or to be shared more often on social media will give you further guidance in the process of creating new content ideas. Just as different content ideas will help you reach more customers, they will also help you get closer to customers in different ways. This is why audience analysis is the brand’s key to understanding how content ideas should progress. If your customers prefer traditional ideas, your current customers will be more satisfied if you continue proceeding along that path. However, since the goal in content marketing is always to gain a wider customer network, trying a few different content ideas outside of your usual pattern will also help you gain potential customers.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Frequently Asked Questions

Simplify your social media publishing and save time.
A social media scheduler is a feature that lets you schedule your posts and will automatically publish them at a particular time or date on your specified social media accounts, whether that be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Twitter. Learn more.
With RADAAR, you can create a post and schedule it to be published on Facebook (pages), Instagram (business accounts), Twitter, and LinkedIn (company pages) for now. Soon you'll be able to schedule posts on Pinterest, YouTube, and Vimeo. Learn more.
Yes! But you need an Instagram business account connected to a Facebook page. Unfortunately, multiple pictures, stories, videos, and IGTVs are not supported due to API limitations. Learn more.
Absolutely! You can reschedule, copy, or move any of the posts by using the drag & drop function. Learn more.
A powerful social media scheduling tool allows your team to work together and ensures your content is published without delays, even outside of office hours. That means you can streamline your workflow, stay focused, and save time. Learn more.
RADAAR supports all important post formats such as single pictures, videos, multiple pictures, and text at the moment. Limits are based on each network's API. Learn more.
Yes. You can easily collaborate with your team members and even invite your clients as guests to review, accept, reject, or give feedback on your scheduled content. There's no limit on invitations. Learn more.
Yes. You can easily export your scheduled posts in PowerPoint, Excel, or CSV format. Learn more.