The importance of content marketing and some great content marketing examples!

Content marketing is one of the frequently mentioned terms in the marketing world today. It is known as an effective and valuable way to reach customers. According to many studies that we have studied, due to user trends, businesses have recently focused on Blogs, Videos, Content, and Podcasts.

For example, in 2020 up to 89% of businesses created content marketing strategies through Blog posts to attract users and satisfy their research needs. 86% of businesses often compare blog content to other formats. Or due to changes in search demand: more and more people find information through videos, so up to 87% of businesses say that the traffic to their website increases thanks to video marketing, etc.

It is not by chance that businesses focus on content marketing. They really realize its importance to the coverage of the business, helping to increase trust, attract customers and thereby increase traffic to the website.

They understand that the success of a business depends on customers, and in order to get many customers, businesses need to think of ways to promote brand images and attract and meet the needs of customers. Today, let's learn about the importance of content marketing and some content marketing examples so that you will have a more comprehensive view of this field!

What is Content Marketing?

First, we need to understand what is content marketing. Surely you also somewhat understand this phrase, but I will explain it once again more clearly!

Content marketing is an internet marketing strategy that entails creating, producing, and distributing content to a targeted audience. Businesses use it to attract attention and generate potential customers, grow their customer network, produce or boost online sales, make a large number of users know the brand and reputation of the business.

By generating and sharing great free material, content marketing draws new customers very effectively. It assists businesses in establishing long-term brand loyalty, providing consumers with useful information, and increasing consumer propensity to purchase products from the company in the future.

The first stage in content marketing is to identify the customer's needs. Then the material can reach users in a variety of ways, such as through blog posts, forum shares, news, videos, email, case studies, podcasts, tutorials, question-and-answer sections, photos, tips, etc.

Content marketing helps readers improve life knowledge by sharing all information about all areas of life: education, entertainment, perspectives, and multi-dimensional comments on a certain issue and thing.

Content Marketing is a process, a strategy of the marketing plan that a business sets out to achieve its business goals. Compared to regular promotional content, which customers can buy for some reason such as unique or cheap, content marketing is a way of providing useful content to potential customers to help them solve a problem. Valuable content shows a high level of customer interest.

In fact, content never calls customers to buy. Its sole mission is to create and distribute valuable, relevant content to attract and retain customers. Thereby, we see that the ultimate goal of content marketing is to "turn the people who are receiving the content into actual customers".

Why is Content Marketing powerful for e-commerce success?

1. Increase visibility and brand awareness.

The more people reach the content, the more people know the name of the brand: Content marketing is the golden key to help increase business efficiency and bring your brand to customers quickly. That's the reason why many individuals and businesses spend a lot of time and money creating unique and attractive Content Marketing products.

You can freely design and create content for blog posts, website posts, Facebook ads, videos, e-books as well as many other interesting forms to help attract potential customers. When readers find good and useful content, they often tend to share it with their friends or share on social media, thereby more and more people will know about your brand.

The first step in brand recognition: Brand names, logos, colors, and things that appear in your content marketing are what customers will see and subconsciously store in their memory.

Maybe at some point, when customers accidentally see your logo or brand name appear somewhere, they will remember you because they once read an interesting blog post and saw your business logo there.

It's also a very effective way to promote your brand, isn't it? So why not associate your brand with great content so that readers will always remember you with great experiences?

2. Drive traffic, increase conversion rate, and boost sales.

Increase visits to the site, make the website always at the top of search channels, social media: In truth, each business unit that has made an investment has a well-thought-out content marketing strategy for their website, blog, or social media page...

As a result, traffic is constantly expanding. Naturally, increased consumer interest leads to increased visitor numbers and conversion rates. More specifically, an effective content marketing strategy provides useful information to users. And when they realize that your website is an effective information solution, they will come back when needed. And of course, then the person who benefits is the business.

In addition, building good, impressive content will also help you push natural traffic (Organic Traffic) to increase the quality score to help your website get to the top faster.

Increase visitor interaction rate with products and services: When people see valuable material, they are more likely to be interested in connected products, which makes them intrigued, curious, and eager to learn more about the product. When this happens, client service becomes highly crucial.

Businesses must respond to questions and provide help to consumers in a timely manner; services such as live chat should be invested in and promoted, otherwise, customers will seek out another option rather than waiting for you for an extended period of time.

If you do the above steps well, you can completely convert visitors into clients and get potential orders.

One outstanding content marketing example is the story of Microsoft. Hit the psychology of reading user stories, Microsoft tells good stories on the blog. When users find your story valuable and meaningful, they are touched by your story, they will trust you and become your customer.

3. Build trust and relationships with clients.

Good content is also an integral part of maintaining strong relationships with existing customers. Each content marketing campaign is considered successful when it can create a connection between customers with your business, and with the brand that you bring.

When seeing the brand or mentioning the name of the store, customers immediately remember the products and services that your store provides. When you get to that point, your content channel is extremely effective. Especially when the content turns visitors into customers, care service current customers are important, you need to always take care of the content to increase the repurchase rate.

You must concentrate not only on content to attract new customers but also on content for existing clients. They are customers who have previously purchased your products and used your services, therefore if you treat them well, the chances of them purchasing from you again are very high.

With these customers, businesses need to focus on content regarding products, discounts, and gratitude for old customers so that they always feel special and cared for.

4. Position you as an expert with great content, informative information in the field, and helpful tips.

Building trust with customers is a long process. You cannot gain trust easily through just a few articles. It is a combination of many factors, and in particular, the need to regularly build and maintain quality content.

If your 10 contents are useful, but just 1-2 pieces of boring content can lose customers, they will no longer be interested in your product.  Therefore, become an expert and always provide useful information to customers so that when they need to learn, they will remember you first.

5. Involve the innovation with trends and research during content creation.

The world around us is constantly changing, and so are people's needs. So, you can't just stand in one place and do everything according to your personal feelings. This is even more true in the field of e-commerce, researching trends and learning about the market to build content is also how businesses improve and develop themselves.

If you do not keep up with the trends and needs of customers but keep providing information from a personal point of view, your content will not be able to reach customers. Remember that we have to provide what customers need and feel useful!

Another content marketing example: When the user's learning needs change. Instead of reading a long article full of text that will easily cause a feeling of boredom, inserting images will make the reader relax and even easier to absorb and remember the content.

Humans naturally tend to remember images better than text, so with the important content, you can find or design the right images to imprint into the subconscious of customers. Buffer has been at the forefront of this and recommends it as the ultimate marketing tool to help you build your own brand image.

Content marketing formats and examples

Content marketing is an extremely important element in any marketing campaign. Different content marketing formats can help you connect with customers in different ways. To please customers, you need to plan great marketing and bring the best experience for them. In this article, we will introduce you to the 5 most popular content marketing formats today.

1. Infographics

Infographics allow you to insert a large amount of information into a visual image that is easy to understand and remember. For example, if you have 15 different statistics from a case study, would you like to see: a graph icon with visual icons, charts, and graphics next to the statistics, or just a bulleted list?

The infographic is more effective than other types of content because it is eye-catching, easy to understand, easy to share, viral, etc. You should choose simple designs, consistent colors, harmony, concise text so that people use it without information overload.

Or for example, in food stores, instead of taking pictures of real food, design infographics and food photos that make users happy and excited to see. Especially fast food stores like McDonald's are very attractive to young children and make them feel close.

2. Blog content

This is the most used type of content. Speaking of types of content marketing, we have to talk about Blogs first. Many brands also make blog content a central part of their content marketing strategy. Because blog content is related to SEO, easy to search on Google, easy to share, reach the target audience, provide value to users quickly with low cost.

Blog posts make it easy to build relationships with your readers, helping with nurturing and conversion. For blogs, you can also easily measure traffic, analyze reader behavior to gain experience for campaign implementation.

When it comes to blogging content marketing examples, we can't help but mention Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) - a co-op and online business for those who enjoy spending time outdoors and participating in sports. Beyond their product sites, their blog receives a lot of organic search traffic, with 347.4 thousand visitors each month.

This is one of our favorite examples of e-commerce content marketing. With around 167.5 thousand backlinks referring to the blog as of May 2021, it's a content-heavy site. Utilizing high-volume search phrases and providing in-depth content, it provides value and captures the top-of-the-funnel audience.

3. Podcasts

Because of Covid 19, crowded entertainment activities such as cinemas, indoor and outdoor music stages are limited, most people have to work from home. Therefore, customers need a form of relief to make life less stuffy. And Podcasts are a simple, convenient way to listen to your favorite things.

Podcasts are becoming more and more popular, considered one of the most popular content marketing trends. Podcasts allow listeners to continuously absorb information anywhere in any situation. That could be while walking, jogging, or driving. This is also the most relaxing way to fall asleep.

However, producing a quality podcast is quite expensive because it requires businesses to equip quality audio equipment. But that is only a small problem if businesses want to go deeper into this marketing strategy.

A good example of a podcast: With TedTalks Daily, TED intended to reach out to a new audience of users who might be interested in topics like astronomy, homesteading, tree identification, personal finance, artificial intelligence, coding, and animal husbandry.

Commuters on public transportation may not be able to comfortably attend a video lesson while maintaining a feeling of their surroundings, but a podcast allows them to do so more readily. Every day, TEDTalks Daily offers something new.

TEDTalks gains from expanding its visibility, authoritative legitimacy, and name familiarity by incorporating the brand into another app environment – podcasts.

4. Videos

Video content is a form of content marketing that uses video to convey media information to customers. A well-made video spot reveals a different perspective of your company. It can also help you generate content that demonstrates how to do something or how something works more effectively.

Producing video content can be both costly and time-consuming. But most people nowadays are afraid to read the article content, instead, images and videos are preferred.

Here is a video content marketing example:

This is how Lazada has done its marketing campaign. Instead of posting articles and announcements about big promotions, they produced eye-catching videos, attracting viewers.

Every time you watch a program, you can see the video above and also want to take advantage of the offers that you see in the video. So that means Lazada has successfully completed this marketing campaign.

By the time of applying for the promotion, the number of customers visiting and buying goods increased significantly. So, is it worth investing in such video marketing? You probably already have your answer!

5. Social media

When it comes to content marketing formats, it is impossible not to mention social media. It is a pity if businesses ignore this marketing channel. Why do I say that? Do you find everyone around you almost using at least one social network? Every day they update the news, surf social networks many times.

Therefore, this is the fastest and easiest channel to reach customers that businesses cannot ignore.

For example, when your company releases a new product, you don't have a lot of money to produce marketing videos like Lazada, you can completely announce new products or make your own funny videos and post them on social networks. It's also a great idea and a convenient way to inform your customers.

Or do you remember Burger King's emotional call to support restaurant chains as thousands of employees are at risk of losing their jobs during the pandemic? With more than 40 thousand likes on Instagram, this appeal really spread to many of their customers and supported many restaurant chains at that time.

Content marketing plays an extremely important role in the growth of a business. It not only helps you expand your market, increase brand awareness and potential customers but also provides useful information and builds trust with customers. But the important thing is that you need to stay up to date and keep up with the trends, and always stand out with your own content colors.

We hope that the information we provide in this article is useful to you, and you can also get inspired and take advantage of the content marketing formats and their example to your business in the best way!