At The Complete Guide to Content Marketing - DO Edition 2024

At DO COMMUNICATION we are obsessed about all things digital, and especially digital marketing.

Today, we are sharing our updated take on content marketing and how it helps with your organic and paid traffic generation. So, without further trumpery, let’s begin.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a business strategy for creating, publishing, and distributing customer centric content for greater engagement and possibly sales of goods or services. The ultimate goal of every content marketing strategy is and should be conversion. Because why spend a truckload of money on writers, designers and AI content tools, if nothing sells?

Key Components

Since it’s a strategy, it has a lot of moving pieces. Like every business strategy, you start with your goals and objectives, assess the current situation, activate content creation, and then test the waters by distributing it among your target audience.

Let’s have a look at the steps involved in detail.

Content Assessment and Planning

You begin with an audit of your existing content.

1. Create a list of your content profiles. It includes your web page content, blogs, articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, paid ad copies, and basically anything else that is a customer facing text or image.
2. Assess the quality of the content you have posted. For this you may need the services of some top specced content creators, i.e., copywriters, video creators, and search engine optimization experts.
3. Categorize and organize your content by type and use case. For example, your organic content copies can be bucketed for a review by SEO professionals while your paid ad copies and social media creatives are marked for the more expensive services of copywriters and video creators.
4. Evaluate past performance to identify the good, bad, and the ugly stuff. There might be blog posts that you posted in 1998 before the dot com bubble burst. Do you still need them? Only a content audit can tell. You can further categorize content performance by:
   1. Traffic, paid and organic
   2. Engagement metrics, such as likes, shares, comments, time on page, etc.
   3. SEO performance, i.e., is the content ranking, and if yes then where? No one is looking at the second page on Google.
   4. Conversation rates, separated by source medium
   5. Brand identity, more on this later
5. Identify content gaps and opportunities by researching the competition. Start by searching for your core keywords, i.e., the most important keywords you want to rank for, and checking who ranks and why. Once you know where the gaps are, you can start deeper analysis using tools like SEMRUSH and Google Keyword Planner.
6. Finally, collaborate with all stakeholders to understand their current and future content requirements. For example, the SEO team may be looking to scale up the blogs and articles by writing more in-depth pieces, the performance marketing team might be looking for more emphatic ad copies and creatives, and the YouTube team is looking to engage more people with quality research and dynamic infographics.
7. Create a content roadmap.

Content Creation and Review

The next step is to assign content roles (internally or to freelancer and content marketing agencies) and setting delivery schedules. Content delivery schedules also vary by requirement. For instance,

• On-page SEO content needs to be evenly spaced, e.g., a blog post that goes live every Thursday, a weekly news and media update, and web page content enhancements that were needed yesterday.
• The bulk of off-page SEO content has to be up and about before you cross the mid-way mark in your monthly reporting cycle.
• Social media posts that are on a daily or weekly schedule.
• Ad copy updates that are usually needed right now.
• YouTube video scripts that should be ready a week in advance.

So, you get the gist.

And, you will not be surprised to know that most delays happen during the creation phase only. Sometimes because the content is bad or delayed, and sometimes because the reviewer did not have time to give a nod of approval.

Speaking of bad content.

Ways to identify bad content

There can be a number of combinations, in no specific order:

• The content is not grammatically sound.
• The content is grammatically okay, but a bore to read.
• The content is too funny or excitable.
• It does not capture your brand or style.
• There is just something off, you cannot say what.
• The images are bad.
• There are too many white guys, and you are an Indian brand, or vice versa.
• The video messaging is off, etc.
• The video is fine, the audio is bad (trust us on this one, users hate videos with bad audio).
• The content is fine-ish but you are a perfectionist sod.

Once all these hurdles are crossed and the content is reviewed, revamped, or re-written, it’s time to publish.

Content Distribution

Contrary to the “fire and forget” approach followed by novice content marketers and SEO professionals, content publishing is both an art and a science.

For the science part, you need to understand who your audience are, what are their likes and dislikes, what is their search behavior, and how you can reach out to them. And the art is all about when to post, when they are most likely to consume the content you are putting out.

Different types of content pieces require different kinds of publishing processes. Here are some key things to remember when publishing your content.

SEO Content:

Blogs, articles, web page content, FAQs, and other content that goes on your website can be called SEO content. Because the motive is to grow the organic reach of your business. After the helpful content update by Google, answering customer queries on your website does help your rankings. That is why, top SEOs recommend posting regularly and at predefined frequency. In theory, after a while the search engine crawlers learn your content posting pattern and start indexing your website at given intervals. Hence, improving the chances of indexing and ranking much faster.

Emailers:

A tried and tested form of content marketing, emailers are a quick and easy way to collect leads. But only when you are sending these out when your customers are most likely to engage with them. If you are shooting your MailChimps first thing on Monday morning, your customer may already have their hands full, and not time to taste your content cocktail.

Social Media Posts:

Numerous studies indicate that there is a time and place for everything. So is true for your social media posts as well. Have you ever wondered why most of your contacts are not engaging with the cutest kitten video you just posted on Instagram? This excellent article about social media posting patterns on HubSpot may have the answer. But to sum it for you, social media engagement metrics can tell you when your customers are more likely to be online on their social accounts (from their work phone or laptop of course). And, that is when you should be putting out your content.

Videos and Podcasts:

Similar to social media, video content also requires a nuanced approach for posting. Most influencers and video content creators on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion, time their content for maximum visibility. Videos are most viewed when your customer is at home and relaxed. Podcasts on the other hand are played when people are driving or traveling to and from work.

Gated Content

This is the niche content, which you have spent a lot of time and money researching and publishing, and which isn’t available anywhere else on the internet. Gated content often includes ebooks, case studies, and white papers. This type of content is more likely to be consumed after a customer has already engaged with your website and is now looking for further information. Gated content can be placed behind free sign-ups or a nifty credit card paywall. That we leave to you.

Infographics

At DO COMMUNICATION, we love infographics. These can be placed anywhere and everywhere. Whether it’s a blog or a social media post, or any other format of content (except maybe podcasts), infographics can add a note of authenticity to your content, especially the ones representing numbers. For example, here’s an infographic, which is just a Google Analytics graph showing the organic traffic journey of one of our edutech clients.

Despite reading all of the written word so far, this one visual piece of information is probably the most convincing for you to believe that content marketing really works (if done right). Somehow infographics have that power, a psychological impact if you will, on the viewer's mind. Imperio!

Analytics and Review

In the world of digital marketing, success can be fleeting if you are not careful. You have written the most awesome blog of the century but forgot to update it. Now your competition has the most awesome blog of the century ranking in first place.

That is why, tracking performance of your content and optimizing it regularly is essential for success. Be it search engine optimization, Google Ads, or social media marketing, you need continuous improvement or else someone is gonna start doing it better. It might not be fair, but that’s how the world works.

Once you have published the content and a suitable interval has passed, which may be a month for a blog and a couple of days for a social media post or a PPC ad, start the review process by juxtaposing actuals versus projected. Typically this is a team task, and you will need a professional SEO and SEM agency to helm the analytics part, make sense of the data, and come up with optimization suggestions.

What’s next?

Optimize, post more, review, and repeat.

What makes Content Marketing important?

A HubSpot client research shows that over 29 percent of companies are using content marketing in 2024. Why? Because it's an effective tool to communicate with customers, and if you are smart about it, content marketing can cost way less than traditional marketing methods.

Here are the top reasons why content marketing is gaining preference:

• Consumers are now tired of repetitive, click-bait content, and they absolutely hate intrusive ads. For instance, I, the writer of this blog, have patience no more for even the YouTube video narrators who keep repeating themselves for the sake of increasing runtimes. And how many of us haven’t tried an ad blocker? Content marketing though is all about the stuff your customers are actively looking for, which means it’s an effective way to generate more leads.
• Good content is great for your brand and can even help in building new ones. And if you are publishing great content, then you benefit from brand recall and new audience discovery. Just look at the YouTube success stories, the content there may not always suit your taste, but for people engaging with it, it’s great content.
• Content marketing also builds trust in people, companies, and brands. As it also enables user generated content, i.e., the reviews and comments on your posts. And most users are more likely to believe an actual user review than what your marketing brochure says.

Summing Up

In conclusion, content marketing is an essential strategy for modern businesses, driving both organic and paid traffic while enhancing brand visibility and trust. At DO COMMUNICATION, we are dedicated to staying at the forefront of digital marketing, and our comprehensive guide reflects our updated insights for 2024.

By conducting thorough content assessments, creating high-quality and engaging content, strategically distributing it, and continuously analyzing and optimizing performance, businesses can effectively leverage content marketing to achieve their goals. Embracing these practices not only aligns with current consumer preferences but also provides a cost-effective alternative to traditional marketing methods, fostering stronger customer relationships and driving conversions