What Is Content Marketing?

You see this page here? This is an example of content marketing. If you are reading this, then it means our effort at content marketing paid off. In fact, this entire section is an example of how content marketing works for online marketplaces and other websites.

Content Marketing involves creating content that is of value to your customer and publishing it where it can be found easily - on your web store, on your blog, on social, YouTube, forums and other relevant online publications. If done well, content marketing increases your brand's visibility on search engines and helps drive traffic to your online marketplace or store.

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How To Create Useful Content For Marketing Your Marketplace or Online Brand

Why did we write this post about the benefits of content marketing? Sure, an article like this will help you learn more about digital marketing and help you promote your business better. It will enable you to drive more traffic to your marketplace or web store and ultimately help increase your revenues. And what is good for our merchants is ultimately good for us.

But this article has another purpose as well. It brought you to our site, for starters. And by the time you scroll down to the end of this page you will hopefully click the nice 'AI Chatbot' button and start building a chatbot on Wotabot. Or maybe not? But maybe someone else will? Maybe you will share this post with your friends or tell them about Wotabot? You get the point.

The Name's Bond. James Bond.

Content Marketing is nothing new. It has been around a long time. A lot of kids' movies are fantastic content marketing exercises. A new animated movie comes out and all the kids want the action figures to play with afterward, generating truckloads of $$ for the merchandising companies involved.

Look at James Bond. I could tell you that my new, luxury, 2-million-bhp supercar is really, really cool (and maybe leave you shaken but not quite stirred...). Or I could just have James Bond blow it up spectacularly in his next movie. Mission accomplished, 100,000 cars sold the very next week (BMW Z3 - Golden Eye).

Strictly speaking, that's product placement, but it is an example of content marketing being deployed in an entertainment format. A better example would be if I created some content that was of more long-term value to you.

Lets Take Something Mundane, Like Power Tools.

So I offer you an electric drill - comes with 8 bits for wood, steel and concrete, extra-long power cord, 2 year warranty, all yours for $69.00. I expect you to know what to do with it and I sell it to you and off you go with it and start drilling holes all over the countryside.

Wouldn't it be better if I gave you a little booklet that showed you how to build a table, with nice little diagrams in it? Now I have empowered you. I've taught you a new skill. I've turned you into a carpenter. Now you can actually get all your money's worth out of the drill and do things with it that you never knew before.

And since you are building a table, perhaps I can offer you an electric saw, an electric planer, some chisels, a hammer and nails and a roll of measuring tape too?

Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising (or blowing up my hardware store spectacularly in the next Hollywood blockbuster), I've created content that is actually useful to you. This is content that inspires trust in my products, shows you how to use my products and helps me sell you related items as well.

Of course we'll have the booklet online, where people can share it on social media and woodworking forums, and Google can pick up some keywords and help me score some points in the search engine optimization department too. No point printing it - that just adds to printing costs, chops down trees and certainly does not get into Google (print media can be a great way of disseminating content, but let us exhaust all digital channels before we get there).

Making Content Marketing Work For You

There's lots of different ways you can make content marketing work for you. You could be selling women's clothing online. Along with your entire product catalog of dresses and shoes, you could run a fashion blog too. Cover the latest style trends, give out fashion tips, become a style guru. Your industry sees you now as a respectable style icon, and will trust your opinion as a trendsetter.

Or you could be selling sportswear, to get really specific - your own line of gym pants, running shoes and workout accessories. Instead of simply selling your products in a store online, promote healthy living. Put up healthy-eating articles, nutritional tips, workout routines.

Content Marketing may not work for everyone, of course, or even be a viable option for many. Not everyone has the time and aptitude for weaving stories out of thin air. Online story-telling and content generation may not be your strong point. Maybe you are better at product development and personal networking.

You could always get someone to generate content for you - a copywriter or a content marketer or a blogger who covers your industry. But they may not always have the depth of involvement with your industry or possess the high levels of energy required for a fully-fledged content marketing exercise.

Making A Long-Term Investment

Content Marketing requires continous involvement, and results may take several months to materialise. It is not a one-off job. You cannot just write 2 pages about the benefits your products bring and leave it at that. Content Marketing is like a fireplace that needs constant refuelling and you will need to tweak your content several times before it appears in search results.

There's hundreds of thousands of articles, how-to's and self-help guides being published online every month. To make your content stand out would take a long-term commitment and a content marketing strategy that evolves over a period of time. Perhaps you would be better off investing your marketing $$ in traditional digital or offline advertising.

Content Marketing may take a long time to show results. But once it does, the boost to your brand is far greater than any short-lived, dollar-intensive ad campaign. Content marketing helps you build your brand, inspires confidence in your business and shows everyone that you truly are an expert in your field. If you are in for the long haul, content marketing is one area of marketing you should really look into investing in.

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