The Importance of Content Marketing in the Digital Age

Digital transformation is producing a paradigm shift in doing and conceiving marketing. It’s not just about creating viral content that generates millions of likes and sharing it on social media. It is also about making users loyal through different platforms and offering personalized content that captures them in the brand’s dialogue.

In this moment of business change, we can see the trends toward the specialization of content so that if brands want to prosper in the market, they have to pay more attention to the consumer and their needs. That is the predominant role of content marketing, especially in visual storytelling.

Why is Content Marketing Important?

In our day-to-day life, we are surrounded by content. Hundreds of thousands of million pieces of content are published daily. Suppose we consider content marketing as a strategy aimed at awakening consumer interest. In that case, it implies the commitment to an optimized omnichannel strategy, which should lead us to a different way of doing content marketing. Look at the following samples:

• Improving the user experience with the brand through any channel.
• Increasing the brand’s notoriety in the digital field.
• Defining more operative workflows for managing the brand and its audiences.
• Increasing sales with lead capture and conversion processes.
• Loyalty to customers with personalized promotions.

As a result of the digital transformation, Content Marketing has gained even more importance thanks to omnichannel: better digestible and more personalized formats that can open new markets, introduce new products, and increase a company’s sales.

For all this, today more than ever, transformation and innovation processes in any Marketing department must know multiple contact channels (digital and physical) and understand their consumers perfectly. In other words, think and feel like them:

• What needs do they have?
• What are you willing to pay monetarily and emotionally for our product?
• Where do you feel most comfortable at the time of acquiring it?
• Through what means do you wish to receive the information?

The Use of Content Marketing in Different Technologies

Next, I show you some examples of the use of Content Marketing leveraged in different technologies and digital trends:

1. Virtual Reality

It will take the user experience to another level. The total immersion of the experience will cause an absolute change in how we consume the content, for example, in the real estate sector.

2. Interactive Wi-Fi

We can use Wi-Fi as a marketing and communication channel to better understand our customers and communicate with them in a personalized way according to their interests and preferences. For example, stores or department stores that, when they detect that you are in their facilities, send you a message via your mobile saying where the product you were looking for is.

3. Chatbots

This technology is based on Artificial Intelligence and allows companies to solve, monitor, and centralize agile queries and incidents through instant messaging platforms. For example, in the retail sector, clothing and cosmetics brands have developed chatbots on Facebook Messenger to allow customers to talk with their virtual assistants. The virtual assistant has the important function of recommending specific products based on their tastes, style of dress, skin tone, etc.

In short, the key is getting to know your audience, preparing good content, and detecting new technological trends. In this way, we can tell a coherent story about the brand innovatively, satisfying our customers’ needs and establishing a relationship of trust.

A Content Execution Plan

Once you have defined the type of content you will create, you must establish the creation process. Your content execution plan should be a step-by-step map of how an idea becomes a finished product. This plan adds stability to your marketing content efforts and ensures that you can track the progress of each piece of content at each level.

What should a content execution plan include? A program, an idea in the process, a project report, and a content chain of command.

The Program

You already know what you want to achieve with your content; how much content do you need? Do you need a video for a week? Two blog posts per day? A webinar and a demonstration per month? Create a content program and share it with your team. All people involved in content marketing should know the program so that deadlines do not surprise them. The shorter the term, the more people can participate in each content.

The Idea

Who is in charge of generating ideas? Certain people should be responsible for contributing content ideas periodically, but this should also be open to anyone with a good idea. You do not want someone to shut up an idea due to a closed creation process. It would help you define where to send ideas and who approves them. Once your idea is the app, continue it.

The Report

You might consider implementing mandatory reports if your content involves multiple people. A report summarizes the idea behind the content, the objectives, the target audience, the deadline, and the role of each person involved in the project. A good report helps avoid mistakes and dizziness and reduces questions between project managers and content creators. Create a template for the report and share it with your team. In this case, you may need a content marketing platform. You can find many platforms available on the market.

The Creation

All the people who create content must know their place in the chain toward the final product. When creating content, for example, start with the writers. After the written part, you could pass the document to an editor. Then, you could continue with the designers or video makers. Once the content is complete, you can continue with the manager. Any required changes will be sent to the corresponding creator and, after that, to a manager for final approval. Maybe you have a project manager managing the process between these steps. You may also not have the resources to take on this complex process, which involves only a writer and a designer. In any case, people should know their place in the process and their responsibilities in the project.