What is the best way to learn content marketing in one hour?

You’re designing a marketing plan for your business, but don’t know where to start? You’ve probably heard about content marketing and want to test the waters. But what is it exactly? And how do you get started? In this post I’m going to show you how to learn content marketing in less than one hour. This article is a beginner’s guide to content marketing and it’ll teach you what it is, why you should use it, and how you can use it to attract traffic.

But why learn content marketing? Because content marketing is changing how brands and businesses market online. It’s been called the “new SEO” because of its ability to generate massive amounts of traffic and business leads at an affordable price.

Define your audience

A good way to get started is to know who your audience is. Get to know them. What do they like? What do they want? Why are they on the internet right now? What are their concerns, their pains, and what makes them feel fulfilled? You should be able to write a profile about them: their socio-economic status, interests, and problems that need solving. Knowing this information will help you reach your audience.

You should generally understand:

• Their needs and wants
• Their pain points and how you can problem-solve for them
• How you can empathise with your audience
• Who you’re selling to (if applicable)
• What are their expectations 

What matters to your audience?

Successful content marketing starts with understanding your audience. Ask yourself: What do they want more than anything? What are their needs, wants, desires and problems? By figuring out the answers to these questions, you can identify the pain points they might be experiencing—and what you can do to help.

Here are a few of the things that matter most to your audience:

• Readers want to make informed decisions before purchasing a product or service.
• They want to find reliable sources for useful information about products and services in your industry.
• They’re not just looking for an answer; they’re looking for an actionable solution as well as a way to implement it.

How do they pick you over the competition?

To stand out over the competition, you have to know what sets your business apart. Ask yourself:

• What makes my company different?
• What value do my products/services offer?
• How do they meet my customer’s needs?
• What are my strengths, weaknesses and those of my competitors?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you identify your unique selling proposition and focus on it in your marketing.

What is the story you want to tell them?

The next step in the content marketing process is figuring out what you are going to say. It’s time to brainstorm topics for your content. This is one of the most important steps in the process and includes a few different methods you can use

• Tell a story
• Give them problem-solving information
• Be an expert
• Provide reviews or testimonials
• Share anecdotes, examples, or case studies

How can you make your brand different from everyone else’s?

So you’ve completed your market research, built a content marketing strategy, and are ready to create some content. Now you need to ask yourself: how can I make my brand different from everyone else’s? To do this, you need to understand the personality of your company. You should be able to sum it up in one simple sentence that encompasses who you are and what makes you different.

• Identify your strengths. What is so great about your brand? What makes it unique and stand out from the crowd?
• Identify your competition. Who else is out there doing what you do? How are they presenting themselves online?
• Define your USP (Unique Selling Point). This should answer one question: why should someone pick me over my competitors?
• Define your brand’s personality. What mood do you want people to be in when thinking about or interacting with your brand? Is it formal or casual? Young or old-fashioned? Playful or serious? These will influence how ‘talkative’ and ‘bubbly’ the writing style is across all of our content.
• Define your brand’s voice. Now that you’ve identified which adjectives describe the ‘mood’ of our brand, use these adjectives as verb forms (e.g., modern, playful) instead of nouns (e.g., modernity, playfulness). This will allow for consistency across all platforms once again – no matter where our customers run into us!

How can you match your product to their requirements?

You should ask yourself two questions:

• Can I satisfy the requirements of this audience?
• If not, am I in the right niche and/or do I have the right product?

If you can’t satisfy their requirements, and you’re in a big niche, then find a different audience. Or if you can’t satisfy their requirements and it seems like you might be able to for others in your niche, then find a different product.

Create content that matches your product and appeals to your audience

You need to create content that actually matches your product and appeals to your audience. This is why it’s important to have an audience persona in mind when you start researching for content. The more specific you are about the audience, the easier it will be for you to figure out what kind of content would appeal to them.

Here are some ideas on things to consider when researching for a new blog post:

• What are people searching for? Use SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs/Semrush/Uber Suggest/Moz, which will tell you what queries people are searching for around a particular topic. If there’s a lot of search volume around that query, then there’s likely a lot of interest in it as well.
• Ask your team! Think about who is closest to customers and who knows best about the customers’ pain points: sales or support teams? In many companies, sales or account managers have direct contact with existing or potential clients and can give you valuable insight into what type of content they need.

Identify what content is the most important for convincing them to buy

Before you begin creating content, take a step back and identify what content is the most important for convincing them to buy. Focus on producing content that will create the most value for your audience. The more value you can produce, the more sales you can drive. The best type of content is one that answers a question your customer has. It should be useful and engaging: educational and entertaining.

How does this fit into your sales funnel?

Once you’ve understood the basic tenets of content marketing, you need to understand how it fits into your sales funnel. Sales funnels are the journey prospects take from being unaware of your brand to becoming a customer for life. Inbound marketing is the strategy that supports these kinds of funnels.

There are three stages to good inbound sales funnels:

• Attracting strangers and turning them into visitors.
• Converting those visitors into leads.
• Closing those leads into customers. To achieve this transformation, you have to have a consistent influx of valuable content that can be consumed by strangers and turn them into advocates for your brand.

Conclusion

Content marketing isn’t that complicated once you get good at it. Content marketing is all about having a plan and knowing what your content will achieve. Some people think of content marketing as “blogging,” but it’s more than that—it involves anything from podcasts and videos to ebooks and downloadable guides. Content marketers then use this content to persuade their audience to buy an item, sign up for something, or take any other desired action.

Whether you’re a B2C or B2B company, learning how to market your business or organisation online is key in the new digital age. You should adopt content marketing strategies that go beyond the latest flavour of the month by focusing on creating valuable content and finding opportunities with long-term results. That will help your brand make meaningful connections with potential customers and improve overall visibility in the process.

Here’s the overall strategy to follow: read, think, and take action. Read what successful content marketers are having great success with; think about how their strategies might be adapted to your business or products; then take action by implementing your best ideas. If you do this, your content marketing will grow more effective over time.