Content marketing is one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing that continues to thrive by bringing targeted traffic to your website. Small and multinational brands alike are incorporating content marketing in digital promotion campaigns to make the most out of what social media platforms have to offer.
The best part about content marketing is that it always keeps growing. There are new strategies at play every few weeks, and if you’re slow at keeping up with them, your reach may not be progressing at the rate it could be.
So, as we step into a new year with the latest technologies and marketing techniques making headway, what can you do to build brand awareness using content marketing? Read below to find out.
How Does Content Marketing Influence Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness refers to your target market’s familiarity with the services you’re offering, your products, and your brand itself. There are different degrees of brand awareness. Some people only know about your brand from its name, while some remember it because they have purchased your products.
This is where content plays an integral role; it builds brand awareness. Just go back a little and think about how fidget spinners became popular. Someone posted content on their Instagram while using fidget spinners. Soon rather than later, Google Search Engine was blasted with hundreds of questions regarding the new product on the horizon.
Keeping this in perspective, with the help of a holistic content marketing strategy, you can drive more traffic to your website, generate leads, and have far more potential to convert them into sales.
Let’s put it this way; the more people are aware of your brand, the more they will search about it on Google. This drives more traffic to your website, Instagram, Facebook, and social media profile.
5 Ways to Build Brand Awareness Using Content Marketing
You can incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) in your marketing campaign and content marketing to influence brand awareness. People may not know about your brand as of yet. But you can conveniently use non-branded search terms to drive more traffic to your website.
Wondering which content marketing strategies will help you out in this regard? Here are a few to begin with:
Before you create a content marketing strategy, the first thing you need to do is figure out who your target market is and what are the demographics of the people you’d like to reach out to your brand.
Most brands make this one common mistake: not researching their target audience. They don’t know their interests, what kind of content they like, and what approach will resonate with them.
So, always do your research before you come up with a content marketing approach.
If you want to impact your target audience, you need to define your brand’s unique selling proposition, i.e., your brand’s USP.
Once you launch a business, you already know plenty of competitors working in the industry, selling the same product, or offering the same services. So, why should the customers choose you?
To sell your brand, tell your target audience how you’re offering them a solution that no other brand has ever done. Portray yourself as the problem solver; only then you will make it far.
The only way your content marketing campaigns will work is by using data to drive your content. Various tools available on the website and social media platforms will let you interpret user data and then forge content strategies to make the most out of your reach.
Use these tools to monitor your website’s activity every week. It will allow you to determine which content marketing tactics are working and which aren’t. You can tailor your strategies to suit your needs and reach more audiences.
It is impossible to know which platforms will resonate more with your target audience. You are also unaware of which kind of content will click more with your market.
Some demographics resonate more with visual content, while others may be okay with reading blogs. A few content marketing tools are as follows:
In this regard, we recommend that you incorporate a diversified approach to reach more audiences. Use blogs, podcasts, videos, and social media posts on different platforms to target a diversified audience across different platforms.
This will drive more audience to your website while building impeccable brand awareness.
Lastly, content marketing is directly linked with influencer marketing. Influencers are creators with their own audience and promote your products or services in return for preset cost.
With the help of influencer marketing, you can reach out to potential target markets and share more user-generated content. Hiring influencers is an incredible way to build brand awareness and increase your business’s recognition.
Common FAQs About Content Marketing
Answering some of the most frequently asked questions about content marketing below.
Content is the core of everything you see on the internet. People go through the website, search for reviews, and get as much information as possible about a brand before making a purchase. Content plays a vital role in every marketing tactic, so it is important to build your brand’s digital presence.
It does. Content marketing helps build brand awareness and promotes your business in more ways than one. With the help of content, you can bridge the communication gap with your audience to generate more sales.
Final Thoughts
When business owners think about building brand awareness, the first thought that comes to their minds is publishing content on social media platforms hoping that people will notice. However, you can make your content marketing more bulletproof if you act strategically.
Publish content on third-party websites that are keen on promoting small businesses. Incorporate influencer marketing in your digital marketing campaign to reach more audiences. Content can make or break your campaign, so use it wisely.
Social proof is a concept that is as old as time. It has just begun to gain traction amongst online marketers as it explains a lot about the success of the marketing influence of some online ventures and the failure of others.
“Social proof in a social media context is the theory that accounts that have high follower numbers are trusted and followed more often”
It can be used to build trust in a social media environment for your business.
Social proof marketing is not new but often forgotten.
Peer pressure
One of the earliest influences on human development is something we have all experienced…” peer pressure”. When one person within your group of peers pressures you into doing something, you’re not so likely to do it.
When many people within your peer group are pressuring you to do something, you’re much more likely to do it. This will escalate as more people join in.
The world of social media is, as you’d guess, much like the real world. In a social media context, social proof comes into play when web users see that a large number of people already follow, like, share, or commented on a piece of content. The increased activity is seen as something desirable to join in on.
What video are you more likely to watch?
Another view of social proof is the idea that people will refer to the past actions of others when they’re unsure as to what they should do. When on YouTube, if someone isn’t sure they should comment on a video or not, a large number of comments will say to them “Yes, you definitely should.” No, or few, comments will say “No, not worth your time.”
Let’s take a look at a more practical setting that we’re all familiar with… television. TV shows have been using social proof for decades.
Watch a sitcom with canned laughter, or laugh tracks, in the background. When you hear those people laughing you’re more prone to laugh as well, increasing your enjoyment of the show and the chance that you’ll watch it more often.
Examples of social proof
There are a number of excellent examples of social proof over on this blog. I’ll summarize them in point form so you can quickly expand your knowledge here before clicking over:
Bloggers have been promoting their number of subscribers for years. More subscribers = more trustworthy.
A key guest blog on a relevantwebsite can increase sales better than an article in the New York Times, or a spot on CNN.
Yelp’s entire designs are centered around social proof – higher star ratings and better comments are a result of customerreviews. You’re more likely to go when more people have given it a high rating – just like peer pressure.
Customer testimonials have been used in commercials for years. Some real, some fake – both are examples of social proof.
These are all more advanced forms of social proof. That most immediate one, and the one that people will see the most often and make the highest number of judgments on, is quite simply your follower numbers.
A low number of Twitter followers leads to few people taking you seriously. Few subscribers on YouTube leads to people thinking that your videos aren’t any good.
What aspects of social proof should you focus on for success?
We just spoke about your follower numbers as a key aspect of social proof, but what else do you need to think about?
Here are some points to consider:
Positive social proof is better than negative
Negative social proof is the type of bullying behavior that we all resent. To look at the most basic examples in the Twitter images below, which are you more likely to click on? You’ll never truly win people’s trust with negative social proof, just like those schoolyard bullies.
Money is less persuasive than social proof
A study in the Wall Street Journal showed that consumers were more likely to make decisions based on social proof than the potential of saving money.
In the study, “Your neighbors are already doing it,” was more persuasive than “you’ll save $54/month” when it came to influencing consumer behavior!
Use pictures to make it real
Social media is the perfect platform for building social proof as it gives you a nearly limitless number of ways to attached pictures to your social proof. You can post photos with calls to action that breed comments that lead to social trust. You can make comments, with the author’s permission, and post them to your website along with their photo. Your blog posts can be filled with images of success enjoyed by your products or services.
Check out this excellent tweet that shows a brand with a story to tell, and with a picture added for visual impact:
Your best social proof may be the stories you tell
Statistics are great for bored, sorry, board meetings, but they are hardly ever going to truly interest people on social media. A compelling story, from a customer with a positive experience, could be positive social proof that increases engagement more than any other thing you do. People understand stories, people relate to stories, people are entertained by stories – statistics are work and are often ignored.
Influencers: The friendly online bullies
As discussed in the point form notes above, nothing quite equals the positivity of having a respected leader say something positive about your products or services. Their behavior is able to “bully” their users with their positive influence. They’re much more likely to trust your product when someone they trust speaks of it positively.
Social media is an absolute dream for this type of social proof – no more paying celebrities for an expensive commercial, just cut right to the key influencers in your industry!
Social proof is more than an ego
Social proof is something as old as the human race itself, but social signals and social media have made it something tangible for modern marketers to use. Remember the next time you make a push to increase your followers that you’re not stroking your own ego, you’re trying to show the next person that finds your account that you are worth their time and trust.
I couldn’t do it if I hadn’t learned a few things over the years about how to get people on my side:
Lots of time listening
Listening well.
Even if you already know what people are going to say, and even if there’s no way you can do what they want, start by listening. Being listened to is one of the things they want–that’s true of just about everyone.
That was one mistake I made on my first project: I had listened to people who wanted to volunteer but not to those who had volunteer jobs to offer. I assumed they’d be happy to have new volunteers, but I was wrong.
Ask lots of questions
Not only because everyone wants to be listened to. Careful questioning will help you determine what people really want, which is often different from what they say they want. It will also tell you what they have to offer.
Human-to-human connection
Look for ways to connect that have nothing to do with the work at hand. Maybe they have children the same age as yours, or they live somewhere you’ve vacationed, or you share the same hobby.
Even if none of that’s true, you can still make a bit of a connection on the basis of universal experiences. For instance, right now a large portion of the United States is suffering through extreme winter weather.
Let your own guard down
It’s always tough to know just how much of your personal life it’s OK to share in a business context. Many people err on the side of caution by sharing little or nothing about themselves. Instead, decide what you feel comfortable having other people know, and then give them a few details. You’ll make other people feel safer and engage their human side.
Say thank you
Think hard about who’s helped you or put him- or herself out, and make sure to thank him or her. That makes it much likelier he or she will put him- or herself out again for you next time.
Give praise
Most of us never get enough praise for the things we work hard to do. So if you want to influence someone, make sure to call out what he or she has done well and how he or she has contributed to your organization or your well-being. Do it in public if you can.
Always give people what they want
Obviously, this isn’t always an option. But if you can figure out what people really want or need and make sure they get it, they’ll be that much more likely to give you what you need from them.
