What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing refers to the use of relevant and engaging content to influence the market’s purchasing decision. Although, it is never direct about it. Instead, it offers helpful, entertaining and even viral content. You get engaged. You remember the brand that brought you that content. You begin to trust the brand. That’s content role.
It was never intended to convert – at least, not right away. That’s conversion marketing’s role. And, this is done through tried and tested landing pages, banners, ads and what-not. Content, as we know it, isn’t really a part of this conversion framework. It is just there to support.
Conversion and Content
So, with conversion content marketing, the differences blur. Through the use of highly targeted helpful content, conversion can happen right away. Of course, you can still distinguish it from conversion marketing. Here are some conversion content marketing principles to remember:
1. Conversion is still optional: Unlike landing pages, which are developed to convert, content is still there to influence, not convert. Conversion remains optional. You give the user a choice to sign-up or subscribe. You give them an option for premium extended content or to have a customer support person call with more information. It is never about limiting access to your content. Content remains free.
2. Conversion content marketing pages aren’t always tested: Landing pages go through the A/B performance testing. They have to. You need to know pages that are more effective in converting your target audience. Conversion content marketing pages, on the other hand, don’t always go through testing. While testing helps, conversion is still not the main goal of these pages. The objective is still to have content that people will find helpful. So, take it upon yourself to do more work. Test your content, and refine it where necessary.
3. Content can come in different forms: You are not stuck to creating blogs for your conversion content marketing. Content can be anything. It could be a video, a web application, an infographic.... Conversion happens with how you word your call to action when it comes to these content.
