An Original Guide to Content Marketing and Digital Marketing [Researched 2024]

Content is all about talking to your audience using written words. So, whether you are talking to them through the company brochure, your TV ads, your product wrapper, books, your website, social media posts, videos, audio podcasts, newsletters, memes or any other form — all of it is content. That vast and all-encompassing it is!

Whether you are an individual trying to scale up your influence, a business trying to engage your customers, a community trying to expand its reach — one has to let his/her/its voice be heard far and wide and this can only be achieved through written content.

So, the content was always there since the start of the age of industrialization but it looks like it has suddenly come to the front of marketing and communication now.

Yes, content writing is one of the most aspired career options of this generation and one of the most in-demand services of the corporate world today.

There are primarily two reasons for this sudden development:

1.The slow, gradual changes that were taking place in technology, internet and a shift from offline to the online world

The invention of the internet was a gateway to the creation of an alternate reality. Since internet came into being, gradually each of us began to go online to visit sites, search for information, read books, meet people, make friends, buy products (services), review services, recommend products and people, work to make a living, entertain ourselves, seek inspiration, motivate others and so much more. Gradually, we started spending more time on internet and less time offline.

This shift was noted by businesses who now had to create an online presence if they were to seek the attention of their target audience and hence, businesses started to create content to build their visibility online. This began in the form of a website but it grew exponentially with the advent of social media.

The virtual world, as many call it, is an ecosystem in itself and any individual or organization that wants to create a meaningful presence needs targeted and well-researched content for it. Bit by bit, companies were creating content to enhance their image online and connect with their audience.

This process was gradual and not every organization felt the need to do this since they believed that people were spending only a part of their life online. The rest of the time, they were still spending in offline activities like working, meeting and interacting with others.

Hence, not everybody was in a hurry or had the strategic vision to come online.

2. COVID and its short and long term consequences on business and life

COVID just did not have implication on health and mortality. It disrupted life, business and how we interacted as a species. Lockdowns and social distancing meant that people had to adapt to a new lifestyle, overnight! This new lifestyle meant spending even more time online.

It brought almost all the interaction online. Businesses that were slow in their adaptation of their online model, were forced to speed up the process since they did not have much of an engagement offline.

The first reason created the entire framework and the second reason gave the much needed compulsion to make the transition for all. That’s why content writing services have suddenly come at the forefront of every business that is trying to adapt to this new normal.

So, what are the different forms of content that individuals and businesses need — it may be in the form of articles, blog posts, website pages, newsletters, social media engagement, forum posts, online ads, Vlogs, video scripts, and audio podcasts.

Now the next question that comes to mind is that how does content help individuals and businesses online:

1. Content helps organizations talk to and engage with their target audience
2. Content adds value to the reader and motivates him (her) to keep coming back for more
3. The content encourages readers to take action
4. Content influences the decision-making ability of the readers and helps them make choices that provide a win-win solution to both audience and service providers
5. Content helps organizations to differentiate themselves. A well-crafted content helps a company stand out, separate wheat from the chaff!
6. Content makes a personal connection with readers, helps them to discover aspects about their own selves which they may be unaware of
7. Content informs, empowers and encourages readers to take charge and establishes a brand as a credible source to seek information and help from!

As is clear from the above list that content can itself become a complete marketing tool for an organization. But for a piece of content to deliver the above expectations, it should be

• Well-researched
• Written with a clear objective
• Original and error-free
• Engaging
• With a clear CTA (call to action)
• Optimized in terms of tone and linguistic complexity to cater to the needs of target audience

Content writing is a serious business. Its ability to become a brand’s voice is what makes it important, influential and non-negotiable. So, while businesses are exploring ways to create a new normal, content writing is going to play a huge role in defining the scope and scalability of brands in the online world. It is both exciting and intriguing since it will be largely through content that the initial impressions about a brand would be created among the minds of prospects.

Add to this the internet connectivity and the wide reach of social media and we know that these first impressions would be here to stay. So, it becomes very critical for organizations to have a detailed, well-thought strategy for content creation that would focus on the brand’s objectives and would have the depth required to make a kick ass initial impression.

Content writing is here to stay. It is still in its initial stages and a lot of exploration is yet to be done in times to come. But one thing is for sure, for organizations looking for the next stimulus for growth, the answer could lie in coming up with the right kind of content.

The world has taken a leap towards digital marketing. According to an estimate, around 24 % of the 5700 surveyed businesses contribute hugely to social media for their success.

The power of social media can be estimated with the fact that around 89 % of North Americans are on social media channels alone. It is a door of opportunity for those who are looking to take a greater bite of success. Today, companies are rising from scratch and becoming big players. How do you think they made it possible?

There can be several factors but the most significant is the incorporation of tools and strategies of digital marketing in their business that contributed to their exponential growth. Brands are reaching out to influencers more often than before. With the advent of the latest Analytics tools, the format of Social media has changed completely.

Now they are not merely a communication platform but a B2B and B2C marketing ocean.

1. Increased traffic and engagement- The sole purpose of digital marketing is to take your business to a new height where your business can be touched by maximum people. It aims at expanding your business, turning your company from local to global.
2. Digital marketing has helped businesses to expand rapidly with an increased number of sales and product distribution. Digital marketing is a huge field. It involves automation and manual techniques to improve brand visibility and conversion rate. Channelizing businesses through social media is on fire because social media marketing has helped B2C businesses to grow rapidly.
3. The Digital Funnel- Before the digital revolution, the concept of funnel creation was an elaborate process and always took a salesperson to engage with a potential customer. That’s too much work. The advent of digital funnels, two powerful tools, multi-stage interactivity and Analytics, has helped to shorten the process and create effective sales funnel to target only the potential customer.
4. The workspace can be personalized and you can run your business from your living room with a laptop or pc, thanks to Digital Marketing! With the combination of metrics, customer engagement statistics and interactivity, now it is possible to analyze customer behaviour patterns and using this data to provide personalized marketing response.
5. Interactivity tracking- Social media enables people to connect with various companies, browse various products, ads etc. where people can ask questions, give feedback, like and engage with posts. All this activity can be shown in a graphical representation to enable businesses to understand customer behaviour, analyze the success percentage of a campaign and plan marketing strategy accordingly.
6. Tools like SEMrush and keyword management software have enabled content writers to target potential customers through persuasive writing, thanks to digital marketing! People can track, follow, and watch influencers and successively enters the marketing funnel. Before 2019, it was not possible to engage people at this level but today it is possible due to digital marketing.
7. Power of advertising- Advertising industry has taken a massive leap in recent years. Influencer marketing, social media marketing, funnel marketing, campaign-driven marketing, all this is possible due to digital marketing.
8. Today, every big and small business can approach a marketing agency and ask them to advertise their business, brand, product or services. One of the greatest conveniences that digital marketing has welcomed is ‘no cost bar’, which means you can advertise even with a small investment.
9. Gone are the days when companies had to put hefty sums of money into advertising. Another important factor is that it has given wings to startups and entrepreneurs who initially start with lesser investment.
10. Ease of communication and feedback- Communication and feedback are pillars of Analytics and marketing strategy. With chatbots, it is now possible to converse directly with any customers that visit your website/ Business page. It uses text, voice and messages to answer queries and aware customer of your products. It is very useful and helps in conversion.
11. Chatbots help in giving personalized services and target potential customers. Not only does it provide accurate and organized customer query management but it reduces the cost of hiring customer relation executives. You should be aware where to use chatbots, for ex- pages linked with social media platforms and software or products can harness its power.
12. The power of influencer marketing- It is more likely for people to believe a real person’s reviews and recommendations more than any advertisement.
13. People want to get surer about what they are investing in. Here comes in influencer marketing. Businesses can hire influencers across various platforms with a sufficient number of followers and ask them to recommend their services or product. People tend to convert more with this marketing strategy.
14. Influencer marketing has become a million-dollar industry and it really works! Instagram and Facebook are two powerful platforms to generate sales and attract potential. The driving force of digital marketers is how well are they equipped with the latest trends and shifts.
15. The more accurate your predictions and marketing strategy is, the more successful digital marketer you become.
16. Artificial Intelligence- Do you know whether it’s a bot or real human who just responded to your campaign? No, then you have a catch here. Incorporating Blockchain technologies and artificial intelligence into your business analytics can help you track even the subtlest activity that software can’t track.
17. It helps in tracking malicious bot activities and provides you more reliable and ‘ready-for-action’ analytics. With reliable information and statistics, it also gives you a more actionable marketing strategy. Benefits of AI include increased engagement rates, more sales and conversion, better customer relation, enhanced personalization and protection of marketing assets. It makes sure that every penny that you spend goes in the right direction.

Digital marketing is the new face of advertisement and the backbone of rapid success. Digital marketing has brought control in people’s hands and skyrocketed the sales trajectory. It is therefore important for businesses not to ignore this opportunity and dive into the world of digital opportunity and dominate the market.

The wording inside a book is considered as an example of content in simple terms.

Generally, the content produced by writers can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, e-books, photos, and infographics that answer specific questions people have and provide them with something they could not get anywhere else.

Blog, and social networks are still the basic means to publish content on the internet.

Content that is unique, high-quality, interesting and relevant contributes significantly to the success of companies on the Internet. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer activity.

The invention of the world wide web in 1990 led to the growth of the term content. It does not mean that content writing was not there before. It started long ago when humans started painting pictures on cave walls but the term ‘Content Writing’ was coined in the nineteenth century and created a completely different Industry.

It is fact that before 1990 content usage limited to publishing like books, news dailies and magazines. But subsequent edge towards websites and blogs made almost every computer user a content writer if he desires to publish online. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter led the trend to a more profound extent. Twitter made everyone a publisher to express his own views on social and technological issues.

Video content is any content format that features or includes video, like vlogs, animated GIFs, live videos, presentations, and webinars. It is a highly effective form of content and its popularity has progressed hand-in-hand with the rise of social media.

Even though so many of us consume online videos daily, many marketers still aren’t using video as part of their digital marketing strategy as they are not perceiving the best results that it concludes the relevance of written content even today. But many researchers suggest that formats like video support text and make the audience feel as close to the story as possible.

SEO writing is a form of writing that helps websites become more visible to major search engines. A highly visible website with good content appears on the first few pages of results when someone searches for that topic.

Living in the unprecedented times of a pandemic, it is but natural for one to wonder what the future has in store for us. Sure, most corporations have been suffering, but the effect on small businesses and organizations has been unparalleled. Without the intention of being mistaken as an alarmist, I believe this would prove to be the deciding factor of whether or not an organization has the potential to survive and thrive.

The introduction of hurdles and barriers pertaining to the entire system of live events, conferences, and face-to-face advertising to promote businesses has left companies askew. In such circumstances, the virtues of resilience and adaptability become the key to one’s survival, not to mention the survival of a company. Development of contingent solutions and mitigating ongoing crises is how one should tackle said issues.

An excellent way of doing that, for the time, is investing in the ever so resourceful field of Digital Marketing.

If your business just so happens to be one in which face-to-face meetings are a necessity, you are now in a position of losing clients for the reason that the majority of your prospective clients would avoid any human interaction. The idea of waltzing in and shaking your hand and dealing with someone does not prove to be the idea they have in their mind anymore.

Switching over to online marketing appears and is the best alternative. It is, at the moment, a bloodbath out there, and the only way an organization would survive is by stepping up their Digital Marketing game.

The reality is not that Digital Marketing is a bad thing; in fact, it is the polar opposite of it. It is easy to implement and cost-effective, bringing along with itself paramount profit, and the following paragraphs would describe why such is its nature. Designing and asserting your own web presence goes a long way towards encompassing customers for your service or product. Day-to-day hours of your business do not apply to the realm of the internet.

Here, potential customers are active round the clock, which not only helps increase visibility by a lot but also makes your product available to the customer at all times. Your business appears to be open when at times when in reality, it is closed.

The real world is a cold place ruled by giant MNCs, and you might have seen the evidence for yourself.

Shops and buildings being destroyed only for them to be reconstructed for a mall full of big brands, large companies moving into towns and wiping out comparatively smaller businesses, it is all in front of us.

Amazon would be called the online equivalent of this, headed by the richest man in the world. It is but wise to understand that corporations no longer have a grip on the steering wheel; it is the public that is in the driver’s seat as of now.

Such a circumstance warrants, and even demands more engagement in conversations with the community, forming actual relations with customers and building brand loyalty.

What Digital Marketing does, is somewhere along the lines of leveling the playing field and providing you with a fighting chance against corporate giants. On the web, there is no apparent bias toward huge organizations. Through effective marketing strategies such as SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, one can manage to be as visible and appealing to leads and clients as large corporations are.

It stands out to be a beacon of hope for small businesses, as it promises visibility based on relevancy that gives them a chance to compete in the major leagues without being a giant in the first place.

A corporation stands a negligent chance of buying their way on to the top of the search links. They have to compete in the same field and in the same manner as a regular small shop.

This is one of the most remarkable things about Digital Marketing.

One important thing to note and to affirm to yourself is that the customers you are looking for are in fact in search of you as well.

There is a vast clientele population out there on the internet waiting for you to display your services, and only by establishing a web presence, can you make your services available to them.

It seems to be an opportunity ripe for the taking, and if you don’t take advantage of it in the given time, you might lose to your competitors who have probably established their online presence.

It is also noteworthy that through easy to use digital marketing analytics resources and software, the ability to directly target certain demographic presents itself.

You can present your services directly to the people who are most likely to buy them, consequently increasing your sales several fold. Tracking your progress and growth also becomes easier through this method. It provides assistance in reviewing where to invest more, where to hold back and what one lacks in a particular sector. Keeping a record of growth trends and being observant as well as consistent in one’s efforts is how one walks the path of success.

In lieu of draining exorbitant funds for advertising like the usual media of marketing do, Digital Marketing actually proves to be quite easy on the pockets.

That means even if the situation demands top-notch results in a tight budget, numerous forms of digital marketing act as a bridge between a wide range of audiences, and overcoming the communication barrier becomes a piece of cake.

There are statistical analyses and various industry trends to show you that the adoption of Digital Marketing techniques always concludes in tremendous profit, regardless of the industry or the field.

Moreover, reliable studies confirm that some form of marketing can be more than 3 times the cost of online advertisement; and marketers in the habit of being persistent in their efforts of publishing relevant content and valuable blogs increase their chances of receiving a positive Return on Investment by 13 percent. Those look like odds you want in your favor, don’t they?

Several research efforts by the Blue Nile Research concluded in their assessment that close to 80 percent of customers use mediums such as search, brand websites, and customer review to assess and evaluate service quality. A significant amount of netizens also make use of social media for their product review. All of this leads you to one thing; you can’t compete in the game if you aren’t a player. Planned and proper investing in all of this is bound to yield a great return on investment, which can then be optimized to better their marketing strategies and services.

Digital Marketing allows business owners to spend less on one comparatively cheap yet overtly effective method of marketing, all while investing the money saved into a rather traditional method of advertisement equitably. At the end of the day, cost-efficient yet impactful marketing strategies are how businesses make the most out of their budget. One of the most surreal yet true statements is that every 70 rupees you spend on Email Marketing (having the highest ROI out of all methods), you could potentially earn a sum total of 3000 rupees. Shocking? Yes. Effective digital marketing efforts such as PPC campaigns or social media campaigns cost less than their non-digital counterparts and yield impressive amounts of ROI. This is how a company grows and its profits begin to skyrocket.

Social media is, in these grim times, emerging as a platform with real potential. Through this, your brand is made to engage with the general public in a much attractive setting. This way, one gets a chance to answer questions relating to the service, take care of any concerns that may arise, and overall, build effective communication with your audience. This significantly furthers and advocates the cause of laying the foundation for brand loyalty and user awareness.

When you visit a truly good online website, its prominent trait, as one would notice, would be its personalization. Not only does it lead to the user what’s best for them per their choices, but it also provides a familiar, homey feel. It is a step toward brand loyalty. A constructive way to get hold of this concept would be user-generated content, which provides you with unprecedented creative input, all while creating a provider-customer bond. A creatively and beautifully executed example of this would be the social media campaign started by GoPro.

Their execution of this strategy included the announcement of a ‘Photo of the Day’ event, which would go-ahead to feature a customer-clicked photograph every day on their respective social media sites. This would not only become an excellent engagement maneuver but also come on the foothills of proving to an extensive amount of people the merits of the camera.

The public is then allowed to vote upon their most liked picture on the GoPro award page. Spreading the word about their project, fostering customer relations, and incentivizing users to do your bidding, all in one stone, is how a genius marketing strategy is formulated.

According to several surveys only 5% of B2C marketers consider their content marketing efforts to be very effective. The inference clearly shows that all this content production doesn’t seem to be working. There’,s clearly a disconnect between what marketers are doing and what is actually happening. Technology has brought information at our fingertips and access to information has become easier.

Google in hand we come across virtually anything online and could meet millions and billions of people with our ideas.

Content is a unique selling point for Google since its inception in 1998. It focused on content creation and processing, and it gradually turned out to be the revolution of information technology. It has been a leading icon for content on the web from then on.

Google became one of the top companies of the world simply for its belief and foresight in content management. but It has gradually seen the menace of plagiarism, a crooked practice of content theft. To check this, Google launched web Panda which removes all the duplicate content from the web. And then google introduced pirate to resolve the copyright issues by giving credit to the original writer. This step has proved to be a historic move for protecting the rights of original content writers.

Besides, google launched penguin 2.0 which made social media interactions crucial for better search ranking. Google came up with updates such as panda, pirate, penguin, and others to give out the best possible content to the readers.

Future is in compliment of the web content writing industry. Blogs are the major form of content writing. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, it has pushed it further. Now, almost all companies from a small retail shop in your locality to multi-national corporations are increasing their online activities. Many companies are getting customers multiple times a day just through their blog for several daily activities like ordering groceries. So, imagine how dynamic a role a blog plays to get customers to buy products after the covid-19 situation.

Now, it has become necessary for every business to grow online. And for a better web appearance, content writers play a key role. Blog, videos, and social networks are still the basic means to publish content on the internet, so there weren’t many changes in this track.

A Content Strategy helps marketers set and reach goals. The Golden rule of Content Marketing is to post informative and educational content 70% of the time, ask for the sale 20% of the time, and add personal feel 10% of the time. However, misguided efforts only lead to wastage of time, money and energy.

People in general, for many decades, did not consider content writing as a career option like many others. Unfortunately, Even the education system did not recognize it as part of mainstream education but slowly it is getting popular in some elite educational institutes across the globe. Thanks to the Internet, the ever-widening growth of more people connecting to the world wide web made things easier for content writing.

The advantage content writers enjoy is that they can work from any place any time. They are in great demand especially in Business and Marketing field. Hence, they earn a lot of money.

Learning and earning compliment with one another for content writer. With time, writing capabilities, vocabulary and language fluency gets improved in them. But content marketing can take a while to give ideal results. It is not a quick fix. Sometimes the strategies may change rapidly. It has been considered like an investment and have to be waited with patience.

Many people got attracted by the Content Writing Industry and considering if they could become a content writer. It is good to have a degree in literature or journalism to establish yourself but not necessarily.

Because there are so many techniques, courses, and applications available to learn content writing online, but choosing the right beat helps people excel in all their endeavours. According to the Marketing reports, around 2 million blog posts are written every day. This number is expected to grow in the future at an exemplary rate.

This has created a lot of gaps in the demand and supply of quality content writers. The demand is always higher than the number of writers available in the market. According to several reviews, the market is wide open for both entry-level and experienced content writers, and they are among the most sought-after professionals for many organizations in near future.

Three Golden rules for creating unique content

• Never copy text anywhere. Avoid plagiarism by citing research and using your own words to describe the concept.
• Always use multiple sources when researching.
• Give your text a unique structure, style, and logic.

Does your organization have a strategy for content or have you missed the bus?

Updated and Edited with New Content on December 27th, 2023

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