The best marketers are those who create markets, and content marketingcan help you achieve it. buy youtube views
Many times we think of marketing as a way to identify potential users of our product or service and thus be able to “sell” our brand. But what really makes the difference is the ability to create a new audience where it did not exist before and thus expand the reach of our brand.
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s recent study Using Content Marketing to Generate Demand, Create New Audiences (how to use content marketing to generate demand and create new audiences), content marketing can help us achieve the goal of expanding our horizons and creating new ones public for our products. Let’s see how!
The problem: identify demand or create demand
One of the best examples of creating demand is the Apple iPhone. When Jobs introduced the product in 2007, no one was aware that he needed an iPhone, or the brutal change that would be in our way of communicating. In fact, not even Apple expected this revolution: they had simply proposed to design an iPod that could make calls.
Another great example in our sector is HubSpot . When the company was founded in 2006, the marketing automation market was already saturated. But instead of copying its competitors, HubSpot popularized a new category: inbound marketing . Today, just over ten years later, this concept is an essential pillar of our strategies.
Faced with these two exceptional examples, the truth is that marketers today have problems when generating demand . We move in a fragmented and full of noise environment in which it is very difficult to reach potential customers. The marketing areas are under great pressure to meet short – term goals. The customer’s journey is increasingly omnichannel and complicated and it is difficult to differentiate our brands.
But despite all these complications, generating demand is one of the most important needs of today’s companies . Marketers should continue to look for opportunities to support the growth strategies of their companies.
On many occasions, demand generation strategies remain in demand identification plans. Marketers focus on finding users who are already asking for their products, services and solutions, optimizing their content for the search terms and the needs related to them.
The problem is that the market potentially interested in the specific products of a brand is always finite, and ends up being exhausted. Therefore, although initially great results can be achieved, this strategy is not feasible in the long term.
Given this situation, the Content Marketing Institute study has considered how to create a content marketing strategy whose results improve over time. Let’s see what their results say.
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5 ways to create demand through content marketing
The Content Marketing Institute study was conducted in April 2018, based on an audience of 192 qualified responses from 25 different countries. All respondents claimed to use content marketing to generate demand in the different stages of the conversion funnel . These are the practical recommendations that were reached after analyzing the answers.
1) Use content marketing in all phases of the funnel
Almost all respondents claimed to use content marketing to generate demand in all stages of the conversion funnel, but tended to focus mainly on the TOFU (top of the funnel) phase :
- 87% indicated the main reason for using content marketing to create demand was to generate leads or potential customers in the upper part of the conversion funnel.
- The phase in which companies get more value from the content marketing used to generate demand is the initial phase (attraction / interest) with 51%.
- The main metric used to measure the impact of content on the generation of demand is web traffic, as indicated by 67% of marketers surveyed.
- The most effective type of content according to the study are entries and blog articles in the TOFU phase , chosen in 73% of the answers.
But despite these data, it is also very interesting to note that half of the respondents created content for other phases of the funnel in 2018. 29% produced contents for the MOFU phase (middle of the funnel) and 21%, for the BOFU phase (bottom of the funnel) .
What all this tells us is that it is not enough to attract the attention of a new potential client, we also have to be able to maintain their interest during the entire trip of the client. To be successful in creating demand, it is not enough to feed the upper part of the conversion funnel , but we have to create content-based experiences for all stages in order to maintain interest and gradually build up the new customer. .
2) Experiment with different types of content in different phases of the client’s journey
Respondents stated that blog posts are the most effective type of content in the early stages of the conversion funnel , reports in the intermediate stages and case studies in the final stages. In-person events worked well at all stages of the funnel.
However, the answers to this question show great diversity. Some types of content continue to work in later phases, although they are more effective in the first. Others have similar efficacy figures in the first and second phases, or the second and third.
The conclusion? Do not close yourself to only one type of content in each phase and experiment until you find the best solutions for you. Here are some ideas to try:
- Try to vary the structures and approaches of a particular type of content . For example, a case study that is thought from an educational point of view can work well in the initial phases, or a personalized report can be used to give the last push towards the purchase.
- Instead of taking a content scheme and applying it to the funnel, think about the story you want to tell and the formats that best fit to express those messages.
- Do structured tests to determine what works best in each phase . For example, you can design an A / B test in which half of the users download a report and the other half a case study in video, and see which of the options generates more conversions to lead .
Although, according to the study, there are contents that work best for each type of phase of the conversion funnel:
3) Think first of the objectives and then of the metrics
When we talk about metrics, it is necessary to distinguish between what English speakers call “vanity metrics” (those that serve to “feel good” about our results, but do not really indicate what is happening) and KPIs or key performance indicators , this is, those that are directly linked to the business objectives that we have set out to achieve.
According to the Content Marketing Institute study , the metrics most commonly used to measure the impact of content marketing belong rather to the sphere of “vanity metrics”: web traffic (67% of respondents), audience interactions ( 58%) and the number of leads (57%).
The lesson we must draw from this is that these types of metrics are only important insofar as they tell us how we are progressing towards our goals: it does not do much to accumulate more visits, comments on social networks or leads if the final conversions are stalled .
If what we are looking for is to generate new demand for our products and services with our content marketing , we have to consider what metrics really put us on the track of if we are achieving it. For example, we can aim to generate a certain number of qualified leads for sales of a new audience sector or located in a certain region. In any case, think that the metrics should always be linked to an objective and not be the objective itself .
4) Investigate your audience thoroughly
According to this study, only 46% of respondents had segmented their audiences based on people, although 35% said they intended to do so. But it is also that we have to distinguish between buyer people and audience people.
In general, both types of user profiles can provide us structure when designing our marketing plans and very valuable information to attract visitors, leads and customers that interest us most. The fundamental difference is that the buyer person are users who already know that they are interested in a solution like the one you offer, while the members of the audience person still do not know that they have that need or that there is a solution to it. In conclusion, if you are looking to generate demand, you are interested in focusing more on audience people.
When defining our target audience , it is important to go beyond demographic data such as age, location, income level or location. As we have already explained, we can not base ourselves directly on the interest in our product or service. Therefore, what we have to look for is the challenges and interests that define them.
The more defined the audience to which we are going, the better opportunities we will have to create a content marketing that really adapts to it. On the other hand, we have to balance this need with ensuring that the audience will be large enough to be viable.
From the point of view of generating demand, audiences can be more valuable than leads or customers . Some members of your audience person will become part of your buyer person, and will become leads, opportunities and customers.
However, in the short term most of them will not convert … but that does not mean they do not add value. Audiences are not only potential buyers, they are also useful to generate demand and provide the information you need to improve your marketing.
In short, audiences not only today’s potential customers, but tomorrow’s potential markets. In the short term, audiences help us share and recommend our valuable content and be more efficient when it comes to reaching new users. In the long term, they are our source of demand creation among people who would not have identified their needs on their own.
5) Give the generation of demand an opportunity
The majority of respondents in the Content Marketing Institute study (58%) stated that they had had moderate success using content marketingto generate demand. If we add to that the 18% that is defined as “very successful” and the 3% that claim to be “extremely successful”, we see a very positive outlook to expand our market niche thanks to content marketing .
To increase the chances of success, it is necessary to focus on the acquisition of audiences, focus on KPIs and not on “vanity metrics” such as web visits and be willing to experiment with different types of content and approaches.