Once a content marketing plan has been flushed out, content marketing managers can now plot deadlines for creation, publication, and promotion on a content calendar so the whole marketing team can see at a glance what content is planned for the coming weeks and months.
What Does a Digital Marketer Do?
Digital marketing is no longer a niche industry. It has become an integral part of marketing activities across industries to engage prospects, drive traffic, and generate quality leads.
Brands that want to succeed in today’s fast-moving digital world need marketers with digital expertise that can ensure their products and services are visible online. Skilled digital marketers require knowledge and qualifications that go beyond basic marketing strategies and creativity skills. If you’re considering a top digital marketing career, a good place to begin is by understanding the skills required and what digital marketers do.
What is Content Marketing?
Michelle Lin, a content marketing guru who writes extensively on the topic, pokes fun at the question in her article, “How to Explain Content Marketing to Anyone.” In it, she describes the difficulties she faces explaining to people what exactly she does and the “aha” moments that have helped her to explain it.
Content marketing is a specific niche within the field of digital marketing. It is a way that businesses connect with their audience outside of selling them their brand or service. There are several mediums through which they make these connections such as blog posts, social media posts, emails, gated content, and video.
Content marketing and creation is an art form that requires the ability to design creative and interesting content that connects with a targeted audience. It’s educational material that helps the reader, answers a question, or solves a problem in a way that is entertaining to read, watch, or listen to. Becoming known as an expert on a topic creates customer trust and loyalty, especially if you remain focused on content that provides value to your audience.
The purpose of content marketing is to persuade a person into taking action. Content should entice someone with valuable, engaging, and relevant information. The content marketer’s job is to determine not only how to do that, but how to evaluate the efficacy of strategies employed by using metrics.
A content marketer needs to be both a storyteller and a data analyst. Ultimately, your goal as a content marketer is to work as a part of the company’s overall digital marketing strategy by identifying and engaging with the target audience in a way that is meaningful to them.
How to get started with content marketing
Content marketing can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. A successful content marketing campaign should be manageable and sustainable. Take these steps to get started:
- Identify your audience. To create content for a particular reader, you need to have a clear idea of their priorities, challenges, and preferences. If you have detailed descriptions of your various segments, choose 1 or 2 to write for. Otherwise, craft profiles of your audience members and prospects before starting.
- Determine the right formats. The right format corresponds with what stage of the sales cycle you’re creating content for. Another important consideration includes what formats will best help you showcase value. For some, this will be a video; for others, a checklist.
- Decide who will write, edit, and proofread your copy. An audience will judge your content on its quality, and they should. Identify the right resource, internal or external, to create this work. Regardless of who creates it, hire a professional proofreader to review anything before it goes out the door.
- Determine how you’ll distribute. Will you post content on your site, email it to people, or print it for an event? Start with “where” you know your audience is likely to be, and choose formats that make sense. For example, an article makes sense to send via an email, a checklist or worksheet can be posted on social media, and a buyer’s guide is a good follow-up to a pitch.
- Choose a sustainable schedule. It’s easy to make a content marketing plan that’s overly ambitious. Once you know the target readers and the formats, create a short-term (3-6 months) plan for a realistic number of content elements you can create, based on your budget and resources. Keep track of how long it takes you to create each piece of content, so that you can build that time into your schedule.
- Follow best practices. Compelling content is clearly written, without jargon that only you and your peers will know. It should also include how-to advice. A short, relevant, actionable piece of content is best.
What do marketers do in traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing doesn’t exclude digital outreach efforts, but it’s less concerned with some of the main tools digital marketing relies on. If you think of the way marketing work was done even 20 years ago, you’ll have a better idea of what this umbrella term covers—radio, television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, telemarketing, face-to-face efforts and more. For many companies—a non-digital approach connects better with their customer base.
Experiential marketing
“I work at a marketing agency that specializes in experiential marketing,” says Emily Fritz, marketing manager at dio. “It’s a growing trend in marketing that directly engages consumers by inviting them to participate in an interactive, real-life, usually hands-on, brand activation.” Fritz says experiential marketing might look like pop-up shops, a virtual reality installment or a series of events.
“In a digital-heavy world, experiential marketing stands out and breaks through the clutter. It is a real-life experience that more expressly communicates a brand’s positioning and persona,” Fritz explains.
Since this kind of marketing campaign is more about relationship-building, Fritz says it can help with building and retaining brand loyalty. A brick-and-mortar craft store, for example, could launch a craft-making event in the shop, creating buzz, opportunities to educate consumers about the business and reinforce people’s understanding of the brand.
“Don’t blindly follow all things digital, just because the world is digital right now,” Fritz says. “Humans are starting to crave visceral experiences outside of their screens. Be open to explore all marketing disciplines: research, sales, strategy, analyst, media, advertising, creative, retail, content, digital, social media, email, public relations, affiliate, sponsorship, print, broadcast, emerging media, trade show, event and yes, experiential!”
Do You Need a Content Marketing Manager?
Certainly, many of the tasks outlined above can be outsourced or delegated to other team members, freelancers, or agency partners, so it can be tempting to think that you don’t need to fill this role at all.
However, this line of thinking is unwise. The job of your content marketing manager is to ensure your content marketing strategy succeeds. If you don’t have a passionate, talented person in this role, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind of simply churning out content.
Content marketing managers tie together all the individual parts of your content strategy – writing, SEO, promotion, analysis, and optimization – with a clearly defined content workflow.
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Brody leads the DivvyHQ team with more than 20 years of experience in the trenches of corporate marketing, advertising agencies, entrepreneurship and establishing himself as one of country’s top digital marketing strategists. Brody’s primary focus is helping companies and marketing agencies shift their mindset, structures and processes so that they will think, act and consistently deliver like publishers.
References:
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/what-does-a-digital-marketer-do
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/what-does-a-content-marketer-do
https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/content-marketing/
https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/business/blog/what-do-marketers-do/
https://divvyhq.com/content-marketing/what-does-a-content-marketing-manager-do-exactly/