Digital marketing has led to a massive shift in the way brands and users interact, and it can often be difficult to navigate through these changes. The maritime industry has had to catch up to these trends and that does not make it any less confusing. With terms like analytics, content marketing, sponsored posts and the like…how do you make sense of it all?
The first step is understanding where to focus your digital marketing. There are many options, but that does not mean that each one of them will be relevant to you, or will give you the best return on investment. The biggest one to invest in though? Content marketing.
What is content marketing?
Think of it as value-driven marketing. Rather than bombarding your customers with promotional ads, provide them with valuable information. This content can come in the form of blog posts, articles, even posts on social media, but the underlying driver is the same, it is content that provides value.
Create themes for your content such as helpful tips, interesting news, new industry developments – there is a lot of variety available. Creating content might seem like more effort in the short-run, but it brings about better benefits in the long run.
Why is content marketing important?
Because it boosts sales and conversions and is great for SEO and social media.
Latest statistics show that:
- 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing
- 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing
- More than 70% of marketers are able to demonstrate how content marketing has increased both engagement and leads
These results show that content marketing works.
Moreover, content marketing is crucial for SEO strategy. No business is able to thrive in hyper-competitive landscapes without having Google on their side. And Google’s algorithm favors content-marketing driven websites over websites with thin or poor content. Businesses that are not able to create effective content marketing strategies run the risk of falling behind in their SEO efforts, which can be detrimental if your competition continues to update and evolve their content to meet the customers’ needs.
Case Study
ShipServ serves as an interesting example of how effective content marketing can be across different industries and sectors. Content marketing can be applied in different contexts to achieve successful results in B2C or B2B.
ShipServ had some clear goals: Drive traffic to their website, create brand awareness, and get more sales.
They were able to accomplish all these goals successfully through content marketing. For example, they wrote weekly blogs that updated their customer base about developments, industry news, and other thought leadership pieces. By staying organized and developing content plans and schedules, they were able to leverage their pieces to start conversations with leads, chase sales and engage their social media following.
Original content found its home on their social media channels, providing a new level of engagement and brand awareness while promoting themselves. Whitepapers revolving around key industry trends were also promoted across channels providing ShipServ with a winning strategy.
Key Takeaways
If you strive to replicate ShipServ’s success here are some key methods that can be implemented on a smaller scale to see content marketing’s effectiveness.
Using a content calendar will create consistency.
- Starting a blog, or creating email newsletters is one way to start.
- Creating a content calendar, and sticking to it is another way to establish discipline and ensure consistency.
- Think about key pain points in your industry, and write articles or whitepapers revolving around these and provide users with that content.