Business and marketing are two terms that are rarely seen separated. In order to build a reach and gather the attention of the market you need to have a defined marketing strategy in mind.
Now, when we talk about marketing it’s no more the traditional channels of marketing whereby you yell out information about the products and services that you offer as a part of the business and quite yourself best in front of the customer. These techniques of marketing are fading away thanks to modernization and digitization which has opened up the doors of information.
The market and customer are smart enough and you can’t convert them into your potential revenue generator by just throwing the information about your products and services as a part of your marketing.
So, what can be the solution? Executive Search Marketing is the new way of marketing. The basic rule of the market is to make the customer see what he wants to see and content marketing works on just that rule.
To provide the information that customer/clients are looking for and providing these things regularly is what the concept behind content marketing. Now, you should not mistake content marketing for some random content distribution. Well, you are looking to get some business out of it so it should be a designed and planned move.
Content marketing is a defined and strategized approach towards marketing. The aim is to target a certain section/audience/market base through valuable and relevant content consistently such that profitable action can be derived from them in long run.
The process can be explained better with the help of an example. Say you are a seller of women clothes online then you should not immediately go out and send the message to your audience/target customers that there is a sale or discount (this would be traditional kind of marketing).
What you should do is to plan your sale or discount and spread the message in a strategized way. This can be done by delivering information among the user base that what are the best clothes to grab this season, what are best party wear or simply answer the common query or your potential target audience. By going this way you would be yelling about your offers and discounts without even sounding like a promoter and the target audience would eventually start searching for those items on your platform.
The example above is a perfect working mechanism of how content marketing works and how revenue generation can be maximized for your business with the aid of content marketing.
Now, content marketing can be used in a number of manners as a part of your business model. It depends upon you which business model you think suits the best for your business needs.
If you are curious in regards to what type of business models for content marketing exists then you have got your search ending here.
Yes, we would now look into 7 of the best business models for content marketing.
So, what you need to do is to relax and go reading down till the end to get an answer to your curiosity.
1. Content as facilitator
Content marketing can be used as a great facilitator for expanding the reach of your business. Nowadays where digital marketing has defined budget and strategy as a part of the company’s operational expenditure, content marketing can act as great support for digital marketing through various channels.
Suppose you have a dedicated social media page for your digital market promotion. Now if you add a tinge of valuable and suitable content on (on a consistent basis) it as per the need and taste of the target audience then it can be a great crowd puller.
2. Content as a source of information
Content can be anything say a blog, an article, a video, a write up etc. The main theme of the content is to convey some sort of information. One business approach is to content marketing is to offer content that can solve the query of audience/users. Say for example you are providing relevant information related to study abroad perspective on your website. Now, you start delivering information in regards to each aspect of study abroad to the users, this way, in the long run, your platform would become a trusted source for information related to study abroad.
Thus you would be able to create an information repository that would be trusted and most visible on web garnering you a good number of visitors each day.
3. Content marketing as a service
Almost everyone needs content to support their digital presence. What about supporting their needs with your services. You can use content marketing as a service based business model to extend need-based content marketing services to the clients.
This is one of the popular business models which budding entrepreneurs and small business firms are catching on.
4. Content marketing as a part of SEO
Content marketing as a part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services is a good business thinking. SEO is the need of the hour and if you have been offering these services then adding on content marketing would provide integration of content as an additional service.
Otherwise, also you can sync the SEO and content marketing services and offer a comprehensive service package to the clients.
5. Content marketing as a business extension
This is one typical business model in respect to content marketing that IT & Development firms generally adopt. While offering website design and development service the logical way to extend your business’s service network is to offers content marketing services and SEO services.
This can be understood in a way say you were earlier offering furniture as a final product and now you’re adding the finishing and varnishing services as a part of it. This is bound to divert some additional revenue on your side.
6. Content as a mainstay
This is the ultimate content marketing business model based on which many e-education giants are standing. Offering content specific to a particular section of society say students and covering all aspects related to it say from school students to college and competitive exam aspirants.
Once you gain credibility you can generate a great source of revenue through marketing and packaging your content systematically as many of the online education channels are doing these days.
7. Network-based business model
This is a minimum investment and good revenue generating option in terms of content marketing. It is similar to the content as a service option with a hub and spoke business approach.
You can build a network of content creators (freelancers you can say) and offer them projects/work which you get as a part of the service request from clients. This would help in creating a small business operation that would thrive and progress on the back of minimal investment.
Since you have now got hold of best business models in the context of content marketing; you are now in a position to choose the best as per your needs.
Alex Jone Works in a HR and Recruitment at Alliance Recruitment Agency- an IT Recruitment Agency. He specializes in helping with international recruiting, virtual social media assistant , HR services and Careers advice service for overseas and international businesses.