What is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing, as the name suggests is the leveraging of informative, relevant and consistent content to attract your target customers and drive profitable consumer actions on your site. As content is such a vast field there are a number of services digital marketing agencies offer under content marketing, like:
Content Strategy
Content strategy is the first step involved in a content marketing strategy. This is where you define your buyers’ persona, in other words, your ideal client. Creating a buyers’ persona will allow you and the content marketing agency to get a clear idea of the type of content that will need to be produced and how to distribute it. The content marketing agency will also evaluate your existing content to see if there is any content that can be repurposed to provide a point of origin for the content going forward.
Content Production
After developing a content strategy it’s time to get down to business. Content creation has many facets to it, depending on the medium you choose to deliver your content through. This is a good time to revisit your buyers’ persona to gauge what medium is used by them the most and what will be the most effective content. Most businesses tend to benefit from a blend of social media marketing, email marketing, SEO Content, blogs and premium content.
Optimization
Creating content is just half the battle won, now you need to make sure your customers are seeing the content you are generating. This is where content optimization steps in, there are a number of tools that digital marketing agencies use to optimize content like, the use of SEO best practices, analyzing user behavior, competitive insights to see what your competitors are doing to get spotted and a myriad of other such strategies.
Promotion
The promotion of content is another critical step in content marketing. This is where you decide to give your content a bit of a boost through ads or other paid campaigns. Content promotion is great to ensure your customers are always seeing your content when they look for products or services on their desired platforms. A good content promotion strategy will account for your buyers’ persona and will study your customers’ behavior to determine the places to promote your content which will give you the best RoI.
Maintenance
Content maintenance is the process of ensuring the existing content is updated to contain the latest information. Google loves fresh content, so ensuring you have relevant content will give your content marketing strategy a massive boost. Content maintenance can be performed on any place where you have published content, from your website to the blog to any other platform where you have decided to post content.
Reporting
Content marketing agencies also provide content reporting services. Content reporting refers to the monitoring of the performance of your content. This is a crucial step in the content marketing strategy as it will allow you to gauge the performance of the content you are publishing and will allow you to plot the trajectory of your strategy. By viewing the performance of your content you will be able to gauge what your target customers positively react to and what produces a negative reaction, allowing you to make necessary adjustments to your overall content marketing strategy to get the best RoI.
Digital Marketing Agencies in Chicago
Here are our top picks for Digital Marketing Agencies in Chicago
JumpFly
JumpFly is a digital marketing agency headquartered in Elgin, IL 40 miles outside Chicago, IL. The company was started in 1998 and has seen great success since then. Jumpfly offers two main lines of service in PPC management and Social Media Marketing. The company also offers SEO services upon request. They have a minimum project size of $5,000 and an hourly rate between $50 - $99. If you’re looking to roll out a PPC campaign or a social media campaign Jumpfly might be the company you are looking for.
Arcalea
Arcalea was started in 2015 with the aim to provide companies with effective content marketing strategies and campaigns. Since then the company has seen a positive growth trajectory that has landed it in a favorable spot within the digital marketing arena. Arcalea offers content marketing services like email marketing, SEO, Web development, PPC management and Web design. They have a minimum project size of $5,000 and their hourly charges are between $50 - $99.
Yakkety Yak Marketing
Yakkety Yak Marketing was started in 2014 and provides turnkey marketing solutions to medium and small size companies. This digital marketing agency provides comprehensive services that include, content marketing, SEO, digital strategy, web development, web design, PPC management, branding and social media marketing. Yakkety Yak Marketing has a minimum project size of $25,000 and their hourly rates are between $150 - $199. So if you’re looking for a digital marketing agency in Chicago that can provide you a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, Yakkety Yak Marketing might be a good option.
