Content marketing is the practice of creating and sharing useful online content like blog posts, YouTube reels, vlog, guides, and videos to attract and engage customers. Traditional advertising has been overtaken by social media which has allowed news and information from across the web to be accessed in real time. Many people tune into social media first to find out what’s going on and what’s trending. Access to this large built-in audience data, whose usage is frequent, is a gift to organizations. However, since listeners can organize their own feeds by following specific accounts and then are served more with more content of their choice which is done with help of algorithms is a boon to buyers and organizations. Companies can’t expect their target audience to find them, instead they need to generate efforts like paid amplification, influencer marketing and employee advocacy to help their content get seen and their messages get heard by target audiences.

Since the last decade, traditional television advertising has significantly lost its sponsorship to a high production value in content marketing. That evolution has seen even bigger disruption as the television, radio and press advertising that once reigned the advertising world.

Content marketing has been ruling ad world by increasing organic visibility. It drives more traffic to the digital content created by the company and boosts brand’s awareness and visibility. The company must create content that matches their target audience’s needs. CarryMinati is the most popular and the biggest YouTuber in India. CarryMinati, also known as Ajey Nagar, is a comedian from India who makes videos about playing games, rapping, and has a lot of fans on YouTube. Indian consumers prefer comedy genre of content, and it takes the top spot, while VIPs and celebrities are at the other end of the ranking. Lifestyle brand Arctic Fox famous for its backpack bags has announced YouTube content creator Carry Minati aka Ajay Nagar.

As of November 2023, cricketer Virat Kohli is the most followed Indian celebrity on social media, with approximately 375 million followers. He was also the most valued celebrity in the country, with a brand value of over 227 million U.S. dollars. That’s the reason he is brand ambassador for most products: brands like Blue Tribe, Rage Coffee, Philips, and Audi. Virat endorses Myntra, Puma, Philips, and more, aiding companies to enhance brand visibility and market appeal.

Content marketing generates more conversions. It turns more traffic into leads and sales by providing useful and engaging content that attracts the target audience and makes them feel comfortable doing business with a brand.  Because it differs from other marketing methods in which it doesn’t interrup or annoy the customer’s time with sales pitches. Instead, it seeks to provide them with valuable information that solves their problems and answers their questions. It is a strategic approach to attract, engage, and delight target audience with valuable and relevant information.

Coca-Cola. Content is central to Coca-Cola’s messages in all its promotional campaigns. The brand thrives on modern problems faced by a worldwide audience. The 70/20/10 rule used by Coca-Cola classifies content into low, medium, and high risk, helping the brand to allocate time and resources accordingly. Low-risk content comprises 70% of the total content created as it has minimal risks, is less controversial, and does not take much time to produce. Cola-Cola. With approximately 1.1 million visitors a month, is seen maximum on social media. Coca-Cola’s digital magazine Journey has been wildly successful at creating audience-focused globally.

Traditional media includes all outlets that lasted before the internet, such as newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and billboards. Before online advertising, companies typically allocated most of their marketing budgets to traditional media with the goal to increase their brand awareness and attract new customers. Even today, many businesses continue to rely on traditional media for their marketing and advertising campaigns, which can be very effective if their target consumers regularly engage with these forms of media.

LinkedIn the social media platform is one of the most successful content marketers out there today. By encouraging its members to publish original and well-researched, longform content, the platform has created countless educational and promotional opportunities for brands looking to get their names known. Its library of content created specifically for digital marketers has braced full of insightful industry advice and expert tips in the form of eBooks, presentations, and webcasts.

Even, Amul adopts a comprehensive marketing approach, characterized by its iconic mascot Amul Girl campaigns and consistent content marketing efforts, which resonate with its audience. Another important aspect of Amul’s marketing strategy focuses on its diverse product portfolio. The brand has developed a witty formula to connect with its customers. Amul uses comic strips, fun elements, and powerful taglines to pitch their industry presence as a voice for many social issues. They use their brand for current issues awareness. Amul uses the technique of moment marketing by creating content on trending things happening now.

Some famous content marketing agencies in India are Elatre creative marketing agency, SEO Discovery, MMG Technologies, Content Spotlight, which are famous for digital Strategy, website development, search engine optimization etc.

Zomato multinational food aggregator and food delivery company knows how to bring out the hidden “foodie” in all of us. Zomato is so clever with its content marketing skills that it knows just how to grab mind shares of the people. Zomato has a good understanding of its target market. The brand understands what motivates people to utilize its services and it never fails to excite them.  Zomato’s content marketing strategy revolves around providing value-rich content that resonates with its audience. Through blog posts, articles, videos, and infographics, Zomato offers a treasure trove of food-related insights, trends, recommendations, and culinary inspirations. So many cloud kitchens, street food vendors and restaurants have gained fame and fortune because of Zomato.

Content marketing helps to build relationships, foster loyalty that leads to repeat purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations.

GE hits the mark when it comes to publishing original and provocative content. From Pulitzer-prize winning photographers to Forbes journalists, GE has recruited top-notch talent to create high-quality content that gets picked up not only by industry experts, but audiences in general and even the media.

Today organizations cannot survive without email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, public relation, pay-per-click, marketing funnel, digital marketing. One thing for sure, marketing today is impossible without great content.

According to the old-school of thought, the marketing funnel appeared like this: in this funnel the marketer required to fill the top of the funnel with as many leads (prospective customers) as possible since the bottom of funnel only filters out a small percentage of concluding customers.

But today, a majority of business firms understand that their relationship with the customer should not end at the bottom of the cone-shaped marketing funnel. Instead, it should open up the funnel after a person purchases a firm’s product. Firms today invest on retraining the customer forever. Firms try to capture the customer’s journey after a person buys product of the firm. At its core, customer relationship management (CRM) is all of the activities, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage their connections with their current and potential customers. The proverb “customer is king/queen” is literally practiced through the marketing funnel; therefore today’s funnel looks like this.

Role of CRM:  Customer Relationship Management helps firms to build association with their customers. CRM helps firms to create loyalty and customer continuation. Customer’s experience with a firm increases their loyalty towards it. Product quality and loyalty goes hand in hand and increasing the sales of a firm. CRM is a management strategy that results in increased profits for a business. At its core, a CRM as a tool creates a simple user-related collection of data that helps businesses recognize and communicate with customers in a quantifiable way.

A far-sighted business firm therefore needs to adopt various strategies to influence consumers at each stage of the funnel. Stages such as awareness, comprehension, conviction, action can be geared by follow-up telephone calls, sending them positive press reviews, reminders, or updated corporate communication. The sales and marketing departments must guide this traffic of the prospective customers through the funnel using strategies that are designed to be effective at each stage. At each stage of the corporate communication, firms need to update it with latest trends.

Role of Social Media: A marketing funnel starts with awareness. Please understand this fact that a firm cannot do anything until consumers become aware of the existence of their brand. Social media gives business marketers a direction to communicate with customers, and to find specific potential consumers. It personalizes the “brand” and helps business to spread the firm’s message in a comfortable and informal way. It helps in creating awareness and harnessing the power of word-of-mouth, which is much more effective than traditional advertising.

Effective marketing strategies a must in each funnel stage:  marketing activities must be conducted in such a way that they must facilitate consumers through the funnel process. The activities must engage promotional activities to create awareness about the products, detail of the benefits compared with the competitor’s product, chart the advantages of how a purchase will benefit the customer, or offer a special promotion that infuses the sale. Once the sale is complete, marketers needs to engage the customer to get feedback and retain loyalty, as that can lead to repeat business and referrals.

Marketing and sales funnel is one and the same: Some companies differentiate between a marketing funnel and a sales funnel, but both can work together seamlessly. The distinction in both is immaterial. Marketing is responsible for generating traffic at the top and through the middle of the funnel, and as these leads or buyer prospects get closer to a decision, the sales activity clicks.

Marketing funnel is based on technology: Digital technology is part and parcel of business and cannot be ignored by marketers. The marketing funnel offers a good example of this fact. The buying process has become faster than before. Majority buyers do their own research online, comparing features and benefits of competitive products, rather than relying on a company’s traditional marketing activities to guide them through the funnel stages. This means buyers enter the funnel at a point where they are more prepared to make a sale. It also means companies need to get information online; they need to upgrade their website, blogs with product content, price, discounts, warranty, guaranty etc, etc. Post purchase review has become an essential feature these days.

Funneling is a continuous non-stop process: No company can ever say that they have completed marketing activity. The world is changing fast. So does the customers’ needs, wants and demands. The competition is fierce in every walk of life. There is nothing called product loyalty in business world. Continuous improvement in marketing helps firms to achieve better returns on their investment in marketing. Continuous improvement is a form of quality management that focuses on making small additional improvements to a process, rather than trying to achieve major changes. In marketing, at each stage of funneling, firms can keep doing continuous improvement to achieve goals such as increasing the accuracy in segmenting, targeting and positioning of course by using product differentiation strategy.

The marketing funnel is visualization and perceptive to understand the process of turning leads (prospective customers) into real customers. The idea is that, like a funnel, marketers cast a broad net to capture as many leads as possible, and then slowly nurture prospective customers through the purchasing decision, narrowing down these customers in each stage of the funnel.

The funnel is a term for describing the route by which prospective customers, or prospects, become customers. The visualization of the process looks like a funnel. A larger number of prospects go in the top and are reduced to a lesser number of customers who come out at the bottom.