Introduction

Online marketing, or digital marketing, is the practice of promoting the use of the internet and other digital media channels, such as search engines, websites, social media, e-mail, mobile apps, text messages and online advertisements, to connect brands with consumers. The best method to become familiar with and engage your audience is through online marketing. You can try out promotions and messages to observe when individuals are most likely to visit your site. You can build relationships with them more quickly and easily if you have a social media strategy, which you should. Establish credibility by knowing your audience, and you will be able to get ahead of the pack. Digital marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing methods. There is less overhead. With one of the numerous templated systems or by paying a little more for a custom design, you can build a sleek, business-oriented website for relatively little money. Free social media sites can be created, and for a moderate price, you can use an e-mail newsletter service. Digital marketing is appropriate even for the smallest firms because it is very affordable.

Content marketing is another major engine of digital marketing, encompassing all approaches and strategies tailored to a business’s particular clientele and exceeding the norm for typical business advertisements. While both may be intended to generate sales, normal advertising usually compels its products or services onto clients. Content marketing provides a source of regular, relevant, valuable content to attract a clearly defined audience towards a profitable customer action while enhancing the long-term relationship as well. Many people have contributed to the voluminous scholarly literature advocating the virtue of content marketing concerning creating awareness, carrying out engagement with consumers, search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation and building trust among consumers. This indeed is the primary advantage of content marketing: creating brand recognition and visibility. Many studies indicate that the strength of consistent good-quality content is evident in brand-consumer perception. Pulizzi (2010), the father of content marketing, puts it this way: Brands cannot rely on old advertising because modern consumers are looking for organic and engaging content. In line with this thinking, Holliman and Rowley (2014) state that content marketing has enabled brands to stand out in an increasingly competitive digital space. Companies can now establish themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries by offering valuable insights, educational material and entertaining content. Furthermore, Baltes (2015) also states that firms that invest in content marketing enjoy better brand memory among consumers, as it translates to high loyalty from consumers and, thus, greater profitability in the long term.

Literature Review

Online marketing has grown more and more essential in the time of digitization as a part of the marketing strategy applied by business organizations of every size and type. Since content marketing is essential for online marketing, the efficiency of an enterprise’s online communications is greatly dependent on the quality of its content marketing. In order to adapt their content and select the most appropriate means of promotion in this case, online marketers need to study their target audience along with promoting high-quality content marketing (Baltes, 2015).

Content Marketing: Strong Tool for Customer Retention

In today’s information-based, digital age, content marketing has evolved into a powerful marketing tool. While it is not a new idea, content marketing is gradually gaining popularity with companies. Brands will now attain their marketing goals by creating and sharing the most valuable content in the world for that particular niche, instead of mainly on interruptive media. Though content marketing existed earlier, very few companies utilized it then. However, due to the latest changes in customer behaviour and technology advances, it is becoming the new trend in marketing. Customers have realized the importance of information and how it will affect their selection of products. Therefore, they begin to demand more information. Also, they are getting smarter and smarter, and there is no option for marketers but to develop incredible and authentic content because in this era of the internet, manipulation of information does not work. Since users are not paid to endorse certain products, customers believe that user-generated content is much more credible. Lastly, it is important for companies to engage with the public ethically and authentically. The public hates to be lied to and manipulated like a tool. For trust and client loyalty to be maintained, content marketers need to ensure that content is genuine and transparent. Publishing is taking over marketing due to the prevalent marketing trend (Kee, 2015).

Converting Leads to Potential Customers Using Content
Marketing Strategy

The term ‘content marketing’ describes all the marketing plans that involve creating or distributing content in order to engage with current and new customers. To be successful in the long run, a firm needs to employ content marketing, and it has applications in nearly all sectors. It has been easier due to technology, and internet-based marketing is evolving rapidly. One billion search results are generated daily by portals such as Yahoo and Google. Marketers continuously seek innovative ways to reach out to potential customers. The greatest challenge lies in reaching these customers and surprising them. Marketing professionals feel that content marketing provides a much-needed break from the tried-and-tested marketing strategies and has opened doors for the sector to evolve. Customers are now able to interact with each other differently. A bad product will no longer be aided by expensive advertising to grow and thrive. Content marketing is sometimes called New Age marketing, but it is actually new wine in an old bottle. Many marketers have challenged this idea because they feel these new developments have immobilized them.

Content Marketing: Marketer’s Best Practices for B2B Business

Business digital content marketing is an inbound marketing style that employs websites, social media and valuable content. It is believed to be an effective aid in creating and sustaining a valued brand position. Brands need to employ a ‘publishing’ approach in order to offer content that is useful to B2B audiences. This approach involves acquiring information on the informational needs and the purchasing process of the target audience. Valuable, relevant, interesting and timely are all terms to describe worthwhile content. To properly utilize content marketing, a cultural shift from ‘selling’ to ‘helping’ must occur. This movement requires distinct marketing objectives, plans, KPIs and skills from those brought to more traditional marketing methods (Geraint Holliman, 2014). Moreover, social media awareness has also become an instrumental tool for generating digital literacy, health and wellness (Sengupta, 2024).

B2B vendors are motivated to create online content that invites prospective buyers to interact with their company by the increasing importance of the internet to B2B client buying decisions. A new model called ‘content marketing’ has been established as a consequence of this phenomenon (Jarvinen, 2016).

Role of Content Marketing in Social Media

It adopts the consumer’s point of view to create alliances. Most of the past research on social media communities has focused on social media marketing and virtual brand communities, typically overlooking contentmarketing’s vital and underemphasized role in social media content communities (Plessis, 2017).

Social Media Content Marketing in Banking Sectors

The economy is making a shift from market-based to network-based as a consequence of technological development, and social networking has captured the top IT movements of the technological industry. The banking sector also got entangled in the internet wave, and as they notice a rapid transformation in customer attitude and buying trends, the banks are compelled to concentrate their efforts and redefine their digitalization process. Banks can now be powerful instruments for facilitating customers’ businesses as well as acquiring the target prospects due to social media and digital marketing. One of the most important elements of the whole digital marketing strategy is content marketing, which is crucial for measuring the success and effectiveness of an organization’s online communications. Apart from the quality of the material, the marketers must know and think about their specific target audiences as they distribute and market the information (Sawhney, 2022).

Increase of Brand Awareness

In a world that has been globalized and touches people’s lives, the role of the internet is becoming more important these days in various aspects of socioeconomic and political life. A person’s daily life can no longer be separated from the need that is the internet. The internet can be utilized in seeking and satisfying nearly all consumer needs. The company applies online marketing strategies as a strategy to increase sales of the products it produces to the public (Budiman, 2022).

Research Objectives

• The purpose of the research is to study how content marketing helps the digital marketers of B2C industries to grow their business and engage customers.
• Content marketing is the best way to change the customer’s mind and customer perception.
• Focus strongly on video graphics content, which will have a positive impact on the customer’s mind.

Research Gap

From the above literature, it has been observed that content marketing has emerged as a dominant strategy in digital marketing communication, but more research is needed on how content marketing influences customers with video animated advertisements or how it will influence normal customers and change them into loyal and frequent customers through social media marketing tools.

Research Methodology

This research uses a qualitative conceptual approach to study the impact of content marketing strategies on consumer purchase decisions in the business-to-consumer (B2C) landscape. A thorough literature review of scholarly writings and reports on digital marketing, consumer behaviour and content marketing supplied all necessary secondary data. The study’s methodology relies on thematic analysis, concentrating on major strategic tenets that include storytelling, personalization, SEO, video and social media marketing. The ability to combine prior research and theoretical insights with the evolving role of content marketing in fostering brand visibility and consumer trust and loyalty defines this conceptual approach. The research also highlights the limited focus in the literature on the influence of video and animated content on consumer conversion and aims to identify the gaps as areas that need more empirical research. The study does not include primary data collection and statistical analysis, as the theoretical research was designed to provide a starting point for more thorough empirical research in later stages.

Discussions

Content marketing went on to be one of the most powerful strategies in the B2C sector, influencing customer perceptions, engagement and purchasing behaviour. Contrary to the traditional methods that insist on pushing a sales agenda, content marketing actually creates, disseminates and promotes invaluable content tailored to attract and retain customers. As the scepticism of consumers about advertisements continues to rise, the trust factor, relationship nurturing and eventually sales generation are what brands seek from content marketing. A conceptual study on the content marketing strategy in B2C sectors shows that it plays an important role in influencing consumer purchasing decisions with a strong emphasis on digital engagement, emotional appeal, personalization and trust-building mechanisms.

However, the major focus of content marketing in B2C industries is to engage the prospective buyer with useful information or entertainment. Whereas traditional advertising is considered disruptive, content marketing is thought to cater to relationship building using value offerings from the consumer perspective. It is very key in the customer journey in terms of all the possible ways of guiding the buying decision through awareness to purchase via blogs, social media posts, videos, infographics, podcasts and e-mail newsletters. One obvious advantage of content marketing is that it creates awareness of the brand.

Consumers are now always exposed to digital content; thus, there is a need for brands to create more unique and appealing materials to garner attention. Content-heavy establishments stand out in the jam-packed marketplace, enabling potential customers to identify and recall them during the purchase consideration. With content marketing, businesses earn the right to be trusted by the consumer through the provision of relevant information and value. Well-researched articles, case studies and expert opinions can position themselves as an industry leader in the minds of consumers, making them less sceptical about trusting or buying their product. The more the brand generates and disseminates content, the more exposure it gets. Being in search engines, social feeds and inboxes increases the chances of brand recall and hence, conversion.

Before making a purchase decision, it is commonplace for consumers to seek information online. Providing educational content that addresses customer pain points allows brands to portray themselves as problem solvers, exerting influence on purchasing decisions. How-to guides, FAQs and explainer videos serve this purpose excellently. Then, interactive content by way of quizzes, polls and videos is a great way to trigger consumer participation and engagement. An engaged customer is more likely to develop an emotional connection with the brand, which facilitates their journey towards purchase. User-generated content, testimonials and reviews are what ultimately sway potential buyers. Content marketing strategies that draw on customer feedback and experiences provide authenticity and credibility, thus pushing new customers into the purchasing decision. A big part of content marketing is SEO.

Creating keyword-oriented content allows the brand to get better ranking on Search Engine Result Pages, enabling consumers to spot them when looking up relevant products and services. Consumers prefer personalized experiences in tune with their interests and needs. Using data analytics and AI-based tools, companies can develop customized content that builds rapport with various customer segments. Emotionally driven content marketing allows a personal connection with consumers. While telling an engaging story of its own, a brand can highlight real stories from customers about their positive experiences with the product or service, or even discuss the corporate social responsibility angle.

Video content today dominates social media marketing. It engages consumers in a much more appealing way than any other medium. Compared to static posts, video content grabs attention better, improves engagement rates and increases brand recall. Video-driven content is prioritized by platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, so it has to be included in any digital marketing strategy. Brands can deliver powerful messaging through short-form videos, live streaming, video product demos and storytelling techniques. Video content fosters emotional connections, makes complex information digestible and builds conversion by demonstrating products at work. Companies that realize present consumer tendencies favouring video-viewing and incorporate far-reaching video marketing strategies are likely to build brand loyalty and increase sales. Managers should determine what the video content should achieve, whether increasing brand awareness, engagement or sales and align video content with the market plan accordingly. Managers should also measure concrete KPIs, such as views, engagements and conversions, that can help in optimizing future video content strategies. By encouraging their customers to create and share videos with their brand, companies can foster authenticity and create community engagement.

Conclusion

Digital marketers should think that content is the backbone of digital marketing to grow their audience or fan base. So they should be more focused on the business model and awareness of the people by conducting a survey to ensure the smooth use of the content marketing tool for business promotion or customer engagement. Digital marketers should ensure the use of content for promotion frequently, which will help customers get additional and detailed information. There are many customers who are not only influenced by e-posters or newsletter content. They should also create and focus on some videoanimated or audio-related graphical content, which will strongly convey some useful information to the customers about their products and services. The video-related content for the product or service advertisement should be unique and should be related to the organization.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Surjadeep Dutta  https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4637-6844