All of us remember the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign that was carried out by the iconic brand Coca-Cola in 2014. The reason for its popularity was the personal message it carried which resonated with the masses. It was among the finest examples of content marketing – simple yet effective.
As a business owner, you need to ask yourself an important question, ‘Are you making complete use of content marketing and is it giving you the results you need?’ Content is the easiest and most affordable way to reach out to your target audience and boost web traffic. It can also get you leads and increase sales, but that requires you to rethink your content marketing strategy and tactics.
To help you save time and develop the right approach to content development and marketing, here is a useful guide.
How does content marketing impact businesses?
Using content to market your products or services seems straightforward, but that’s not the case. While the tools that are used in the process are all the same – blog posts, videos, podcasts and more, the way they are employed by brands differs.
When you create good content, people reach out to you as the written or visual material invokes their interest or curiosity. The best among content marketing examples is Hubspot, a multinational company that markets software products useful for business growth. Instead of simply writing blogs targeting their product, they make guides on sales and marketing strategies in the form of informative e-books, webinars and even free courses. This high-quality content generates interest, increases engagement and the guides convince people to try out Hubspot software.
How does content help marketers?
Marketers know that making your product stand out in a competitive market is not easy. Spending money on massive strategies is not possible for every company and the results are not guaranteed either. Hence, generating unique content is an affordable option, and if it’s done right, it can turn heads. Below, we’ve outlined some factors that make content king for marketers.
Attracts your target audience
Often great content alone is enough to pull in customers. Though to sustain them, you must provide good services as well. Airbnb showed us that just by using features and videos effectively and putting together a great story, you can attract customers on a global scale.
Be informative
Let’s face it, the best way to let the audience know about your business is through content. This way you can educate them and the business is promoted automatically. Canadian diaper brand ‘Huggies’ created a content marketing campaign where they focused on the importance of hugs and skin-to-skin contact for babies. Their sales automatically went up by 30%.
Make your customers loyal
Effective content marketing can play a vital role in ensuring that your audience become loyal fans of your business. For this, you have to make them feel part of the brand family. Reach out to them on social media, create personalized campaigns, show empathy during crises and deal with criticism with a dose of humour.
Creating a good content marketing strategy
As is the case with every marketing strategy, a good content marketing strategy also revolves around audience, goals, teamwork and of course, lots of hard work. Below, we’ve outlined some of the key factors you’ll need to consider while developing a content strategy for your brand.
Define your audience
Before you build any content strategy template, it’s important to understand your audience. Once you have a clear picture of what they want and desire from your services, you’ll be able to create a better content structure. By understanding the needs of your audience, you will be able to offer them a more interactive and insightful experience. For example, if your business sells clothes, you can create content on styles, fashion and promote body positivity.
Set your goals
Another important factor is setting measurable goals and defining the right course of action to achieve them. While developing a content strategy, you should include audience reachability and learn what they can gain from your content. For example, you may have a content architecture that satisfies search engines and users or produce content with the aim of making complicated topics easy to understand in layman terms.
Get a team
Treat online content marketing as an important element of your business process. Get someone on board to create content, update it and also create a publishing schedule. The flow of content on your website or social media should be seamless as audiences prefer sites that regularly update and publish new content.
Blogs
Blogs are the easiest way to connect with an audience. They helps readers stay informed and interested, making blogs an essential marketing tool. The content planning template should include variety in blogs with case studies, interviews, expert advice, taking up generic customer concerns, tutorials and how-to-guides.
Keywords
The smartest way to climb Google’s ranking is by making good use of keywords. Conduct some keyword research and use three basic types in your content – short-tail keywords which are a single word that broadly categorise things, mid-tail keywords that identify broad concepts, and long-tail keywords, which are longer and specific.
Length
Two things must be kept in mind while curating content – ample research and a suitable length. Add substance to your work and create longer blogs and articles as they are among the top SEO ranking factors. Longer content is also easier to optimise which makes adding keywords and links easier.
Assess your content
If you have been uploading blog posts for a while, analyse it to learn if it’s meeting your goals. Understand what’s working, the gaps that need to be filled and how much the audience appreciates and shares each post. Analytics and tools like SEMRush can help you with content assessment.
If you are looking to upskill and want to learn the art of content marketing to create impactful strategies, then the Diploma in Digital Marketing Specialist Co-op by TSoM is a great choice. Powered by the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI), this program focuses on all important aspects of well–designed marketing campaigns. Click on the link above to start your journey into this dynamic industry today.
