Modern marketing is inseparable from high-quality and effective content that helps tell the brand story in an attractive and engaging way. Content marketing provides companies with endless ways to spread their stories. That is why it is becoming such an important part of every company's business. According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than 70% of organizations working in the B2B sector and more than 86% of those working in the B2C sector use content marketing in their activities in one way or another. However, despite these figures, more than 63% of companies still do not have a clearly planned content marketing strategy. The remaining companies that are able to make more effective use of this marketing method are able to achieve significantly better results. Without it, achieving goals becomes a matter of chance. How does content actually work and how can it influence results? Studies show that companies that publish more than 16 blog posts attract three times more traffic than those with fewer than four posts per month. Content marketing is significantly cheaper than traditional marketing and has a conversion rate six times higher than other marketing methods. To make your content more beneficial, we recommend starting with these steps.
Set goals for the content you create
Knowing your goals allows teams to make further decisions to improve targeted marketing. Goals can vary widely, from increasing sales or website traffic to reducing marketing costs or utilizing social networks in your activities. One of the simplest goals may be to attract people to a website or blog and add them to a newsletter subscriber list. Later, emails can be used to strengthen the connection with those who are interested in your content and the goods or services you offer.
For some people, content marketing is perceived as being much more than just a company's products or services. The idea is that by understanding the company's mission and goals, buyers themselves will appreciate their appeal and, as a result, purchase the product.
Here are a few more examples of content marketing goals that organizations often set:
- Increasing sales and finding new potential customers who will help achieve financial goals.
- Improving the company's image in order to gain influence and authority in the market so that customers see you as market leaders.
- Successful SEO that attracts more visitors to the website or online store.
However, in order to understand whether the goals you have set are achievable, it is important to establish key performance indicators (KPIs). They will not only help you evaluate the results you have achieved, but also allow you to compare them with your current results. It is also important to determine how often you will measure your results. The indicators you choose should be directly related to your goals and may include data related to turnover, sales, visitors, SEO, and various aspects of digital marketing, such as email marketing and social media indicators. These are usually measured in specific numbers. For example, you may decide that you want to:
- Achieve a certain amount of revenue per month, quarter, or year.
- Attract more subscribers by using a special offer to attract potential customers, which would mean that you would have more high-quality potential buyers.
- Gather a certain number of new subscribers to your newsletters.
- Increase website traffic and user interest in the content published there.
- Improve the search engine rankings of certain pages in order to increase the number of visitors.
- After publishing content, get a certain number of mentions, shares, and comments.
- Be invited to certain events taking place in the market.
It is also important to remember the costs associated with various marketing campaigns and the costs associated with attracting new potential buyers and increasing sales.
It is understandable that you should be able to evaluate your results, but it is important to assess the situation you are currently in. Otherwise, it will be difficult to determine when and due to what actions you succeeded or failed to achieve your goal. Knowing the current situation will make it easier to determine whether new content is helping you achieve your goals. The assessment of the situation depends on how much content you already publish. If you are just starting out, then practically any positive change in results will mean that the content is working. However, if you are already using one or more channels, you should analyze them:
- Mark the content you currently have, such as blog posts, etc.
- Evaluate the usefulness and success of the content.
- Identify shortcomings.
You can also compare new content with existing content used by competitors and decide how it will fit into the market.
Know your audience
An effective content marketing strategy always includes two key elements: your brand voice and your audience. This allows you to communicate with them in a way that they understand. For example, if you are trying to reach younger buyers, the best way would be to use social networks and more specific language. However, in order to attract the attention of older customers, your content should be focused on forming an authoritative opinion in the market. Tools such as Google Analytics can help you determine which content is more popular with your audience and who reads the information provided, when and where. Analytics tools allow you to create a profile of your reader, knowing their age, gender, education, and even income. The ability to determine what the content should be focused on allows you to understand what topics to cover and in what format to present them.
In order to learn even more about your audience, you can try to collect their feedback. It helps to determine:
- What feelings does the published content evoke?
- What are their most important needs?
- How can your content help solve their problems?
Properly collected feedback helps identify readers' priorities and determine the best places to reach your audience.
The demographic data and customer feedback you collect can help you create or refine buyer personas, also known as customer avatars. They describe your ideal readers and customers and allow you to prepare better and more accurate content. The best customer avatars help you identify the issues, challenges, information sources, and motivations that drive your customers' behavior. All of this data will give you a better understanding of:
- What content will your audience respond to best?
- How will the content help your readers?
- What will make your audience interested in the content?
Choose your content distribution channels
Different audiences choose different channels and types of content. Blogs and newsletters are often used as the core of content marketing. However, modern ways of reaching your buyer go much further, attracting opinion leaders on social networks, creating augmented reality campaigns, publishing podcasts, printing magazines, creating video series, and so on.
It is useful to start implementing your content marketing strategy with one or two channels and gradually expand them. As your audience grows and your content marketing tools improve (along with your team and resources), you can ask your audience for their opinion on the format in which they would like to receive information from you.
Various analytics tools can also help you choose the most suitable channels. These tools can be used to determine what content is in demand on a particular channel, how many people it attracts, and how much it is shared.
Have a content publishing network
Once you have decided on the form of content and channels, it is important to set up a publishing network – a schedule that specifies how often and what content will be distributed on a particular channel. Not having one is a fundamental content marketing mistake that can be quite costly. If you don't have a lot of content and only use one or two channels, you can use a regular calendar, but if your campaigns become more complex and the volume increases, it is advisable to use more serious project management tools.
Create value for the reader
The content you publish must be focused on your audience first and foremost. In order to attract more readers and increase demand, it is important that the information you publish is relevant and interesting. To achieve this, you should conduct research to determine:
- What content is already published on the internet?
- How can your new content benefit your audience?
You should start by researching the most popular topics and assessing how you could improve them. You can also use keywords in your searches to identify key terms that can be used to improve SEO results and search engine rankings.
Start creating content
Once all the preparatory work is done, it's time to move on to creating and publishing the content itself. At this stage, it is important to think about how you want to reflect the uniqueness of your brand in your content. Do you want to appear particularly professional, completely informal, or both? You will need to maintain a balance between demonstrating your knowledge and preaching to your audience. It is important that your brand's voice is consistent, and of course, you always need to keep SEO rankings in mind in order to optimize your content.
Compare the results of different articles
In order to finally highlight what content readers like and engage with the most, you need to constantly compare the results you get. This can be done by monitoring visitor traffic, the number of shares and comments, and even by asking customers for feedback. All of this will help you follow trends and see if the content you have chosen for your content marketing strategy is delivering results and still in demand. If you notice a decline in activity, it is worth assessing whether there have been any changes in the market that could have influenced audience preferences. It may be that repetitive content no longer seems attractive enough and your readers are starting to look for new suppliers, which means it's time to react and reassess the relevance of your content and its suitability for market needs.
Return to your selected key performance indicators and compare the results. If you have achieved your goals, it means that you are on the right track and your strategy is working and effective. However, if the results are not as good as expected, it may be worth reassessing the market situation and the needs of your audience and making changes that will yield results. It may be worth investing in additional audience engagement, keywords, SEO, and other actions that are more effective and allow your content to reach a larger audience and potentially attract additional potential customers.
Creating a long-term, engaging, and effective content strategy is not an easy task. However, if you approach it consistently while keeping both short-term and long-term goals in mind, it truly pays off. If the process feels overwhelming, remember that your goal is not simply to add more “noise” to the market or try to push yet another product. You are a storyteller sharing the story of your brand — a story worth hearing.
Sources:
https://www.criteo.com/insights/how-to-build-an-effective-content-marketing-strategy/
https://optinmonster.com/how-to-create-a-successful-content-marketing-strategy-in-8-simple-steps/
