If you really want to get to the nitty-gritty of content marketing, start with one major thing – a creative approach. Your approach is all about how you reach out and connect with your customers. Today, everyone knows you cannot use traditional forms of marketing and expect to reach prospective clients effectively. New times call for new measures, especially if you plan to reach and convert quality leads into loyal customers. Now more than ever, content marketing remains the most effective way to reach and engage your target audience.
In this article, you’ll gain insights into how businesses can implement content marketing strategies and make real connections with their audience. So, if you’re down with the idea of increasing customer conversions, improving brand awareness, while also boosting revenues, keep reading!
Below are the key points you can jump to quickly!
- Learn the importance of marketing and its effectiveness.
- Understand the 7 reasons why your content marketing strategy must be effective.
- Improve your content marketing and getting a return on your investment!
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Why Content Marketing Is So Important
Before discussing the two main reasons why this marketing tool is so vital, let’s first learn what content marketing is. Content marketing is the process of strategically manipulating content to reach your target audience effectively. Businesses do this through industry research, content planning, developing, dispensing, sharing, posting, and re-sharing through different venues. Overall, companies have four goals in mind when using content marketing; they are to:
- Improve brand awareness
- Boost business sales
- Connect with qualified customer leads
- Engage those leads into action
Reason #1 – It Helps You Provide What Your Audience Needs
When presenting content correctly, you provide your audience with useful information about your products and services. In the process, you also educate and enlighten them on how to benefit from your products and services. Strategic content marketing should also provide solutions that help effectively solve your audience’s pain points and challenges.
Reason #2 – It’s a Strategy that Can Also Help Solve Marketing Pain Points
Content marketing is today’s most effective way for businesses to combat the snags of traditional outbound marketing strategies. Traditional strategies aren’t as effective at reaching or developing leads as they once were because they interrupt target audiences without making real connections. On the other hand, content marketing helps companies:
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- Educate potential clients and leads and prospects on products and services
- Boost conversion rates
- Connect businesses to their audiences with the opportunity to present how they can help solve audience product and service challenges
- Build lasting relationships between loyal customers and reliable businesses
- And lastly, create a sense of community around a company brand.
A great example of this is the ‘Good Neighbors’ commercial from Ring. Click below to view the clip!
Overall, content marketing is a vital tool you should consistently use when presenting content on websites and landing pages, published articles, and social media platforms. Businesses also use it to show digital download assets, info-graphics, videos, e-books, paid ad campaigns, and company collateral.
Create An Effective Content Marketing Strategy
For businesses to effectively create solutions with this tool, it helps to learn a little about the different types of content marketing platforms. Although we mention a few above, HubSpot offers vast knowledge and insight on the subject.
No business in operation wants to miss out on ensuring their marketing efforts are successful and have an impact. Thus, implementing a strategy is so vital to obtaining success with lead conversion and connecting with your target audience. Below, we’ll help you look into seven things to consider when creating a marketing strategy.
1- Be SMART About Setting Goals
The first thing in implementing a content marketing strategy is to set some SMART goals. For instance, SMART, in this case, means ensuring your marketing goals are…
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- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic and
- Time-bound
When you have SMART goals in mind, you can create content to swear by and uphold as your audience becomes more engaged. Remember, not every goal will apply to each business. So, make sure your goals stay true to business industry products and services and ensure that the content stands out in a way that attracts your audience.
2- Determine Your Key Performance Indicators
Once you’ve set SMART goals, be sure to establish your key performance indicators (KPIs). They are, in fact, quantifiable information points you can use to measure your actual performance compared to your set goals. KPIs consist of things like measuring site traffic, followers, or customer sign-ups with improved brand awareness goals. Another example could be tracking daily or monthly sales when setting projections for increased revenue.
3- Choose the Type of Content to Market
The next step in creating an effective marketing strategy is choosing the type of content you want to create for your business. First, you’ll need to consider buyer personas and your target audience to help you determine the content type. As you consider them, you should think about what they need from you to help solve their problem, and how your product or service helps or benefits them. Knowing these things will help you decide on the best type of content for them.
Again, the types of content you can choose from would be blogs, info-graphics, videos, social media content, ads, etc. However, companies can only benefit from this tool when they first understand and meet their customers’ needs.
4- Pick Distribution Channels for Content
After you determine the kind of content you want to market, the next step is choosing your lead generation content channels. The type of channels to work with for some content types will be evident to you. For example, if you want to create blog content, the channel will simply be the blog article.
Yet, there are other channels that you’ll choose that will require you to make an additional decision. For instance, with a social media channel, you’ll have to pick which platforms you want to market on. Will you choose Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, another platform, or a combination of them? Likewise, when selecting infographic content, you must also determine whether you’ll share it on your website channel, social media, etc. Learn more about content channels below.
5- Set a Realistic Budget
Often, businesses want their marketing goals to excel on a small budget. Yet, realistically, when setting your budget, it should reflect your goals in a healthy way. When you consider the type of content you’re creating and which channels to market that content on, there are some questions to ask beforehand. These questions will help you set your budget; so, ask your team the following:
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- Will we need to buy specific software technologies, like stock image and Photoshop software programs, or purchase camera and video equipment to create particular content?
- Do we need to hire any content marketing staff, like writers, designers, and artists?
- Will we have to pay for ad space?
- Do we need to have access to a variety of resources and tools that will help measure or enhance our specific type of content?
As you work with your team to answer these questions, you’ll start noticing how the responses impact your projected budget.
6- Begin Creating and Distributing Your Content
Content creation is one of the most critical tasks in any successful marketing strategy. Companies need to create and distribute their content in an innovative way to connect with their target audience effectively. In doing so, they help increase the chances of prospects converting into loyal customers.
It also helps to use an editorial calendar to ensure that you are consistently publishing and sharing relevant content with prospects and your targeted customers. When you use an editorial or social media calendar, you’ll only get the most out of it when you strategize and plan ahead for sharing content. Also, the schedule helps your team stay on track with posting and distribution dates.
7- Analyze Your Results and Measure Them
The last thing to consider is a method for analyzing and measuring your results. Having your results will ultimately help you make those necessary adjustments to improve your content marketing efforts. Results will also help you reach more prospects.
However, you’ll want to refer back to your SMART goals and KPIs to determine the overall success of your marketing strategy. Check and see if you’ve achieved your goals and KPIs, and if not, identify any missteps and make the proper adjustments.
Get Help With Content Marketing
The beauty of having an effective content marketing strategy is that just because you understand it doesn’t mean you have to work the entire process. Most times, companies like yours don’t have time to sweat the small stuff, although it’s just as important to overall success. Instead, you’ll want to place all your efforts into solely working on your business rather than working in it. This is where marketing partners like BUILDINGBLOCKS Marketing Solutions (BBMS) come into play.
We’re in this with you to help your business grow by connecting you to the right opportunities. Our desire is for you to truly benefit from our years of experience when it comes to effectively applying your chosen content marketing strategies. We know that your ultimate goals are to reach your targeted audience, increase conversions, and see a return on your investment. Since there are various ways to market with content to boost revenue, grow your brand, and build relationships with prospective customers, we can help you determine which methods will work best for your business.
