Content marketing is one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies for all sorts of companies irrespective of their size. It is a sure-shot way for their growth and broad user base. You got doubts, skim through the 2018 content preference survey report.
However, when it’s about crafting an appropriate strategy, the task is not so easy. The process of content marketing is quickly evolving, and the focus isn’t just on quality but on creating quantity for the audience. Which design is perfect and which one won’t do justice with your business is a very difficult thing to figure out.
Hence, grab a cup of tea and jot down a plan or give a lighthearted read to our already devised formula…
1. Identify Audience
Content works best when you know who you are aiming for. Blindly writing articles without understanding your audience will do no good to your business. Before you try creating captivating content, spend some time getting to know your readers. One technique to leverage in this context is researching keywords, aimed at discovering what your customers desire. Remember, how well you know your audience, the better you can base your plans, the more effective will be your content strategy.
2. Make good use of Visuals
As an age-old saying goes, “a picture speaks a thousand words” holds no less in the arena of content marketing. Accompanying great visuals be it in the form of pictures, videos or infographics with qualitative and engaging text is one such strategy that should never be overlooked.
Also, infographics help companies educate their readers and provide useful information that can add value for lead generation. The visual content helps readers visualize content so that they have a better idea of how something operates.
3. Keywords Research
Pay extra attention to keywords as they help in determining the content for various pages. Keyword research boosts SEO functionality and brand presence online. Understanding key trends is very crucial. It is the process of locating and analyzing actual terms that people enter in the search engine. The insight you acquire in this analysis will help in writing user-engaging content.
4. Make the best use of SEO
Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the process of bringing in organic website traffic from search engines. It is, and has always been creating the right user experience. SEO is a strategy that encompasses every aspect of website building and content creation. Focusing on this aspect will take your site higher on the ranking series of Google. And by optimizing your content and site for the search engines, your business online visibility can boost.
5. Eye on Competitors
If a competitive analysis for content marketing hasn’t been conducted, then you are lagging in the game. It can significantly improve a great many facets of your marketing with a proper analysis. Identify the most pages of your competitors and try to compete with them for your keyword. Check their websites, popular designs and most relevant blogs and understand their pattern. See what hacks and tricks they are using to leverage their target audience for building a brand and most importantly boost sales.
6. Remarketing
Remarketing is the method of showing ads to users who have visited your site while browsing the internet. These days, content marketers are pumping a huge amount of money to crack the deal. But why? Because more frequently a user sees an add, higher will be chances of their conversion. One may see a drop in the click-through rate, but remarketing makes twice as likely for users who click on your ad after viewing it.
Setting up a remarketing campaign is not very tricky and may require fewer resources. All you need is existing customer data to plugin into the numerous number of platforms at your disposal. You can take the help of AdRoll, Google Ad Remarketing and other options like Facebook Ads or Retarget links. The primary thing to keep in mind is to segment your targeted audience in accordance with relevance. This will prevent you from retargeting everyone with a similar promotion.
7. Landing Pages
A sure shot method to boost traffic? Create high quality relevant landing pages. Design as many pages as much you think would be suitable. Each landing page optimized for one or more number of keywords that your audience is much more likely to search for. For instance, Nuffield Health was able to generate 60% more revenue merely by developing more relevant pages and optimizing them for the right keywords. This is a perfect example of a business that wishes to learn more about the market and their targeted audience. And then embrace these insights into content creation.
8. Privacy Check
It is not a mystery that websites fund their existence with the help of IP or the device data they collected from users and sell it to the advertisers. In the old days, web users used to be content with this arrangement. However, it has been realised that companies don’t do much to protect this information which, in result, has made them skeptical.
57% of consumers believe brands do not use their data responsibly, while 92% of online users have data security and privacy concerns. It has only become worse in the social media landscape, where no data seems to be private any longer.
To earn customers’ trust, content marketers have to put a lot of work for keeping their personal information safe. The EU released the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, which is a regulatory guide, marketers can leverage it to protect their users data.
Companies need to incorporate privacy protocols into their sites and app to make this as a default option. They will have to seek permission for the effective usage of data and precisely outline how they use the said data.
9. Content Distribution
No matter how beautifully you have designed the content, it will make no sense in end if nobody views it. This is why content distribution has to be at the centre of your content marketing strategy. Going with the flow, do we exactly know what is content distribution?
Content Distribution means including your personal media channels for example, your company’s site, mails, newsletters, blogs and not forgetting the social media accounts. One can even pay for distributing the content over social media or can leverage Google Ad Campaigns, third party apps like Guest Blogs and PR pieces.
10. Niche Content
Given how heavily saturated the market is, with more content than ever before; content marketing has to stand out to have a ghost of a chance. This may require an extraordinarily creative or detailed content creation (which would absorb more time and resources), or you narrow your scope and create content for a smaller niche.
Instead of fighting with other content marketers over the same audience, shift towards niche content. That means you write about “digital marketing campaigns for female entrepreneurs” instead of just “digital marketing campaigns”.
Identify niches in your industry that seem to have been ignored, and recognize angles that have been underserved.
Conclusion
We know it is a lot of work but anyway, the road to success isn’t trouble-free? Content Marketing is no exception. After all, it is not just about writing a perfectly synchronised information delivering extracts. It has to reach the masses in the perfect hour through the perfect channel. All of this takes time and yeah, of course, a lot of hard work on your end.
But don’t work, utilize the above-mentioned tactics and see your website rising the ladder of various search engines. Happy Marketing!
