Today, millions are online, giving your brand ample opportunity to engage with them and win over many.
How do you reach your target audience, despite all the noise online?
Content marketing will increase your brand awareness and conversion rates. While SEO will help, you will be noticed more using a content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing is a way to create, distribute and manage online Content. Its goal is to reach target audiences wherever they are, with the Content they want.
To achieve these lofty objectives, you must have the best content possible, and your strategy must be clearly defined.
Understand Your Target Audience
Content marketing focuses on attracting an audience who will engage with your brand and purchase products.
Before writing or strategizing Content, you should consider who your audience is and their needs.
Create buyer personas, and walk them through their entire buying journey. It would help if you got to know your customers more personally to create Content that speaks directly to them.
Create Content for the three stages of the buyer’s journey.
Make sure to expand your focus beyond just one buyer journey stage. Create Content for each step.
Stage of Awareness
Create educational content to accompany the first interaction.
Engagement stage
Create informative and personalized Content, and start showcasing your products and services. Showcase how they provide a solution. (e.g., webinars, eBooks, email campaigns).
Conversion Stage
Use your Content to demonstrate how your brand is better than the competition in solving their problems. Include a call-to-action so that they can quickly become customers (e.g., case studies, demonstrations).
Build trust and authority with your Content.
Consumers today are searching for brands they can trust and those who can speak with authority about their issues, problems, or interests.
Focus on how to inform and educate them about the problem or issue or feed their interest.
Use empathy when interacting with others to demonstrate that you understand their perspective and what you can do to help.
Resist the aggressive selling approach. Avoid the sales mindset.
Then, add more persuasive Content to move them toward conversion.
Write Long-Form, Evergreen Content
When it comes to sharing Content online, more is sometimes better.
Include more long-form evergreen Content and less short-form or trending Content for optimal results.
Content that is longer performs well in search engine algorithms and improves your SEO efforts. It also attracts a loyal audience.
The best use of your budget and time is to create lasting Content.
This is because this type of Content will continue to be valuable for a long time.
Keep Brand Voice Consistent
Maintaining a consistent brand voice across all marketing channels will help you to make your brand more recognizable.
Align your brand’s messaging and ensure all Content reflects that voice.
Develop brand guidelines and standards for your team. This includes writers, editors, and graphic designers.
You should go even further by creating a content management plan that tracks and manages your strategy.
Different Content Types
You are no longer limited to only textual formats for your Content.
It’s easier to create different types of Content today to reach consumers. Today’s most popular formats include:
- Videos (short- and long-form).
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Interactive Content, including eBooks and lookbooks
- Webinars
- Case studies
- White Papers
Feel free to experiment with different content types. They may be the best for your audience and your marketing.
Prioritize the readability of your Content.
There are many benefits to prioritizing the readability of Content.
Readability is a measure of how easily consumers can understand your Content.
Avoid complex words, long sentences, and paragraphs to achieve optimal readability. Be sure to format your document correctly and write clearly.
By keeping your readers on your site longer, the readability of your Content will directly affect your SEO.
You want to ensure that your text is as straightforward as possible, especially with the increase in Voice Search. This will help you be easily found. Google will take this into account when determining your ranking.
Yoast SEO and SEMrush are online tools that help you analyze and create your text.
Use Analytics to Inform and Guide Your Content Improvement
Knowing how to track, analyze and reach the right audience is almost as important as creating good Content.
Analytics can show you that your Content may not be as good as you think.
Let analytics guide and inform you if viewers need to convert or leave your website Content quickly.
Your Content could be sitting there, generating little traffic and having no effect. It needs to be helping your brand.
You can use analytics to determine the performance of your Content and what’s working. This will help you identify areas that need improvement.
Create a content calendar.
Consider creating a calendar of Content to keep your team organized and on track.
This type of calendar will keep your audience informed and ensure consistent Content.
You and your team can decide how complex or detailed the calendar is, but you might want to include the following:
- Project timelines
- Keywords (primary, secondary, etc.)
- Due dates
- Distribution channels (Social Media, Blogs)
- The team members and their assigned tasks
- Additional Content