Content marketing is all about researching, creating and promoting valuable content for your target audience. Instead of explicitly promoting your product or service, content marketing seeks to share knowledge and insights to support your audience in achieving their goals and overcoming their pain points.
Over time, a consistent content marketing strategy, which shares useful and engaging content, builds relationships with your target audience. It also improves your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), boosts search rankings and puts your brand in front of new potential customers.
There are many different kinds of content you can create for your business, so whether it be a blog, a podcast, a video or an emailer, here are five tips to help you to get the most from your content marketing efforts:
1. Have a strategy
Planning your content in advance will help you ensure that each piece complements the others and contributes to the goals in your overall marketing campaign. Research by the content marketing institute has found that companies with documented marketing strategies consistently feel more successful in their content marketing. These companies are also more confident that customers are provided with optimal experiences and relevant information. To make an effective content marketing strategy, focus on defining your goals (what you want to accomplish), strategy (how you’re going to get there) and your performance indicators (how you will measure your progress and see what’s working and what’s not).
2. Think about what your customers want to see
There are so many options for content marketing that it can be hard to decide what will best address your target audience’s wants and needs. The effort pays off if people value your content and spend more time with it, rewarding you with both happy users and improved SEO, making you more prominent in online searches. Think about the individual personas of your audience and refer back to them in your content planning. They may want to see longer posts, funny videos or answered questions – you know your audience best.
3. Create valuable content
Adding value was described by Forbes as the #1 secret of content marketing. Your content is created perfectly for your audience, so make sure they are also getting something from it that they won’t find anywhere else. Your content should always reflect your values, your ‘why’ and how that makes your company unique. This will help your audience to understand who you are and what your mission is, allowing them to connect with you as a brand, continuing to build your relationship.
4. Promote your content
Effective content promotion will remind your potential customers of your brand, increasing the number of positive interactions with you and leading you further towards a sale. You’ve put a lot of effort into creating a piece of content that your audience will value, and it deserves to be seen, so promote it on your existing channels to get more people engaging straight away. Anything you create can be shared in social media posts or even in email campaigns. Derek Halpurn recommends that in order to have the most amount of people read your best work, you should only use around 20% of your time creating content and the other 80% promoting it.
5. Be prepared to play the long game
When investing time and money in something, it’s tempting to want to see a return straight away. Content marketing builds trust and relationships with potential customers, but the key is consistency. A study from Moz showed that, on average, a customer would visit their blog 7.5 times before signing up for a free trial of the software. While continuing to create and promote content, you can evaluate your progress with measures like site traffic, on-site engagements (likes, comments and shares), content downloads, or track your SEO with tools like SEMrush.
Content marketing can be hard work, but when done right, it pays itself back in spades. Particularly in the age of ad-skipping and blocking, creating valuable content helps you find your target audience and build a relationship with them, without the need for explicit promotion. By following these five tips, you can start to make sure your content is working in the most effective way possible for your audience and brand.
For information about how Kinetic can help you build a content marketing plan, or more information on content marketing, get in touch.
