Every day, 7.5 million blog articles are posted on the internet out of which 2.8 million are posted on WordPress alone.
With such a crowded content space, how can you make your brand’s content stand out from the crowd and gain legitimate traffic? A simple formula to follow is to create content that educates, engages and captivates your audience.
In this guide, our experts have compiled top expert tips to help you curate a solid content marketing strategy framework that attracts quality leads to your website.
Understanding Content Marketing
So what is Content Marketing? In layman\’s terms, putting out a visual or written form of content with the purpose of turning the reader into a potential buyer.
Content marketing is also essential for lead generation SEO ( Search engine optimisation).
In broad terms, Content marketing is planning, strategising and producing diverse pieces of content across a wide range of platforms and channels to target audiences and increase brand awareness, and engagement and possibly lead to sales.
The form of content could be anything from a blog, podcast, posts, reels, videos, magazines, ebooks, newsletters, infographics and more.
Why is it Important?
The importance of content marketing can be understood by its sheer glance of impact which outweighs and outperforms paid marketing when done at scale and consistently.
- Lead Generation and Cost Efficiency – Content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing while costing 62% less. This makes it a cost-effective strategy for acquiring new customers. (Respona)
- Revenue and Sales Impact – 58% of B2B marketers reported that content marketing has helped them increase sales and revenue. Additionally, businesses that invest in content marketing see substantial improvements in their overall marketing performance. (Semrush)
- Consumer Trust and Engagement – A significant number of consumers prefer content over traditional advertisements. For instance, 70% of users prefer to learn about a company through articles rather than ads. This preference for content leads to higher engagement and trust among consumers. (Respona)
Tips to Do Effective Content Marketing Strategy
1. Research Market & Define Your Audience
A simple yet powerful area to consider firsthand is identifying and knowing your audience deeply. It is the only way that helps you tailor the content accordingly.
Market research reveals different insights into consumer behaviour patterns. Make detailed buyer personas, discover their requirements, interests, and pain points by conducting in-depth market research.
This helps you identify the needs of buyers, analyse what points you can target to build trust and then curate content that appeals to these masses.
One effective method is to segregate your audience into four levels –
- Prospects that are already searching for the solution you are selling. (conversion rate is high)
- Prospects that are likely to convert into buyers. (requires efforts for closure)
- Prospects that need more information. (requires more effort on passing information)
- Prospects that are unaware of the problem or solution. (requires more efforts for awareness)
By doing so, you can target your content specifically for these groups and maximise the chances of traffic coming from all the niches. Remember to keep the flow of content marketing informative and less pushy in order to maintain authenticity among the consumers.
Read more on how to target an audience effectively in our comprehensive guide on it.
2. Setting Goals
It is hard to navigate your journey if you don’t have a clear measurable goal. Each piece of content should be produced with a clear goal. For instance, a blog piece explaining E-commerce SEO should be targeted to inform E-com business owners regarding website optimisation and get maximum traction from them. This can drive more brand awareness and help filter out audiences.
Be specific. The more specific you are with the message, the better communication channel can be established. Content marketing space is crammed, so being specific with the message can already place you ahead of others in terms of market voice.
Monitor website traffic, analyse newsletter engagements, record total play hours on videos, check social media insights, etc. and draw important takeaways. Implement the key takeaways in your next piece of content and repeat the process. By being consistent, one can reach close to the initial goals.
Setting a goal helps in establishing a clear sense of direction, focus and accountability, resulting in a successful marketing campaign.
3. Create Authenticity through Subject Expertise
Creating trust and credibility among your customers is essential and authenticity is the key to it. If your content output does not align with your brand message, it’s time to get back to square one and reconceptualise your content marketing strategy.
The key to becoming an industry jargon is to master the art of subject expertise. Wikipedia, for instance, has mastered this. Need any details on a historic event you directly refer to them.
Conducting thorough research on topics, questions, market trends, etc. around your industry can give a brand an upper hand on competitors.
Create detailed guides, and long-form articles on topics, answer questions and doubts of people regarding the niche – Do this at scale and your brand stands out as an expert.
This trust then transfers to your product or service as people are aware of your brand in this field and may refer to your offerings directly or indirectly.
- Write with people in mind and not to impress search engines. Putting out high-quality content will eventually be ranked higher because of the quality of output.
- Align the brand message and company image into content. Incorporate the brand’s personality in the message to stand out.
- Build a connection of trust by showcasing expertise in different subject matters related to your niche or industry.
4. Inform, Don’t Gatekeep
According to Market Insider, “Nearly half of consumers won’t spend time with branded content if it’s not relevant to their interests.”
Consumers can call the fluff and know when a marketer is trying to sell. Creating spammy content and constantly pushing to sell the narrative can not take you to the desired results. The key is to build trustworthiness through knowledge, information and awareness.
It might be difficult to capture and hold an audience\’s attention in a world where there is an abundance of content. Providing valuable content for your audience can significantly increase the likelihood that people will learn about your business and follow through on the buyer\’s journey.
Share your knowledge with the public, let them know the key insights in the market/product, consider your persona\’s tastes, actions, and problems when producing content, Address the queries they may have, and then try to solve them in your writing. By doing this, you\’ll be able to stand out from the competition, interact with your audience, and win over more clients and prospects.
5. Manage and Repurpose Content
Maintain a content calendar and track the progress over time. Organic exposure will take its time to develop and hence make Multi-marketing channels to leverage initial traffic.
When marketing a form of content through different channels, your audience is more likely to take notice. Induce CTA and tell them to interact with the content ( like, share or comment ) to gain a boost from the algorithm.
Additionally, you can also repurpose this content into different forms and distribute them to other platforms. To give you an idea,
1 long-form article on the website can be repurposed into
↓
3 different topic posts/reels for FB and Insta
↓
Long Thread on X(Twitter)
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Carousel for LinkedIn
↓
Email Marketing
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Story thread for Snapchat
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Checklist pin for Pinterest
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Dubbed in Audio for Podcast episode
Creating separate posts for segregated audiences across different platforms takes a lot of time and effort. You can save resources by making long-form content for one medium and then breaking it down into smaller informational
content for other platforms.
The best way to organise this approach is to make a content calendar. This will help you keep track of all the published content and analyse their performance. Take note of insights and see which platform and content medium gains most traction and then centralise the approach towards it.
6. Measure and Repeat
There are numerous ways to create measure metrics. Create metrics that align with your goals and help in making the right decisions. Here are some common metrics that you can refer to –
User-based
- Leads and
- Conversions
- New unique viewers
- Bounceback rate per second
- Sources of traffic
SEO based
- Organic traffic
- Article topics with maximum tractions
- Keyword performance
Engagement based
- Likes, comments and shares
- Mentions
- Pan-location traffic
The list can go on…Frame result metrics that align the most with your brand and give you the best insight on whether the content was a hit or a miss.
And last but not least, Stay consistent with your content marketing strategy. Know that results can take time, the important thing is to show up every day. Results may remain stagnant for 3 straight weeks but One viral reel can outperform the impact of your 3 week’s content. You never know!
Ready to begin your brand’s content marketing journey? Digitalzoop’s experts are here to help you. Contact us today to get started.
