The Power of Content Marketing

Introduction

How do you reach a large audience through so many distinct channels? Content marketing has the biggest potential for achieving this feat, but it’s only as effective as your strategy for implementation and your ability to pivot when necessary. With its increasing importance in the digital world, we’re going to get a firm grasp of what effective content marketing entails and how to incorporate it into your advertising tactics by setting goals, and identifying your target audience. We’ll also dive into content creation and strategy, along with the how-tos for promotion and measurement of success. 

Understanding Content Marketing

Content marketing, first off, serves a purpose for your audience. It passes on valuable information or entertains readers or viewers through engaging text, video, or audio. This form of inbound marketing also helps to build a connection and trust between businesses and their existing and potential customers. This occurs by first catching your targeted audience’s attention with compelling content (as mentioned, video, text, etc.). As trust builds, more of these viewers turn to your product or service. 

Regardless, measuring the effectiveness of a content marketing campaign proves to be a challenge. However, a successful campaign will generate numerous leads without a high cost, especially if it’s well planned and executed. That’s where the goal setting comes in.

Setting Clear Goals and Objectives

The most important part of the planning phase relates to establishing SMART goals and clear objectives. In other words, your goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (hence, the acronym, “SMART”). The end that you’re hoping to accomplish has to be a specific action that would be readily reflected by the data you collect as the campaign progresses. It also has to be relevant to your business’s mission and objective as well as realistically achievable. As an illustration, a business wants to increase the number of email subscribers from 20 new subscribers per month to 30. This can be accomplished through the creation and integration of really specific lead magnets during the course of that month. So now, you have a goal with a particular action that’s doable and measurable within a certain time frame 

Identifying Your Target Audience

You can employ the most effective content marketing strategies around, but they will not serve any purpose without first identifying your target audience. If you don’t place your exact target audience front and center in your marketing campaign, you’ll end up with lower conversion rates. Worse yet, you’ll bring in customers who don’t mesh well with your business which leads to customer service nightmares and ultimately bad reviews.

So you have to ask yourself some questions as you identify your target audience. How much do they know about your product and service? Which problems can your product or service solve for them? And of course, where does your audience work and at what level (ie: entry level, senior management, founders, so on). You can gain this information through your Google and social media analytics. From there, you can develop a crystal clear buyer persona which will drive your content strategy.

Once you have a firm understanding of your target audience, then it’s easy to figure out what kind of content they’re searching for. Fortunately, you can choose from various types to ramp up your content creation. Here are a few ideas:

●    Text–includes blogs, white papers, and case studies

●    Social media posts

●    Video

●    Podcasts

●    Emails/Newsletters

As noted, the insight you have into your target audience will drive your decisions for content creation. For instance, the younger generation might prefer videos and regular posts on TikTok while Gen X might engage in podcasts and enjoy receiving updates in newsletters. As another illustration, members of upper management in an organization would like to read a case study before making important decisions. In other words, you’ll gain a larger following within your target audience if your content speaks directly to their wants and needs. Plus, if you follow a consistent schedule by establishing a content calendar early on, your audience will know exactly what to expect and when to expect the next publication. So, take advantage of handy CMS like Asana, Basecamp, or Trello. Your team will appreciate the organized system as well.

Content Promotion and Measurement

Highlight the importance of repurposing content for different platforms.

At this point, you’ve followed the tips mentioned above, and now you’re ready to take on that task of content promotion. Two effective tools involve social media and email marketing–both of which prove to be highly effective in announcing the next podcast episode or promoting a blog on a thought-provoking topic. While you would normally include links to your website or your YouTube channel (if applicable), you’ll still need to stay updated on your analytics. Looking at the number of post engagements, conversions, and your site’s traffic will tell you right away if your campaign is working. Finding out this information is rather simple since you can access the audience insights from all social media platforms, and the data for your website traffic can be found on its dashboard. You’ll just have to compile the numbers into an easy-to-follow format that would reveal any changes over a certain time span. Moreover, you’ll find out if you need to pivot a bit with your content distribution channels or if you should stay on the same path. 

Conclusion and Next Steps

And there you have all the tips you’ll need to launch your next round of content marketing strategies. By setting SMART goals and becoming familiar with your target audience and creating content that’ll engage them, your analytics will reflect the fruits of your labor as you see increased conversions. Plus, don’t forget the value of content optimization and content repurposing if you find that certain texts or videos perform well. In due time, you’ll find your business a step ahead of the competition.