Content marketing is no longer a nice thing to have. Today, companies must grow their online base and engage their audience to stand out from the competitive digital marketing landscape. Indeed, B2B marketers assign 30% of their budgets to content marketing on average, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
If your enterprise has a content marketing strategy, re-evaluate it regularly to keep up with the latest trends. No matter how solid the content strategy is, it won’t stay perfect forever, and you won’t remain competitive for long if you use the same tactics year after year. Luckily, the tips below will give you a head start in improving your content marketing strategy:
1. Document Your Content Strategy
A documented content strategy is the key to successful content marketing. Yet, many marketers produce content without a written content marketing plan. The result is random acts of content that do not advance your business goals.
Other business owners don’t see the need for a documented content strategy if they run a small team. However, a documented content strategy is the roadmap that guides all your content marketing efforts, whether you run a big or small operation.
Also, a written content strategy keeps your team focused on marketing goals and campaigns. In particular, no one will be confused about their responsibilities and role in running a successful marketing campaign. Accordingly, you can expect increased accountability and effectiveness.
A documented content strategy also helps get buy-in from everyone in the organization. Essentially, the document shows everyone how your firm communicates with potential customers, from top management to the content creation team.
The steps below will assist you in drafting a content strategy:
- Establish business goals
- Define your audience and create buyer personas
- Perform a content audit to identify what’s working
- Plan content for every stage of the buyer’s journey
- Create an editorial calendar
- Draft a distribution plan
- Enact metrics to measure the effectiveness of your marketing tactics
2. Switch it Up
Usually, companies get comfortable with certain kinds of content, whether blog posts, social media, infographics, or webinars. However, your brand will not stand out if you only use one or two types of content.
Keep in mind that every demographic consumes media differently. For example, a vacation rental that caters to millennials will do well with high-quality visual content. On the other hand, B2B companies will communicate their brand value more effectively via white papers, case studies, and data visualizations.
When improving your content marketing strategy, account for different learning types and scalability. Some people are auditory learners, others prefer video content, while other consumers like long-form messaging.
For instance, you can turn the insights from a survey into a podcast, template, blog post, checklist, Instagram post, or presentations to broadcast on digital signage. In this way, your audience can consume your best content in the most favorable medium. Also, experiment with creative content formats, including Listicles, behind-the-scenes, think pieces, how-tos, and interviews.
Another tip is to try different distribution channels for your content. If you heavily rely on your blog, try email marketing and use automation outreach tools to simplify content dissemination.
Alternatively, reach out to influencers in your niche to enhance your brand awareness. Influencer marketing has become pivotal, considering that 49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations when making a purchase. So, establish relationships with influencers whose content appeals to your target audience.
3. Link Your Content Marketing Strategy with SEO
SEO and content marketing are essential gears to effective digital marketing. Fundamentally, search engine optimization focuses on getting the right content to the right audience via organic sources such as search engines.
However, SEO cannot work without content like product descriptions, landing pages, blogs, or images. You need well-optimized content to launch an effective content marketing campaign and increase website traffic. Some tips for integrating these two strategies include:
- Don’t Stuff Keywords
Resist the urge to stuff a page with keywords, as content and SEO work in place. What’s more, Google penalizes websites that over-optimize keywords by ranking them low in search engines. Therefore, be strategic with keyword placement and use keyword analysis tools to identify the most popular keywords for any piece of content.
- Deliver Great Content
Valuable content increases your conversion rate, keeps people around for longer, and boosts organic traffic. Keep in mind that consumers will abandon content not relevant to their interests. Hence, think about your audience’s pain points and behaviors when producing content for your distribution channels.
- Be Consistent
Search engines are fond of regularly-updated sites. For this, you need a clear content calendar that defines how often you publish new content. Every new content adds more keywords and topics that boost web traffic. Moreover, the variety of content establishes you as an authority in your niche.
In Conclusion
A content marketing strategy helps you curate content that serves your audience and prevents you from wasting resources on ineffective content. However, re-evaluate the strategy regularly as the best practices for digital marketing are ever-evolving.
About the Author/s
Tom is a lifelong New Jersey resident, Rutgers and FDU alumni and the publisher of The Digest.
