Have you ever tried utilizing a content marketing strategy for your business and it doesn’t look effective because you are not getting the right results?
Content marketing is an important aspect of digital marketing that has proven to be more affordable and result-oriented than our traditional marketing methods as it could yield three times as many leads as our traditional marketing methods — if correctly implemented.
Here are six ingredients you should use to spice up your content marketing strategy while creating your content marketing campaign in order to achieve the expected results.
SIX INGREDIENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
- A CLEARLY DEFINED AUDIENCE AND OBJECTIVES.
Who and why are you creating the content?
How do you direct your knowledge to people’s interests if you don’t know what interests them?
A normal assumption that everybody who picks interest in your content is a wrong assumption per se. Moreso, Casting a wide net into the market will get you nowhere as a content marketer nor will it yield results.
Having a defined knowledge of your audience and what interests them particularly, is the foundation of content marketing.
Setting goals gives you a direction to an action plan and definitely, your action plan will give you a better structure of how you want to produce valuable marketing contents that would meet a reader’s need and also help to achieve your goals as a content marketer which may be to Increase leads, Drive more organic traffic through SEO or Grow wider email subscribers.
- DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH
Research is the backbone of whatever you want to do to spice up your content marketing strategy as a business owner as there’s no successful content marketing strategy without research and would give you a better understanding of customer insight.
What tools can I use?
When researching, you should consider using tools like Google customer barometer which can help you understand your audiences’ demographics and behavior.
When you start creating content, one thing you should monitor is your growth (Analytics) which is easy to do with Google Analytics.
Is your content triggering the results that align with your goal?
Is your audience getting engaged by liking, commenting, and sharing your content?
Is it converting your audience to real-time clients?
If not! It is time to re-strategize your content strategy.
- A POWERFUL KEYWORD STRATEGY
A powerful keyword strategy is one of the key ingredients of a successful content marketing strategy as it helps to make your content get displayed and found in organic search.
Although, before this can happen you’ll need to conduct a keyword search using tools like Answerthepublic, Uber suggest, Keyword tool, and so on.
These tools have free and paid versions which make it easier to access and will help you check for keywords that attract greater traffic according to google analytics and you can incorporate them into your content marketing strategy.
- GREAT STORYTELLING SKILL
The art of storytelling is an important ingredient for a successful content marketing strategy. The implementation of a unique storytelling skill helps to distinguish you from the other competing business owners who continuously barrage your customers with blog posts, daily newsletters, e.t.c
One of the ways to build that personal relationship and recognition in the minds of your audience is to implement your storytelling skills in a unique voice when creating content.
At this point, you should consider looking beyond your usual rhetorics (content style) and connecting personally with your audience.
What kind of story should I share?
Sharing stories about how the brand came into existence, the challenges faced and how you and your team had to fight it to make the brand’s existence a success.
Then, as time goes on, you can start talking about how you were able to secure a contract and so on.
As a business owner, irrespective of your business size, you should take branding really seriously. Building a strong online identity helps to spice up your content marketing strategy and makes it more effective.
Send a clear message of what your brand stands for and what value you bring to your audiences’ table.
What should you take into consideration?
When trying to establish an online presence, you should consider designing a website where your audience can always see your works, creating a logo, using visuals for social media if need be, creating unique content that carries your brand’s voice.
Another skill you should take into consideration is Effective storytelling.
With Effective storytelling skills, you can create a stronger brand identity online as it puts you miles ahead of your competitors, enhance engagement, interest, builds trust (in your audiences’ mind concerning your brand), brand transparency and consistency which keeps your brand credible across all social media channels.
- CONTENT PROMOTION AND DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS
If there’s anything you need to attach more importance to – apart from understanding your target audience, is to know where to find them.
This also comes down to knowing what interests your audience and finding out what social media platform they are more active on and channel your energy towards that/those platform(s).
Sometimes, people mistake content promotion to be all about posting their content links on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms, Spamming people’s inbox or blogs with their content links and practicing some SEO tricks but that’s not all about content promotion because anyone who is serious about content marketing needs to do things from a different perspective.
These days, direct online promotion no longer works as people desire more value and will always go for a brand that offers them the real value which makes it easy for them to feel loved and cared for.
So, it is not just about promoting content, it is about doing it right!
The importance of content marketing cannot be overemphasized and it will only get to increase in the years to come as new and better forms of content and promotional platforms will emerge but the main concept will keep getting stronger.
The key success in pulling a successful content marketing strategy is having clearly defined goals and objectives, creating unique content with your brand’s voice, and promoting with intelligence on the right social media platform.
Applying these ingredients to your Content Marketing Strategy will help your brand to achieve goals and exceed targets.
Let us help you do it right by Creating a Winning Content Calendar for your BRAND.
