Creating a Robust Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a skill your Brand needs to master to make it big on the digital platform. The content that you create is a direct gateway to your products and services, which further convinces your potential customers, clients, and connections to collaborate with you.
Therefore, produce content that arouses strong feelings of interaction with your audience and persuade them to make a deal with your business without a second thought.
You may assume that your content is best amongst your competitors. However, thousands of brands like you are in the same race, trying to grab a spot in the market. The competition doesn’t end with god content. Perhaps, it starts with a well-off content marketing strategy that must constantly be catered to remain in the spotlight.
But, how will you generate traffic towards your site with the same piece of content over the years?
The best way to resolve this query is by grabbing onto your content marketing team and encouraging them to consistently do background research with the changing trends in the market and a solid content marketing strategy.
The below pyramid explains how a good piece of content generated by you can help you generate leading content:
What is Content Writing?
Every Brand produces a piece of information in the form of words, para’s, phrases, images, videos, graphs, stats, or infographics curated and published on their respective web page or website for the general public to view. This content answers the question about what is the Brand’s objective? What are the products and services offered by the company? How will the products or services offered by the Brand benefit its audience?
Some companies and businesses choose to outsource their content writing services while others take charge to train their in-house team for the same. While both have their benefits, the company should introspect and decide which possibility would be best for their business.
Why Should You Hire An SEO Specialist to Generate Leads?
While you may employ the best of a team, hiring an SEO specialist will offer you more incredible perks than your in-house mates.
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, an essential tool in marketing strategy. In basic terms, if you type “I wanna be a…..”, the web should automatically show you “billionaire” or other phrases most commonly used by the masses. However, if you fail to add the right keywords, phrases, or sentences, you may divert the true reflection of your content and will never grab the right target audience.
It is, therefore, a powerful key to increasing the quality of your content, which will help you increase your rankings within the algorithms.
Hiring a content marketing team means hiring SEO specialists and experts who have a profound knowledge of the working of the market. When you employ a content writer, your writer will be an expert in two or three fields. However, a content marketing agency houses an array of content writers, trained and qualified in various fields.
When asked to deviate from a topic and write something different, your writers would need some time to get hands-on on the subject, but the outsourcing team would be ready with the project. A piece of advice would be to introspect on your current content, learn if it is helping you with the traffic; if not, get your hands on the best SEO specialists in the market.
What is Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing strategy utilizes the exact content your writers generate as a powerful weapon for increasing your brand presence online. It’s a plan to help your business grow in all directions by making it accessible to the audience.
If you closely notice the above image, the name of Upwork brand appears twice on the page when you try to search pages on the topic “the best SEO specialist in the US.”
That’s the power of good SEO, rankings and this Brand is bound to stick for a longer time creating constant traffic towards its sites.
Statistics suggest that 70% of the B2B marketers (B2B marketing is a form of marketing wherein individuals or organizations sell their products or services to other individuals or organizations that resell them, include them in their products and services, or support their work). They suggest that content marketing is excellent in generating leads for their company or business.
A content marketing strategy should also reflect on your Brand’s objective, the format of your content, the platforms which will share the content, and the modes of distribution. Above all, your target audience should be in your mind all through when planning this strategy.
For instance, if you target Gen-Z, your content needs to be more engaging on social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, where your audience is most active. On the other hand, writing blogs or articles may not be beneficial because the audience may never encounter your page.
How Should You Plan Your Content Marketing Strategy?
Step one: Have a strategic plan
The step towards formatting a plan is to discover your target audience. is it the specific age group, gender, or geographical location you are targeting? If you provide local services, you need to draft content that will make you visible to your local population.
If you are writing for the Americans, make sure you relate to them and not the Australians. Being relatable is very important for your audience to connect with your Brand. Once you decide on whom you want to reach, your next goal is to select a platform to deliver content to them.
There are several platforms one can pick; social media sites, social mailing and networking sites, web pages, websites, and other sources of offline propaganda. Again, your target audience will help you decide the platform you select for your content propagation.
If you are writing blogs on the best all-inclusive hotels in Europe, it is impossible to give an elaborate piece of this information on Twitter. You are restricted to writing limited captions, and, therefore, a webpage is the most reachable for your audience to view this data. But, again, your audience will not go on Twitter to find the best hotels. Even if they do, they will have to visit google for detailed information.
Your final goal in this step is to find out how you will achieve your target results and, at the same time, measure them. For instance, if your brand is on Instagram, you need to create engaging content to convince Instagrammers to interact with you.
Instagram features like hashtags, stories, reels, and IGTV are here to get your creativity to an extreme level. by adding these features, you make your page visible to a larger audience and get a chance to be on the explore page on the platform.
Moreover, be a little giving to entrap the audience with high fidelity. Come up with exciting prizes, offers, discounts, and giveaways to make visible within the potential audience. the audience interacts if they see a benefit; therefore, if all the doors close, build a window for you to grab the opportunity.
Step two: Your Brand’s value personality
Every Brand has its unique value personality, and you need to explore your Brand’s unique value personality as well. A brand’s personality depicts an emotional association of the consumers towards a brand. While using a brand image and a brand’s value personality interchangeably, these two terms are different.
Examples of brand personality
The real world shows us how brand personalities work. here are a few usual ones
- L’Oreal Paris showcases its background troop in the advertisement to talk about their hair struggles and how Loreal Paris is the best solution for all of them. Convincing the feminine audience to entrap their trust in it too.
- Luxurious brands like Gucci, Chanel, and Luis Vuitton merchandise their products with urbanity focussing on the upper-class of the society, which attracts only those that can afford to live a lavish lifestyle.
- Toyota makes cars affordable to the rich and the middle class. Their Brand ensures a transport amenity to all groups according to the budget they can handle. This way, cars are a luxury to those tight on their budget.
Defining a brand personality becomes very important to work with your audience. your energy has to resonate with your consumers, and they need to build a rapport with you.
Once you identify your Brand’s personality, you will have to look for ways to resonate this energy with your target audience. to help you with this. First, you ought to find out how your Brand’s product provides an edge to your customers over your competitors.
For instance, given two brands offering a fruit punch at the same rate, Product A, which contains essential vitamins that provide antioxidants, and Product B, which is just a mixture of fruit flavors. If asked to select within the two, most customers would go for the former because it is health-related and has gone an extra mile to make this fruit punch edible for its customers with health benefits.
It would be best to be wise in selecting the words you use; again, content marketing is essential in this step. For example, if you have a cosmetic brand and want to market a cream to reduce dark circles, keywords like aging, dark circles, baggy eyes, moisturizing cream, retinoic acid, the vitamin must be added to your product description as these words are linked to visual health.
These keywords will help you identify your key points and how your product is better than the competitors in the market. While marketing your brands and services, you will have to highlight these features that provide an edge to your business.
Step three: add your value proposition
Another crucial step of content marketing involves adding value to the products or services the company seeks to market. So how does your product or service add value to the customers? The brand proposition is a phrase or a statement made by the Brand to tell their potential customers why they should deal with them and not their competitors.
For example, when toothpaste brands compete in the market, one will always rant out the ingredients, say salt or charcoal in the toothpaste, which is beneficial for your dental health and absent in most kinds of toothpaste in the market.
When deciding on your value proposition, you need to find answers to essential questions, including, why is your product or service important? How does your product or service fill the gap present in the market? Why are you the best amongst your competitors? What different benefits will your customers get if they buy your products and services?
However, do not confuse your value propositions with the tagline or slogans. A tagline is a line associated with your product or service, and when customers hear it, they will picture your Brand. For instance, “it’s Starbucks, brewed for those who love coffee” is a famous tagline linked to the coffee brand. While Starbucks includes a unique value proposition as they brew one of the finest coffees and are vocal in social causes with pure blended coffee served in stores across the globe with warmth and fullness.
Your next goal is to discover how your content is different from the other content creators around you. For example, if asked a kid to select between two books, one has a black write-up and the other with colorful pictures and write-up, it is evident that the kid will select the letter. You can’t ask your audience to read your piece of content continuously. There should be interesting, feeling arousing content that will increase the interaction between your audience.
Below is an example of two pictures taken from Instagram. Though both pictures provide the same information, both have got varied likes. Therefore, you need to pay attention to your photography skills, captions, and formatting to instantly make the audience like your content.
Step four: Content Strategy
Every Brand has a goal to fulfill before bringing an idea to reality. In this last step, you need to jot down what goals you seek to fulfill through this project. These objectives can vary from having a high financial turnover to getting a massive project into your hands. If you do not prioritize your objective, there are chances for you to get distracted on your grounds making you question why you started. Once you define your objective, the last step is amalgamating the different content marketing strategies to bring your business closer to this goal.
One such real-life example is the marketing strategy used by Dove. If you notice closely, they interview their audience, laywomen, on their experience using Dove on their skin. These clips are captured and aired on television, convincing the potential audience of the Brand’s authenticity.
While this is one content marketing strategy, other brands and companies go different ways to explore their options. Social media is another creative option brands use to do their content marketing. Giveaways, discounts, offers, and competitions are options to select from.
Here are some content marketing strategies brands use on Instagram to engage with their audience.
Why Does Your Business Need a Content Marketing Strategy for Lead Generation?
When you have a plan in mind, there are chances that you perhaps will forget a few details if not noted. But when you have a well-documented plan in place, you gather the confidence to effectively and efficiently work it out for your content marketing.
Reports indicate that content marketing costs 62% less and generates more leads when compared to outbound marketing.
Increase traffic towards your Brand
When people read exciting content, they will share it across various domains. If there’s a giveaway at Amazon, that message can be posted on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and much more. Your audience is never confined to one particular domain. Therefore, you can win hearts and grab a loyal customer base with exciting and happening content. However, ensure that your content is positive and does not cause communal disharmony.
The above pie chart depicts direct searches to be powerful than social searches because the branding strategies.
Be vocal for a cause
Some audiences love the concept or the mind that goes behind a product. For example, if you promote vegan food products, you need to be vocal about animal testing and cruelty, forming your content marketing strategy. Do you want to speak about gender biases? Speak through your content and request customers to make sales with you and support the campaign for a social cause. Of course, a portion of this profit would then go to the social campaigns you promote. These concepts convince people more quickly because they are related to human connections.
Let your Brand make profits
you cannot ignore the fundamental objective of your Brand. The better the content, the more the audience will be, directly proportional to the sales made. And when you make good sales, there will be profit at your door. Though this seems like a piece of cake, the process is overwhelming, and content writing is the first step of the procedure. Therefore, do not go loose on the first step because a weak foundation can never help an institution grow independently.
Support your Brand
All the business sectors are interdependent and, most importantly, to sales. For instance, if you are into automobiles, your company will introduce new models each year. Whether the models will be sold out for the consecutive year depends on how the sales are going on in the current. If there’s an inadequate response, your team must shift their focus in designing and constructing another model.
Your content marketing and promotions team also has to develop strategies that differ from the current. This way, the entire process begins again, which can be overwhelming to your team.
Eight Steps to a Lead Generating Content Marketing Strategy
Here is a step-by-step guide to guide you through the entire process of creating lead-generating content through a hardcore content marketing strategy.
-
Be firm on your grounds
An idea can perhaps affect your brands’ image. Every company or business is a result of an idea. Hence, idea generation is essential for your content marketing strategy. Just like the way an idea or a concept convinced you to come up with your project, content marketing too can be used on the same grounds to help you set a goal. The first question to ask yourself is, why are you creating this piece of content? When you answer this question, the ideas to find a solution will instantly pop into your mind.
The best way to be SMART in this game indeed follows the acronyms to Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based
Specific –
Be specific to your product or service. Make your goal clear to who is involved in this plan, why it is necessary to accomplish it, where your goal will occur, and a deadline for your plan to work. For instance, if you develop an application, focus more on it than on the mobiles not supporting it.
Measurable –
this includes the matrices you will use to measure this goal’s profits and losses. Is it the number of sales, the number of audiences garnered, or the small milestones you cover when building this project? Every business will have a different aspect to measure, and hence, you need to discover yours.
Achievable –
the plan you draw out will be a blueprint for your content marketing. Therefore, this plan should inspire you to give your best. Look through your qualified and trained skilled employees. If the skills required to execute this plan are present, well and good; if not, look for ways to attain these skills.
Relevant –
the goals that you consider should align with the primary objective of your Brand. You ought to answer a question relating to the relevance of this project. Is it worth your efforts? Does it meet the needs of your company? Does it support the clauses of your Brand? Will it be too pricey for the customers? are you up to taking a risk, and yes, how much of a risk can your company afford to take?
Time-based –
Creating a goal is one thing, and achieving it with the specified period is another. If your goal lacks realistic timing, then creating and executing it would be a waste of time. Make clear your deadlines and how you can work towards accomplishing that goal. Also, a set goal can be attained realistically.
-
Interact with your audience
Identification of your target group is essential to build a bond with them. To reach them and align with their thoughts, you need to view the buyer personas closer. These are semi-fictional profiles of your potential customers and will help you plan your content marketing strategy accordingly.
To help you with this, a “Customer Journey Map” is the most suitable guide for you. This map connects the companies to their audiences by understanding the customer through various perspectives. In this map, eight essential user features are considered. These include Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Retention, Activities, Motivations, Emotions, and Barries.
In addition, any two features can be combined to understand their user experience results. For example, when your customer engages in advertisements, you understand the awareness level and the activities your customers are involved in when interacting with your brand.
-
A thorough keyword research
like explained earlier, if you type hip-hip, some of the instant searches you get are hurray! Keywords are the most powerful tool that helps the audience reach their brand. Your keyword game should be vital to create a lead-generating piece of content.
If you’re talking about the best places to visit in Costa Rica, stick to Costa Ric and not the Maldives because the more you diversify, the more jargon you create and drive away your potential audience. Instead, explore an array of keyword research tools and discover their top-ranking pages and the keywords that generate massive traffic towards their page. Do not involve plagiarism or spinning, but if that piece of content is outdated, you can try updating it.
In the above image, a query says ‘a green colored superhero with a lightning bolt.’ though the finder does not even type comic books by DC or Marvel movies, google understands it and gives the most relevant result.
-
An eye on Search intent
Search intent depicts the fundamental purpose of an online search. For instance, if you are looking for a quick brownie recipe, your fundamental goal is to find a recipe that will not take much time. That is the search intent. You do not need details on why eggs or sugar are added. Therefore, search intent is crucial to help you increase your rankings organically by being search-specific.
The four types of search content include;
Navigational – in this search, you try to navigate to the page you want. for example, if you want to visit the official website of Oxford University, your query will be “Oxford University Official Website.”
Informational – In this search, you try to answer your queries or questions in mind.Transactional – this search is used to make an online purchase or recharge your bills.
Commercial – this search is done when you consider a transaction, for example, ‘best blogging platforms.’
-
Generate effective content
On average, individuals spend five to seven hours consuming content on their phones. Without good content, you can never increase organic traffic towards your page. Make sure you answer all the queries asked by the audience to add value to their connections through your content. Content creating is one thing, and content editing is another.
Grammatical errors, mistakes, or the use of jargon can decrease the quality of your content because the way you write reflects on your standard and level of understanding in the field.
-
Optimization at its best
Your content needs to be well optimized for the audience to connect with it and make interactions. For example, if you are writing examples, make sure you give images to those examples. At the same time, if you are explaining some steps, say software installment, use pictures to guide your audience through those steps. This step is key to converting your content. For instance, if you are involved in video marketing, your thumbnails, captions are necessary, including the ending, which should end with CTAs.
In addition, your texts need to be highlighted to capture the user’s attention instantly. Like the way Microsoft office provides various templates to download and work on, you can also get creative and enable such download tools and features that will capture massive leads.
The above stats is related to the specific industries that occupy most portion of the search percentage.
-
Position your channels
Once your content creation and optimization are ready, your next step is to distribute this piece of content. While you may assume that the right keywords and search intent is good enough to make you discoverable, it may not always serve you this purpose.
Remember, you are competing with thousands of pages giving the same information. The goal here is to be accessible to as many people as possible and use all channels to get there. Make sure to share the content on all social media sites, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, tiktok, and mailing and networking sites.
One-piece of advice is to repurpose your content in multitudes for maximum distribution. For example, some of your content should be reinvented into a video, pictures, or just depictions. in this way, one content can be divided into four-five types of content you can use across various platforms.
The above pie-chart depicts the percentage of traffic on social networking sites.
-
Consistently update your content
do not assume that the story ends with and distribution. The last but essential step is to find out if the content you have posted gives you any leads. Whether your answer is yes or no, you need to keep your content updated. For instance, if your company sells electric cars, an announcement on a new location opening soon does not generate leads compared to a blog on the potential benefits switching to an electric car can do to your finances.
The Bottom Line!
That was a lot of information for you to grasp within a few minutes. However, the right attitude and zeal will get you there. So pin this page or make quick notes to help jot these points when you next plan your content marketing strategy.
