Content marketing is a highly affordable method to increase website traffic. However, it is important to acknowledge that it has become more challenging compared to the 2000s and 2010s. Presently, due to the abundance of subpar, generic content and our dwindling attention spans, it is increasingly difficult to successfully deliver and engage with your content.
Does this imply that content marketing is no longer effective?
No way.
DemandMetrics states that content marketing results in three times more leads and is 62% more cost-effective compared to other conventional marketing methods.
Content Marketing
The process of content marketing involves the creation and online publication of content. It encompasses more than just sharing, as it is connected to the overall branding and digital marketing strategy. Content marketing does not directly advertise or endorse a brand or service. However, it does generate curiosity and engage individuals with the brand by providing information on topics relevant to a particular audience associated with that company or brand.
Content is a broad term that encompasses various types of content. Anything you come across and engage with on the internet qualifies as content. This includes articles, blogs, and listicles that you read on websites, as well as the text you encounter on your Facebook or Instagram feed. Moreover, content comprises audio-visual materials such as videos, animations, and podcasts.
The relevance and value of content lie in its ability to appeal to the target audience, which is the essence of a content marketing strategy.
1. Establish Your Mission or Goals
All marketing strategies, including content marketing, should have a specific purpose and should be aimed at achieving specific goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based, which is also known as the SMART strategy. SMART goals are structured as follows:
- Improve your search engine ranking to land on the first page within three months.
- Acquire 1,000 email subscriptions in 30 days.
- Increase sales by 25% from a specific market segment within two weeks.
2. Identify Your Performance Indicators
When selecting key performance indicators, opt for metrics that accurately measure your progress toward your objectives. These metrics can encompass various aspects, with no strict boundaries, such as:
- Unique page views
- Referral rate
- Number of downloads
- Net revenue
- Conversion rates
3. Select Your Audience and Content Channels
To effectively engage in content marketing, it is crucial to identify a distinct target audience. The goal is not to attract a wide range of individuals, but rather to create a tailored message that resonates with a specific group of potential customers who are most likely to make a purchase. Obtain demographic information by gathering data from your website or social media platform.
Google Analytics and the features and reports within CoSchedule can both assist with determining who is reading your existing content and establishing a viable online presence. By identifying your audience, you will gain an understanding of the platforms that will provide the greatest exposure and engagement.
4. Establish a Schedule
Do not start bombarding your audience with your insights, giveaways, and thought-provoking articles just because you have your KPIs, audience, and channels. It may be tempting to believe that if one post is effective, then ten would be even more effective, but this is not the right approach.
To avoid overwhelming your followers with too much content, it is advisable to begin with a simple posting schedule. This can involve posting on a blog once a week at the same day and time. As for social media posts, it is recommended to post either once daily or a few times per week.
Creating a schedule is important as there is scientific evidence indicating that posting too frequently can have negative consequences, similar to posting inconsistently or not posting enough.
- Consistency is key. Consistency helps train readers to come back, to anticipate new material, and indicate that you’re a reliable, active source of information.
- It will help you vary the content. Seeing the big picture helps you spot opportunities for variety to enrich your offerings.
- You’ll save time and energy. A schedule is like a road map. Knowing what you’re going to do next helps you join the ranks of the 36 percent of content creators with efficient project workflows.
- It supports KPI tracking. One of the features of a SMART goal is that it’s time-based. Visualize your time-based goals with a calendar.
5. Focus on Specific Topics and Solve Real-World Problems
When creating content, it is important to ensure that there is a clear objective or purpose. Whether it is offering solutions to problems or providing helpful suggestions, your content should not be meaningless talk. Your audience has subscribed to your content because they trust you, so it is crucial to meet their expectations by addressing the topic practically and providing useful solutions.
Another aspect to consider is specifying a topic. Avoid making your content too general, as it will seem repetitive and rehash ideas that have already been published. The major issue with much of today’s content is that it is overly generic and only offers advice that is already obvious and widely known.
Here’s how you can avoid creating content that doesn’t work:
In the scenario of owning an online store that sells fitness equipment, it is essential to generate content that appeals to health-conscious individuals, beginners embarking on their weight-loss journey in 2020, and passionate fitness enthusiasts. To achieve this, it is advisable to address subjects such as:
- How to build more muscle at the gym
- Top 5 workouts to build a better body
- Three ways you can quickly lose weight
The scope of these subjects is too expansive to be addressed fully in a blog post. Extensive literature has already been dedicated to them. You will need to develop an outline for each overarching topic and divide it into more focused subtopics.
6. Craft Your Content and Distribute It to Your Market
Once you have gathered all your research, it is now time to share your brilliant insights extensively in order to attract a faithful audience. To be precise, producing excellent content is equally crucial as having high-quality ideas.
Even if you are a creative genius, it will not be significant if your content is unimpressive, hurried, and feeble. Google also will not be impressed in such cases. Put as much effort into crafting your content as you did when researching your target audience and content channels.
7. Develop a Content Marketing Calendar Based on Your Goals
The content strategy should be arranged based on publication dates and a functioning timeline. The crucial aspect of content is a continuous stream of uploads and regular updates.
To ensure a constant flow of new content, it is important to manage the surplus amount of material that needs to be processed and published. While it is possible to set high goals for your business’s content marketing plan, without a well-structured schedule, everything will become chaotic and disorganized.
Creating a content calendar for each platform in your marketing campaign is a smart move. This encompasses platforms such as your blog, Facebook, and Instagram. Your calendar should outline dates for each stage of your content marketing campaign, such as content creation, visualization, review, and publishing.
8. Promote Your Content on Other Websites and Journals
Guest posting is an effective tactic in content marketing that can help increase traffic to your website’s content.
The process/operation works as follows:
- Chances are, if you do some research, you will find an industry blog or resource that gets more traffic than you and has a target audience that you want to attract to your website.
- If you do, you can email its owner/editor and pitch them with a topic or article idea that their audience will love. If you can, pitch multiple people who run the website. To find their contact info, you can go to their About Us or Team page – or use LinkedIn or a tool like Hunter.io to get in touch with the website owners directly. Make sure you choose a topic that’s related to your website’s content and the website’s target audience to whom you are pitching. If the website editors accept, write the best article possible and submit it for publishing.
In order to submit the article for approval, make sure that you obtain a byline or permission to link your website to the article. This will enable individuals who find your content engaging to visit your website for other related content.
Additionally, if your guest post is not approved, it may impact your website’s domain authority, thus affecting its search engine ranking.
No need to worry. You have the option to upload the content on your website and reach out to influencers who share the same target audience as you do and may have an interest in sharing or linking to your content. Due to their substantial number of followers, this will result in a substantial flow of traffic to your website.
9. Build an Email List to Retain Your Audience
Email marketing is an easy way to ensure that people who visit your site and enjoy its content will remember to come back, as they often tend to forget otherwise.
Simply add a subscription form to your website, inviting visitors who appreciate its content to provide their name and email address. As a result, they will be rewarded with a newsletter containing valuable, top-notch content. The advantage of combining email marketing with content marketing is straightforward.
Content marketing is effective in drawing individuals to your website. In contrast, email marketing aids in preserving those individuals. Subsequently, employing a sequence of drip campaigns enables the conversion of email subscribers into genuine paying customers. As indicated by a report from eTail, the majority of small businesses employ email marketing as a means to acquire and retain customers.
To incorporate an email subscription form, you have the option to utilize a complimentary resource such as Sumo or a comprehensive form builder like Optinmonster. After implementing the form on your website, you will require an email marketing tool to handle your subscribers and generate email drip campaigns.
10. Track the Results
After delivering your content, you will start noticing people’s response within the first few hours. Engagement can be observed through pageviews, likes, and shares, which are some of the initial metrics. As time passes, you will also be able to gauge conversion rates, qualified leads, closes, or any change in revenue. To track key performance indicators (KPIs), there are numerous tools available. Here are a few options you might want to consider.
- Google Analytics. It’s free and easy to measure page views, traffic sources, keyword performance, and more.
- Databox. Databox offers an array of powerful tools for tracking almost any metric.
- Excel. If you’re comfortable with Excel, you can create your own KPI tracking spreadsheets. This works best with metrics like revenue, subscriptions or referrals.
11. Refine and Repeat
Consistency is crucial in great content marketing. Releasing only a couple of pieces of content and considering it done is not sufficient. Take guidance from your KPIs, adjust your content strategy, and repeat. Eventually, you will establish a steadfast base of valuable and relevant information that enhances your readers’ knowledge and showcases your thought leadership.
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If executed properly, content marketing can yield positive outcomes and generate leads in the long run. To promptly reach your target audience, you may opt for promoting your content and website on renowned marketing platforms like Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.
Using paid advertising allows your content to reach people more quickly, but it necessitates a substantial amount of money.
