“If you build it, they will come.” If you believe that then you’re dumping money away. For people to visit your website, blog, or social media page, you must optimize and plan your content.
Find out what your audience is looking for, the message they want to hear, and when they need it. Let us talk about the top content marketing strategies to jumpstart your efforts and improve your audience engagement.
Find Answers to the Right Questions
Ask the right questions to create the right content, which also answers customer questions or issues. Here are some questions to consider before you start:
- Why do you need this piece of content? Decide if you want to raise brand awareness, promote a product, or offer a discount. Perhaps you intend to increase blog engagement or drive foot traffic to your local business. Be clear about your reasons.
- Is there value in your content? Identify what your target audience needs and make sure it is what they get when they read your content. Create valuable content by performing in-depth research, offering sound advice, and using relevant keywords.
- What type of experience do you wish to communicate? Naturally, you want content that elicits positive emotions: satisfaction, belongingness, security, joy, and overall well-being. Define what you want your audience to experience, and design your content accordingly.
- What is your concept? People are looking for unique solutions, better strategies, or the best way to do something. Check your competitors’ content and create something better.
Produce the Right Message at the Right Time
The marketing funnel is valuable in understanding where your customers are in their buying journey.
The marketing funnel has four levels: discovery, consideration, conversion, and retention. Your customer could be at any of these levels. Some may still be looking for answers and be at the discovery level. Those in the consideration stage are aware of your products or services but are undecided.
Creating content specific to audience needs at every level helps you guide them toward conversion, which is not the last step, though. You also need content to retain them and turn them into repeat customers. Here are some tips for creating content for each of these levels.
- Discovery. Introduce your product or service through blog posts, webinars, comprehensive guides, and email newsletters.
- Consideration. For people aware of your product or service, give them more details through case studies, product demonstrations, comparisons, and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
- Conversion. Do not lose the people who already show interest in what you offer. Give them a little push with testimonials, success stories, and product reviews to help seal the deal.
- Retention. Keep existing customers updated with knowledge-based reports, special offers, insider tips, etc. to. More businesses value loyalty management, a market expected to grow five times to $24 billion between 2022 and 2029.
Use a Strategic Content Plan
Start with a concrete content plan. Take the time to meet with your content team and ensure everyone is on the same page. Ensure everyone has access to your content creation tool, calendar, and content management app.
Address the following when creating a content marketing plan:
- State your content objectives. Every content writer, editor, and manager should know your content objectives so everyone works toward the same direction.
- Consider your audience and their needs. Paint a clear picture of your audience, what they need, their pain points, and their issues. Attach a precide description to them, like “first-time parents looking for affordable baby car seats” or “middle aged women who want to remove belly fat at home naturally.”
- Know how to measure content success. Is your content meeting your objective? If yes, then you are successful. Measure success also with your site traffic, size of generated leads, change in revenue, and customer retention or loyalty.
Try Different Content Types
According to Digital Authority Partners, marketers need to acknowledge that people access content differently. Thus, creating multiple types of content is crucial to engaging more people.
Use many types of content—blogs, videos, podcasts, and infographics. Each one benefits audiences at different stages of the marketing funnel. Reproduce your content, too. For example, turn a podcast into a video or a blog article.
Here are a few tips for using different content types.
- Make memorable content with infographics. About a third of businesses use infographics to deliver engaging content because it helps the audience easily digest and remember critical information.
- Use lists to increase engagement. Create lists like “top ten” or “the best places to visit.” Your lists should meet a need, have a round number, and be skimmable so people can look for items quickly.
- Create how-to guides. Help your audience solve a problem with solutions with simple steps.
- Explore visuals. Add videos and images to your content to convey your message better. Not all people are readers; some prefer watching videos or looking at photos.
Stick to Your Budget
DIY marketing and hiring professionals are both costly endeavors. If you DIY, you spend money on content creation tools, video editing software, and equipment. These are on top of planning content and executing the plan.
Let us say you want to write a blog, it would be free in platforms like Blogger, but if you want to apply SEO on this blog, you will need additional tools like keyword research tools. Of course, there are tools that offer free versions like Google Keyword Planner. The same goes for images; you can use stock photos and free image editing tools.
However, free tools tend to be very limited. You can only do so much, and if you’re running a business, you are risking your content looking unprofessional. But if you opt to pay for tools, it is easy to get carried away if you do not have a set budget. You could end up wasting money if you lack experience in writing, image editing, or SEO.
Enter content marketing agencies. With these experts, expect properly high-quality content. But if you will go this way, expect also to pay from $150 to $500 per post from a high-tier professional or blog management agency.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to your budget and how much of the work you are willing to do yourself or to outsource. So decide based on your budget.
Conclusion
Content marketing is more than just websites, blogs, and social media. Make the most of your web content and improve engagement by following these top content marketing strategies.
