Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a powerful way to connect with your audience and grow your customer base. But it’s not as simple as just posting content on social media or sending out an email campaign. You need a strategy that includes video, infographic, and mobile marketing too—plus all the other techniques we’ll cover in this article. Follow these steps so you can stand out from the competition!
Why Content Marketing Matters
Ever since the internet has become more popular and accessible, marketing has changed. Nowadays, marketers have shifted their focus from outbound marketing to inbound marketing. To be successful in a world where content is king, a company needs an inbound marketing strategy.
The idea of inbound marketing is that companies will attract potential customers by providing them with valuable content instead of interrupting them with ads or promotions. This way, marketers can build relationships with their audience and increase the likelihood of converting into a customer.
Developing a content marketing strategy isn’t as hard as you might think. A good inbound marketing strategy will help your company gain more customers in the long run. It requires having a lot of creativity in your company, but it’s worth it in the end.
The benefits to this are :
You can manage and positively control your brand.
Your customers will feel like they’re in control instead of you.
You have the opportunity to promote your business in a non-obtrusive way.
Inbound marketing has been shown to increase the ROI in a company in the long run and can help your company stay in business in this challenging market.
The bottom line: inbound marketing is a strategy you should seriously consider in the long run. To understand this further, let's focus on the three major components of a successful content strategy.
The 3 Major Components of a Successful Content Strategy
Let us discuss the three major components of a successful content strategy that will help you create inbound content marketing.
The 3 Major Components of a Successful Content Strategy are topic, tone, and distribution. Topic refers to what you are trying to say. The tone is how you want your customers or audience to feel when they are reading your content. Distribution is where you are posting the content on the internet for people to find it easier.
To establish your topic, you will need to ask yourself a few questions.
What is my company trying to achieve?
What kind of message do I want to give?
Who is my audience?
How are they currently trying to solve it on the internet?
For example, if your company sells furniture and you had the questions answered above, one topic could be: Tips to help people choose new furniture.
Another successful strategy is to compare your company with competitors commonly associated with that subject.
Here’s an example: You sell furniture and compare yourself to Wayfair, the most successful online furniture retailer in the US.
Once you have established your topic, you can move on to developing your tone.
To do this, you have to use your imagination and ask yourself how you want people to feel when reading one of your articles.
For example, if you want people to feel happy, you could write an article with the following information: "6 Ways To Make Your Home The Happiest Place On Earth"
How you want them to feel directly correlates with the impact you want to make on your audience.
When they feel happy, they are more likely to remember your company and purchase from you in the future.
If you want them to feel successful or confident about something, the tone should reflect that.
Finally, once you have decided on your topic and how you want the reader to feel, you must determine how they can find your content.
For people to find your content, you need to post it where people can see it. The more successful platforms for sharing content include your website, blog, social media profiles such as Twitter and Facebook, email contacts, and a Google search.
Successful content will vary depending on the platform it’s shared in. For example, successful content on Twitter will be short and to the point. In contrast, successful content on your blog or website can be longer because it is more likely to be found by people already interested in your company.
If you want successful content, you need to have successful distribution.
Inbound marketing is a successful strategy in the long run. You can find successful content marketing examples all over the internet and on social media sites.
Successful content marketing is successful because of successful distribution. If no one can find your content or relate to it, then there is little likelihood that they will be successful in finding it.
A successful content strategy is successful because of a successful topic, tone, and distribution. Missing any one of those components will make it less successful.
Who is the Audience, and Where do they dwell?
Every brand should know their target audience and where they dwell. The clearer you are about your audience, the easier it will be for you to make an offer that will make them buy.
The first step to developing a persona is to research and develop a thorough understanding of your audience and where they live. Online surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other research-based methods can all be used to learn more about your target audience. Once you understand who they are and where they live, you can begin designing marketing strategies that resonate with them.
The second step is to build personas. A persona consists of three elements:
Name
Demographics
Behaviors
Build three to five personas of your most common audience members. Demographics include information about income level, gender, marital status, location, age range, profession, relationship with your company, and any other information that helps you get a clearer picture of your audience.
The third step is to find out what your audience wants. Sometimes it’s helpful to design surveys that ask them about their preferences. Other times it’s enough to run a focus group and ask them directly.
The final step is to develop your marketing strategy around what you have learned about your audience. Understanding your audience is the first step to creating an impactful marketing strategy that will help you build loyal customers.
Now that you know who they are, you need to find out WHERE they are.
Where do they live?
Define the online community, forums, social networks, and other spaces where your audience spends time. Learn about their characteristics, habits, and preferences.
What are their problems?
Site content is more impactful when it speaks to your audience's problems. If you can’t find a problem to solve or don’t have the resources to identify one, offer potential solutions. This is one of the fundamental reasons why impactful content marketing can make or break your business.
What's important to them?
Identify their interests, hobbies, passions, and other things that impact how they think and feel.
What content do they share?
What type of content do they share most often?
What impact does this have on your website and business strategy?
If you want to impact, don’t create content that doesn’t affect your audience.
How do they like to engage?
Different audiences and audiences in other spaces have different preferences when it comes to engaging. Take the time to investigate how you can engage your audience in their preferred way.
What impact does this have on your business?
Identify the impact of your content.
What impact does it have on your user?
What impact does it have on your business?
Is this impact enough?
This impact is significant.
If you have an impact that’s not impactful, then what are you doing?
What impact does this have on your Bottom-line?
What you need to do is make sure that everything is pointing in the right direction.
How will you measure this impact?
By answering these questions, you will be able to navigate your audience more precisely and how you can impact them.
Understanding Your Brand's Unique Value Proposition & Story
The most powerful brands in the world have one thing in common. They all have a compelling story that they are committed to telling over and over again.
A compelling brand story can be used to differentiate your company from your competitors, attract prospects, improve your marketing campaign conversion rates, and inspire your team members to do their best work.
Take NIKE, for example.
NIKE brand story is built around delivering "happiness to the athlete in all of us."
They believe that sports build a better world.
According to their brand story, they want to get more people involved in sports and find ways to make them happier while they’re doing it.
That value proposition is delivered consistently throughout all brand touchpoints. Through their brand story, NIKE has inspired a loyal following of customers who continuously support and believe in them.
Your brand story can help you discover your brand's unique value proposition by answering the question, "why does this brand exist?" The Nike brand succeeded with its brand story. They knew what they valued most, and they made sure that it was reflected in their brand story.
As a brand, you can’t be all things to all people. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, brand storytelling is about identifying your ideal core customer based on traits like demographics or psychographics.
Regardless of your brand’s business mission, your brand story should be focused on delivering happiness to the people you serve. Our brand story is about putting the fun back into learning.
It’s not just for kids either; it can help employees learn about their brand and what they can do to support it.
Your brand story can help you deliver consistent communication to your audience. It’s essential to think about the brand experience of your brand's communication by asking questions like, "What makes our brand distinct?" and "How do we differentiate ourselves from competitors?". Those two brand questions will help drive brand storytelling through all the brand touchpoints and brand mediums.
Your brand story should be everywhere, not just online or offline, but in person too.
We know that the brand experience is about making somebody feel something when they connect with your brand story.
It’s tough to grow without the right brand voice and tone to brand story brand touchpoints.
You need to think about brand storytelling as much as you need to think about the brand experience. The brand was just looking for an easy way to connect with the audience through video storytelling.
Remember that you don’t want your brand story to just focus on what your company does, but why you do it.
Brand storytelling needs to be about more than just the experience of interactions with your customer.
It needs to be about values, vision, and values to create an emotional connection with the audience.
Your brand story is a valuable asset that can help your business in many different ways. Make sure you’re using it correctly by clearly defining its purpose and ensuring that everything in your content marketing strategy supports your brand story. Otherwise, people will not be able to connect with your brand at all.
Getting Creative with Share-Worthy Topics and Creative Writing Techniques
This section is mainly about creative writing techniques for brands. Creative copywriting can be used to get people engaged with the content.
Creative copywriting has three categories:
Textual - This is your standard way of writing that you see in newspaper articles or company blogs. The formatting is made to be readable and understandable, but it doesn't necessarily stand out.
Visual - This style of copywriting uses graphics and images to convey messages more engagingly.
Interactive - Interactive copywriting relies on user input to generate unique messages and experiences for the reader.
Many elements go into a creative marketing campaign or a marketing plan, but one necessary for all aspects of the campaign is creativity.
For example, using creativity in blogs will help you engage your audience and get them excited about the posts.
Creativity can also create a brand story that will attract customers so much, and they'll keep coming back for more.
Even though it's not as popular as writing ads or commercials, creative copywriting is very important for all marketing efforts. Consider this: would you instead buy a car from someone who uses monotonous, repetitive technical terms and jargon or from the guy that made it and has personality?
You can fully engage your audience by implementing creativity into all your marketing efforts. This is especially true for brand storytelling. If you create an engaging story with an emotional connection, people will keep coming back for more.
Take a look at these best practices and techniques to maximize your brands' strategy.
Storytelling Techniques
While there are plenty of creative techniques that you can use to create your brand story, here are the ones that seem to be working best for most brands right now.
Top Tip: Before you start developing stories for your business, consider your audience when creating them. Your brand story should appeal to their values and interests.
Digital Storytelling Techniques
One creative digital storytelling technique is developing unique URLs for each post. This keeps the audience on the page longer, makes them share it with others to see what they do, etc.
If you're willing to put in the time and money into it, this is one of the most effective ways to get people engaged with your content. A great example of this digital storytelling technique can be found with StoryCorps.
Live Streaming Video Techniques
These days, it's possible to stream video directly from your phone or computer whenever you want.
This creates more opportunities for unique marketing plans, mainly if you use live streaming video in your content marketing strategy.
360 Video Techniques
With the increase in the popularity of virtual reality, marketers have found their perfect opportunity to create unique experiences that will hold the audience's attention. The possibilities for 360 video are endless- it can be used for Snapchat stories, commercials, or even presentations!
This may seem like a lot to take in, but it's necessary if you want to engage your audience and develop an effective content marketing strategy that will keep them coming back for more.
Video Marketing Techniques
People are visual learners, so videos are the best way to help them retain information about your brand. This is one of the reasons why video marketing is so effective. This type of content can be used in commercials to give customers more information, or it can even take the place of long blog posts.
Social Media Marketing Techniques
Social media has become one of the best ways to engage with your audience and develop a brand story that they'll want to be a part of.
It has been proven that social media is the most popular way to get customer feedback, so it's essential to use this form of marketing technique in your business. There are plenty of ways that you can use social media for marketing purposes, but here are a few that seem to work best:
Creating strategies for different platforms - You can use Facebook for interacting with your customers, Instagram for posting pictures and videos, and Twitter to share content in real-time.
Creating unique experiences on each platform - If you want to be successful with social media marketing techniques, you need to think about the different types of people using them.
For example: if you have a business that caters to young children, you'll want to use Instagram because it's easy and fun for them to use.
Email Marketing Techniques
Email marketing is one of the oldest digital marketing techniques, but it's still very effective if used correctly.
When writing your emails, remember to use your audience's language and speak to them as if you're having a face-to-face conversation.
And don't forget about the power of storytelling here too! You can even create email newsletters that will tell your brand story so that people have something to look forward to each time they receive an email from you.
Mobile Marketing Techniques
Today, people are using their mobile devices more than ever when it comes to digital marketing techniques.
Some of the best ways to market your business on mobile devices are developing apps or creating strategies for Facebook, Twitter, or even LinkedIn.
There are a lot of companies that rely solely on mobile marketing to sell their products or services.
Using these strategies to your advantage, you can take your brand to the next level and develop a content marketing strategy to help it grow.
Developing a Content Marketing Strategy that Works
One of the most important things that you need to do is to think about your target audience. What are their needs? What content will they find valuable?
Another important thing is to create a strategy. You need to plan how you are going to execute your content marketing strategy. You can even use an editorial calendar or plan for this process.
Don’t forget about timing and frequency! It’s essential not just for the quantity of content but also the quality. People should consume more, but less often than one article per day on a Facebook feed.
What about the distribution channels? Make sure that you have all your bases covered by having different channels that bring traffic back into your site - email, social media, blogging...
It's good practice to be consistent with your distribution channels so that people who follow you on social media or subscribe to your newsletter know when to expect the content they'll want to read.
You can even create strategies for paid and organic marketing techniques. Paid tools like Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are effective if used the right way, but make sure not to overdo it. People will no longer be interested in your brand if you use paid marketing tools too often!
Content marketing is a powerful tool that you can use to promote your business and turn your website into a profitable asset. Put all these strategies to work for you, and soon enough, more people will want to visit your website or purchase your products and services!
Do you want to learn how to create content that will create an impact?
I’ve been doing this for years and I can tell you from experience, it’s not easy. But if you follow my 30-day course, I promise it will change everything. You won’t have to worry about coming up with new ideas or finding the time to write them down anymore because I’ll be there every step of the way. It doesn't matter what industry you're in - all of these strategies are universal and they work!
It's time for a fresh start. A new beginning where your content is helping your business create impact instead of holding it back. This is an opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime so don't let it pass by without taking action now! Sign up today and see just how much better things can be when you take control over your content creation process. Let me show you how simple this whole thing really is...it's never too late to turn things around!
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