Content marketing has quickly become one of the most effective ways to increase search ranking, organic reach and audience relevance. Every year more and more brands are jumping on the bandwagon to grow and scale their business and the statistics back it up.
In fact, recent studies show that more than 80% of companies are now using this form of marketing and over 75% of digital marketers are even increasing their level of investment in content marketing. From a consumers perspective, 68% of them said that they feel more comfortable making a purchase after being exposed to videos, articles or other content from the brand.
With this in mind, it should be obvious that content marketing is an essential tool for growing your business, whether this endeavor is consumer or business orientated. What’s more, this is now arguably the fastest and most affordable way to reach and engage with a specific target market.
However, content marketing will only deliver with the right strategy.
Let’s take a quick look at why content marketing is so important:
The Importance of Innovation in Content Marketing
As you know, content marketing refers to the creation and sharing of material such as blog articles, videos and social media posts. At the same time, content marketing is also characterized by the fact that this content does not directly promote a brand and focuses on stimulating interest in the product or service.
For this reason, marketers need to be innovative with their technique and this is certainly true with the arrival of apps and extensions that can block adverts. For example, paid-banners or sidebar advertisements do not provide the same return on investment as they did several years ago.
This means that content marketing is not something that simply be made up as you go along. It requires time and a well-planned strategy in order to help your business grow. You could have the most stimulating content there is, but it holds no value to your brand if it’s not seen, read, heard or shared by the right people.
Not sure where to start? Here are some basic steps we’ve put together to help create a content marketing strategy to grow your business:
5 Steps to Grow Your Business Using Content Marketing
1. Research
Creating a content marketing plan is like building a home – you should always start by establishing a strong foundation. Without this initial research, effective content marketing is almost impossible.
As part of this foundation, you need to define the age, demographics and interests of your target market and find out where these customers are spending their time online. No content should be created without someone in mind, so understanding your audience is arguably the most important step in developing content. Actively analysing your competition is equally as important; from the type of content they produce the specific keywords they target. Doing this allows you to gain more insights into your target market as well as find your points of difference.
Once you understand your audience, you need to place yourself in their shoes. What are they searching for when they need your brand? When it comes to defining keywords, there are various tools such as SEM Rush which can help you identify and choose the best keywords for your content marketing plan.
Having a solid research to drive your strategy means that you can identify the most effective content that the audience will best respond to.
2. Plan
With research to hand, creating the most relevant and effective content is much easier. After all, you should now know precisely who will consume this content and exactly how to optimize it in order to reach the audience.
However, knowing the keywords is not enough to gain traction and content marketing is just as much about creating valuable videos, articles etc that will resonate with potential customers. There should also be an abundance of content ideas in the works and this is where project management comes into play. We recommend a project management software such as Asana or Trello to manage this workflow and an editorial calendar at the very least.
These content systems can track every piece of content all the way from the idea phase to the day of publication and allow for seamless collaboration and improvements as you learn what works best for you.
3. Generate Traffic
When customers arrive on your website, you need to consider that they might be an existing customer or a new prospect. Either way, you want to track their movements in order to keep improving the process and their experience.
For example, if you provide a useful piece of software and you wanted prospects to sign-up for a trial, you could use Google Analytics to track how visitors move from one piece of content to the next. In this sense, you can quickly identify the most effective content for your product and then drive more traffic to this same content.
As you know, you can also boost traffic to this content by reaching out to influencers, publishing guest posts on other websites and even linking to this content internally.
4. Networking and Promotions
Simply put, it’s not enough to create valuable content and hope that customers will find it.
Promotion is now more important than ever especially at a time when so much noise can make it hard to attract attention online. While some of these efforts should certainly involve Facebook Ads or Google Ads, this when influencers, bloggers and other websites come into play.
In other words, you will need to reach out to relevant websites and ask that they share your content. Similarly, contacting the right influencers is proven to boost traffic significantly, while email marketing and publishing daily content is also something which continues to drive fantastic results.
5. Analyze and Optimize
Many marketers fail to realize the importance of measuring results but looking back at past performance is often the best indicator in terms of what can be done to improve future content marketing efforts.
You can identify this key information by checking what content was received the most shares, likes or clicks and maybe the number of sign-ups you received from a particular campaign. Needless to say, sales -or lack of – can also be the best indicator when it comes to the effectiveness of content marketing but optimizing this further is always an option to increase the reach, ranking and relevance of your content.
In today’s day and age, content marketing is by far the best way to grow your business and is constantly evolving. By following these simple steps, you can be on the path to a successful, results driven content strategy that will grow your business. Branding business brisbane.
Launching a content strategy and want assistance with your success plan? Viabrand can help.
Get in touch on our contact page or 07 3180 1416.