For today’s consumer, 67%-80% of the buyer’s journey is digital, making content marketing necessary for businesses. Often, your website is your first opportunity to impress potential clients.
How Does Content Marketing Work For My Business?
A well-rounded content marketing strategy will help you connect with your ideal buyer, move potential customers through a buyer’s journey, and delight your clients to improve retention.
Awareness Stage Content
As you look to expand brand awareness, this stage of content helps answer pressing questions your target audience is searching for. This content also allows you to highlight potential issues and solutions your audience may not be aware of. Content may include FAQ pages, white papers, and blog posts that answer buyers’ questions.
Consideration Stage Content
Once your audience realizes they have a problem, your consideration stage content will educate current and future customers on how your products and services are the answer to their concerns. How to blog posts, infographics, and instructional videos will build trust and answer pressing questions.
Decision Stage Content
Before your customer signs the dotted line, they’ll want to become as familiar as possible with your product. Customer testimonials, case studies, buyer guides, and demo videos will help build your audience’s confidence in your solutions.
Here Are the Content Marketing Strategies You Can’t Ignore
Effective online content marketing efforts will enhance your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), allowing you to reach the right audience precisely when they need you. A successful content marketing strategy uses various content formats to connect to each stage of the customer journey.
Write Blog Content
A well-written blog article will clearly convey your message to your readers and search engines. It’s important for both humans and search bots to understand the context of your content. By writing relevant content and utilizing SEO best practices, you increase your content’s opportunities to appear in search queries for different keywords relevant to your industry or niche.
Break up long-form content with helpful headers, bulleted lists, and images. Strategically placed CTAs will strengthen your buyer’s journey.
It takes time and money to develop high-quality content. However, it’s the cornerstone of every digital marketing strategy because of how much value it adds.
Blog content can attract 55% more organic traffic. You can expand your ROI by repurposing a long-form piece of content.
Video Marketing
Adding video to your content library is one of the quickest ways to enhance your written content and greatly improve your opportunities to rank in search. There are two ways to include written and video content in a blog post. If you start with the video, you can add a transcript of the video’s spoken words.
Need a simple video editor? Type Studio enables you to edit videos simply by editing the transcribed text.
Another way to combine video and written content is to add a video to provide deeper content on a topic. This is helpful for complex subjects such as how-to tutorials and may draw in visual learners who don’t have the time or patience for longer blog posts.
Another great way to use video marketing is on social media. Instagram reels and Facebook Stories offer visual opportunities to connect with potential leads in unique ways.
Podcasts and Audiobooks
If you want to expand your audience and video isn’t your preference, consider developing a podcast or recording an eBook. Podcasts and audiobooks are constantly growing in popularity. While audiobooks are sometimes more of an investment, they are becoming more accessible as libraries invest in Libby and Hoopla memberships.
Podcast content marketing enables you to increase brand awareness and connect with niche audiences through the engaging format of audio-first content. Platforms like Podbean and BlogtoPod make producing and sharing your podcasts quickly and effectively easy.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a key part of a holistic content marketing strategy because it allows you to personalize and target your communication with each contact. Email is used for every aspect of a customer’s buyer’s journey, starting with lead generation. By offering insider discounts on new products or services, you can continue to engage your customers and delight them.
Segmenting your email lists allows you to address various buyer personas directly. By customizing your email content to align with the unique interests, needs, and behaviors of each distinct group in your audience, you create messages that are more relevant and impactful for each recipient.
Visual Content
The visual learning style popularized by Neil D. Fleming is one of three distinct types. Fleming explains that visual learners need to see information to learn it. This “seeing” takes many forms, from spatial awareness, photographic memory, color/tone, brightness/contrast, and other visual information. Include visual content in your content marketing, such as infographics, photos, graphs, charts, and slide decks. One easy way to incorporate visual content is to have a custom image with every blog post.
Social Media Marketing
As you strive to extend your digital reach, it’s helpful to leverage social media. Social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are excellent places to connect with your target audience, share content, and answer questions.
When developing social media content, it’s important to consider the type of campaign you intend to run. Social amplification focuses on increasing visibility and encouraging the sharing of existing content. In contrast, social media marketing centers on creating fresh content to enhance your brand, engage your audience, and motivate them to act. Understanding the distinction between these approaches allows you to optimize your online strategies and elevate your brand’s presence in a competitive digital landscape.
It’s essential to spend time developing a buyer persona. This way, you will know which social media platforms will best connect your brand with your target buyer. You should plan out your social media posts and look ahead to consider ways you can incorporate interactive content such as polls.
Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
Your content marketing success depends on the following factors:
1. Speak directly to your target audience.
2. Develop multiple content types for each stage of the customer journey.
3. Use search engine optimization best practices.
4. Ensure your entire team is on the same page by using a content calendar.
5. Connect with your sales team to develop content that answers your questions for each step of your company’s sales funnel.
6. Track conversion rates to clarify what your customers value.
Hire A Trusted Partner
As you develop your content strategy, consider how to incorporate each of these aspects into your overall digital marketing efforts. If you’re looking to delegate your content marketing strategy development or need help thinking through how to implement your ideas, contact us. We’re content marketing experts who specialize in customized strategies.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on February 11, 2021, and has been updated with fresh content.
