In our digital age, content marketing has become a core part of any successful business strategy. In fact, 50% of marketers say they intend to increase their investment in it in 2024.
But with the vast amount of information available online, consumers are also more discerning than ever. The following are three things to do to ensure your content marketing is worth the investment:
1. Know Your Audience
The foundation of any successful content marketing strategy is an understanding of your prospect. This involves more than just demographics—you must delve into their pain points, interests, and behaviors to ensure your content resonates.
- Develop Buyer Personas — Before anything else, develop detailed personas that represent your ideal customers, including information about their age, location, job responsibilities, and challenges. Learn more about creating personas here.
- Conduct Market Research — This is useful in getting to know your customers so you can develop those personas accurately. Such research can take place in the form of one-on-one interviews, surveys, or social media listening. (Here’s what to know about our partnership with the Market Research arm of Stable Kernel.)
2. Create Diverse, High-Quality Content
Content that educates, entertains, and solves problems for your audience is key to marketing success. But in our current world of rapidly produced, AI-generated materials, quality is becoming a real differentiator. Thought leadership is established when the content author is sharing their unique perspective based on their experience and expertise—something generative AI alone currently cannot do.
It’s much better to produce fewer pieces of high-quality content than to flood your audience with mediocre, repetitive material. In fact, too much content can create prospect fatigue so that they fail to consume materials, unfollow, or unsubscribe. A couple more pointers in this area:
- Diversify — Just as omnichannel marketing strategies meet the buyer where they are, your content should include a mix of digital formats to align with audience preferences. Consider a variety of blog posts, video, infographics, podcasts, and eBooks, and always consider how content will appear on mobile devices.
- Master Storytelling — Even the most informative content can be lackluster if it fails to engage. By incorporating “storytelling” into content, it becomes more relatable and memorable. Use real-life customer examples, anecdotes, quotes, and humor to liven up bland content.
3. Promote Effectively
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Creating great content is only half the battle, as your audience can’t engage with it if they never learn about it. Do this by:
- Optimizing For SEO — Ensure your content is optimized for search engines to increase visibility. This means using relevant keywords, enhancing meta tags, and more. Learn more about SEO optimization here.
- Sharing On Social — Place content (or links to content) on social platforms where your audience is active. Draw attention to posts with engaging visuals, compelling headlines and teaser copy, and hashtags to increase visibility.
- Sending Email — Leverage your company newsletter or email lists to announce availability of new content. Personalize the subject line and copy based on the recipient’s role and concerns.
- Using Paid Advertising — Channels like Google Ads and LinkedIn can go a long way in boosting content visibility. Design ads to target specific demographics, job roles, and geographies to ensure you reach the right audience.
Remember that content marketing isn’t a “one and done”—it’s an ongoing effort that requires a steady flow of knowledgeable, valuable, up-to-date content promoted aggressively. Need help? Contact us today for assistance with your content development and content marketing programs.