Our Top 5 Ways to Build an Effective Content Marketing Strategy That Gets Attention
March 19, 2019
Content marketing is a great way for businesses to connect with potential customers earlier in the customer journey. But simply throwing blog posts or video online won’t get your content in front of the eyes that need to see it. That’s where developing a content marketing strategy comes in.
At the most basic level, your content strategy answers these questions:
- Who am I trying to reach?
- What type of content do they need?
- How will I get my content to them?
- What outcomes do I expect after my audience consumes the content?
We’ve got five ideas to help you answer those questions.
1. Write it down!
It’s not enough to have a meeting to discuss your content strategy. Write everything down to ensure everyone on your team is consistent in developing and distributing content.
2. Set goals.
What do you want to achieve? It could be lead generation through a free trial sign up, new e‑newsletter subscribers or perception building for your brand. What do you want the outcome to be after someone engages with your content?
3. Get to know your audience.
Identify the type of content they’re looking for throughout the buying cycle. Two very helpful tools are audience personas and the buyer’s journey. These tools will help you understand what type of information your audience is seeking and at what point in their research and consideration, they need to see it. People need different types of information depending on where they are at in your sales funnel. For example, blog posts are great to kick-start awareness. Case studies become helpful as your audience looks for more specific information.
4. Locate your audience.
Where do they consume content? Are they on Facebook or LinkedIn? Maybe they read daily news sites or interact with specific mobile apps? The goal is to place your content where they are and get them to engage with it. Make your content stand out with an offer of helpful information, an exclusive deal or some other enticing opportunity that’s too tempting to scroll past.
5. Test, Measure and Refine.
At this point, you know your audience well enough to create content they want, but there’s some art and science to convincing them to click, read, watch or download. There are a few simple ways to test your content to see what captures your audience’s attention. For example, try different headlines when you promote a blog post, to see which headline gets the most interest. Images are also a great place to do some testing. Try sharing your content with different photos to see which image gets more clicks. One last easy test is to add different calls to action. Think carefully about what you want them to do and ask them to “leave a comment,” “contact us for a free consultation,” or “download our free e‑book.” Check out this post for more ideas on calls-to-action.
These five tips will get you started down the ever-changing road of content marketing, but the truth is, none of these tips will help you if your content isn’t interesting, entertaining, informative or relevant. Check out our post on the 8 types of content you should be creating to get some ideas.
Are you ready to make the leap into content marketing?
At Applied Art, we create content that gets results. Contact us if you are ready to launch an effective content strategy that drives customers your direction.
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