Why Content Marketing?
With the digital world full of brands promoting themselves with sales and gimmicks, the masses are beginning to see past the smoke and gravitate towards voices that they trust. Consumers are sick of being ‘sold’ so they’re relying on their gut-reactions, forcing brands to earn their attention with excellent content. What exactly does that mean?
Content is material that serves either an entertaining and/or educational purpose in an effort to tell a brand’s story in a unique way.
Brands spend 25%-43% of their marketing budget on content – Business2Community
45% of marketers say blogging is their most important content strategy – Social Media Examiner
While many brands create and distribute content, having a pre-planned strategy with detailed execution and data analytics is key to maximizing their spend. Here’s what’s earning brands more revenue!
Building Your Strategy
Brand Identity
Your brand demonstrates how you want your business to be perceived, so your image must remain consistent across all channels. Content should reflect your brand, and while the individual message might vary, the tone, verbiage, and overall content imprint should remain consistent. A strong brand adds a personal touch to your business and will assist to establish a loyal following.
Demographics
For optimal results, maximize ad spend and overall efficiency by focusing your content to meet the needs of your intended audience. This means tone, verbiage, colors, and other communication methods should be in tune with your branding and demographics. Research and evaluate the proposed content prior to publication to gauge its effectiveness, as it is crucial to the bottom line.
Your target audience should identify with your brand, so it should meet their perception of your brand’s personality to stand out. If your brand were a person, your potential customers should want to be your brand’s friend!
Documenting Your Strategy
While it might seem redundant, it’s important to record your strategy for the same reason you would document your business plan – so it’s in writing and clear to everyone involved. This will also keep everyone on the same page to promote branding and cross-channel continuity, as well as a cohesive messaging strategy. Documenting your plan makes it easier for your team to reference your strategy as well.
Not convinced yet? Here’s a nugget to consider:
Did you know that 70% of B2B Marketers planned to increase their Content Marketing in the past year? – Content Marketing Institute
Implementing the Strategy
Putting your strategy into action is often easier said than done. Beyond almost anything else, success requires persistence and attention to detail. Remember, details must be transparent and relevant assumptions are unacceptable. Every metric should strategically tie in with your branding or demographics appeal. While this phase is important, it’s how you’re able to adapt and improve your strategy that will define your long-term success.
More food for thought:
The top three B2B goals of Content Marketing are Lead Generation (85%), Sales (84%), and Lead Nurturing (78%) – Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs
Testing and Analyzing Data
Managing the data you collect is just as important as mapping and executing your strategy. Think of your content strategy as if it were a science experiment. You have statistics and other demographic-based information which leads to a:
Hypothesis: Form an educated prediction based on the given data on hand
Preparation: Draft content in an effort to prove your hypothesis (based on the data provided)
Test: Execute your drafted strategy
Results: Compare the results to your hypothesis and deduct a productive conclusion
For the purpose of Content Marketing, you can use this basic scientific method to determine how your content is meeting or exceeding expectations. Once it complies, take it to the next level by exploring more detailed metrics which will provide more insight as to why your content is or isn’t resonating with your target audience. Useful tools such as Google Analytics show historical data so you can harvest metrics that support your hypothesis and deliver measurable results!
In short, use the data at hand to make the most educated conclusions. Go with what works.
Timing
Constantly base the timing portion of your results on trial and error and don’t ignore the metrics. You should be looking for promising results over an extended period of time to reach a conclusion that will lead to a profitable outcome.
Engagement
If using certain verbiage, design strategy, or any other measurable element in your content that outperforms others of its kind, it might be worth looking into. Maybe condensed copy performs better, or using humor – the point is to never ignore your data. Pay attention to what your audience is telling you and adapt to it. The longer you adapt your content message to reach your target audience, the stronger and more personalized your brand and content strategy will become.
A profitable Content Marketing strategy can be a huge difference maker for your business. Could your business benefit from an increase in customers and revenue? Contact the experts at Active Web Group for a complimentary analysis to see how your business can maximize profits.
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