At The Blog Frog, we know that content marketing has been targeting prospects and turning them into customers since the 19th century. A proactive type of advertising seeks to anticipate and meet the needs of target audiences with free, valuable content.
Alongside traditional advertising, content marketing helps businesses attract clients and generate sales for two centuries now.
The age of the internet, however, has been a big game-changer and rendered content marketing unavoidable for any business that wants to become successful.
According to study, 72% of marketers view content as a core business strategy in 2020 and 78% of them take a strategic approach to managing content.
Since this is such an important pillar of any marketing endeavor, here are the five most important things you should know about content marketing.
A Solid Content Marketing Strategy is Essential
The only way to deliver positive outcomes is through careful, thorough planning. Were it not so, project management would be a lost art.
Since that is far from the truth, before creating any type of content, there are a few questions that need answers. The most basic are:
- Who are you writing for?
- What are you looking to achieve?
- How will you measure the results?
- How does content fit into your larger marketing plan?
- How much of your marketing budget can you allocate towards content marketing?
It might sound simplistic or reductionist, but with content marketing strategy, you will need to use terms that everybody in your organisation understands, for the sake of accuracy.
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Whether you are looking to build brand loyalty, boost sales for a certain demographic, or simply increase conversions, it needs documentation, so that everybody is on the same page.
If you’re looking for an incentive to do this, here’s one. In 2020, 69% of the most successful B2B marketers had a documented content marketing strategy, while only 16% of the least successful companies had one.
Email Marketing is an Unbelievably Effective Tool
Despite many prophecies about the end of its kingdom, email marketing seems to do better than ever, especially when email is combined with SEO. Not only is it still relevant to any winning content marketing strategy, but it rules over all the other channels by delivering the highest ROI, especially with well-crafted follow up emails. In simple terms, what you get is a money-back for every dollar you spend.
Most users check their emails daily, some of them as many times as 20 per day. It’s no wonder that this channel is faring better than others when it comes to conversions.
But how do you measure its success? The most important parameters you can track to check the outcomes of your email campaigns:
- Deliverability – Are your emails getting through?
- Open rates – Are the customers opening the emails?
- Click-through rates – Are your customers clicking on the links in the emails?
- Conversion rates – Are the customers buying your product?
Email marketing campaigns are widely used and wildly successful. One reason for that is the unlikely popularity of email, despite the rise of social media in recent years. In 2020, there are 4 billion email users worldwide, and that number is expected to grow to 4.48 billion in 2024.
It’s important to choose the right tools for your email marketing needs. There are lots of tools to choose from, like MailChimp or alternatives. Figuring out what are the right email automation campaigns to start can help point you in the right direction.
One needs to understand the need for proper email list management software & email marketing tools that allows one to create professional marketing email campaigns and do email automation, several tools which are Better Alternatives are useful.
Knowing Your Competition is Key
Content marketing is not always about your own content.
You might write the best, most thoroughly researched articles in your field, but that won’t guarantee you the outcomes you are expecting.
If you’re wondering why you’re not ranking high enough on Google search, even though you are putting high-quality content out there, it might be time to take a closer look at your strategy.
Even though you are not exactly at war, it’s very important to know what your competition is up to. That way, you can:
- Avoid areas they’ve already covered;
- Shed new light on industry worn topics;
- Learn from their achievements;
- Study mistakes and make sure not to repeat.
No matter the field you’re in, your content marketing strategy must include adequate competition research before you can become a genuine contender.
Buyer Personas Aid Brand Awareness and Loyalty
In this race for the customer’s attention, knowing your enemy is key, but knowing your audience is the other side of the coin. Every initial content marketing effort starts with one simple question: Who am I writing for?
Because the answer to that question is proving to be increasingly complex, as more and more data becomes available about each user, marketers create buyer personas. They are embodiments of different customer types, each with their own set of needs and pain points that the marketers wish to address for either virtual sales or straight on purchases.
Personalized messages have always been more successful than generic ones, which is why buyer personas help companies target their audience with more accuracy. By speaking to them as if they know them, they make sure to create loyal customers, thus building not only brand awareness but also brand loyalty.
Analytic Tools Are Crucial to Your Content Marketing Strategy
Earlier, we talked about answering certain questions about your content marketing efforts as part of your strategy. The answers to these questions will provide you with your goals, which will ideally be SMART:
- Specific;
- Measurable;
- Attainable;
- Relevant;
- Time-based.
An important aspect of these is measurability, and it can only be satisfied by employing the correct, most up-to-date tools on the market.
Your efforts would all be in vain if your measuring systems were feeding you the incorrect information, which is why using the best tools is crucial to any content marketing endeavor.
To sum up, a well-documented content marketing strategy can act as the foundation of your wider advertising endeavors. The right content, delivered through the right channels, with a carefully researched buyer persona in mind, can reach your target audience and get your conversion rate up. You can also use tools like eClincher to get the best results on sharing your content on social media.
Remarks
When done right, content marketing can boost your sales and build brand awareness and loyalty. As long as you set out with clear, achievable goals in mind and you use the correct tools, nothing can stop you.
