The digital content marketing strategy is essentially a blueprint that includes processes, standards, and topics to help you plan, create and publish your content.
The content marketing strategy is the foundation of reaching your business
. It is a sort of magnetic compass that you have to craft on your own measure to show you the way to your objectives. And of course, we are all striving to find the best content strategy that works for our business.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter
It’s a guiding line that organizes the marketing teams involved in producing content: writers, editors, SEO specialists, designers, producers, project managers, analysts, etc., identifies the needed tools and channels and provides procedures and workflows. And aligns all the stakeholders involved toward the same goal.
Remember your digital content marketing strategy line needs to be flexible and your team agile. In our ever-changing world, it happens quite often that the situation forecast in January has nothing to do with the reality of May.
Useless to reinforce why you need a content marketing strategy, it’s vital to have a path that leads you toward your goals.
When you need to arrive from point A to point B, you establish in advance a route. This is similar to your business, to achieve the goals you need a route, and that’s the strategy.
A simplified content strategy template that will definitely help you in your endeavors of creating your strategy is to be found if you click the aforementioned link.
A successful content marketing strategy is the ultimate game-changer for your business. Because it’s one of the key things that will give you an edge over your competitors. Investing in it is therefore well worth all the effort.
Audiences have become smarter and more discerning today than ever, they’re looking for value and relevance. Most of them, as time goes by, are becoming media-savvy and can now tell the difference between the noise in traditional advertising and real content that serves their needs. And this is where content marketing is king, it’s what will help you create and deliver the information your audience needs.
What Do You Hope to Gain from Solid Content Marketing Strategy?
a. It’ll Help Establish Trust with Your Audience
People tend to lean towards something that offers them relevance and value. This forms a good basis for trust. By connecting with your customers and giving the answers to their questions through the content you deliver them, you will be building a solid relationship that they can always come back to.
Consistently offer quality content to your audience and find yourself building a good reputation for your brand, which will consequentially attract the trust and loyalty that you need.
b. It’ll Bring Them Back for More
When you offer your audience just the right content, they will get a positive experience. Whenever they visit your site or social pages they will get solutions and this will keep them coming back for more. The positive experience reinforces how they see and feel about your brand.
c. You Gain Authority
Churning out great quality content is your business’s way of flexing your muscles and proving your expertise in your field. When you publish content that solves your audience’s specific issues, your audience will look at you as an expert worth her attention. This will boost your authority and rank your content higher.
d. It Generates Leads
Generating leads is one of the key goals of any marketing campaign and quality content is at its heart. The calls to action become very instrumental in generating leads to your landing page.
e. Boosts Conversion
For most businesses, this is the ultimate goal. And this will be easier if you provide your audience with useful information that they can eventually trust over time. With trust established, and with the right calls to action, the purchasing decision will be in your favor.
Thus, this is a strong relationship between quality, relevance, and offering solutions.
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What is a content marketing strategy without the key elements? These are the building block of effective content marketing efforts.
a. Positioning
This can be considered as the manner in which you get your brand out of obscurity by creating awareness about all the solutions you offer to your audience through the aptest platforms thereby amplifying your expertise to a higher position of great reputation.
When you set yourself as an expert in your niche, you’ll have the leeway to set higher rates for yourself and set yourself up for greater opportunities. This means being in each place where your audience looks for solutions to their problems. When you position yourself on multiple platforms sharing your expertise, you’ll build higher confidence with your audience.
b. Value Proposition
When your audience’s needs meet your solutions in perfect positioning, magic happens. However, achieving this requires navigating through clear communication, true perception, and delivering on your brand promise.
And this is where a good value proposition comes to play. It’s the baseline promise to your audience. A clear expression of what they stand to gain by purchasing your product or service. It’s about the thing that makes you unique and makes you stand out from your competitors to the advantage of your customers. Identify it and offer it.
c. Business Case
The next important element in online content marketing strategy is about driving your brand forward. This will require clearly defining your goals (read below) in order to see how creating an inbound content marketing strategy will get you closer to them.
Knowing your goals will lead you to pick the resources to invest in in order to achieve your desired results. It will also help you have a clearer picture of the costs, benefits as well as risks of implementing your content marketing efforts.
d. Your Strategic Plan
This final element is meant to help plan every step that will support you in reaching your overall goals and how you’re going to measure them. You have to insert in a strategy the platforms you want to use and also the methods you will use to promote the content.
It’s a top priority to also consider the most appealing content type for your target audience. Often times a mixture of videos, blog posts or infographics would be a great approach.
To facilitate your task check the digital content marketing strategy template below, which I created especially to help businesses streamline their strategy creation efforts.
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Now, let’s start and identify the core pillars that are sustaining your website content strategy:
Effectively How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy? A Content Strategy Outline
Pillar 1: Results of Content Audit
If you are not starting from scratch, before committing to the creation of your digital content strategy for the next year, an audit and revision of the content you produced last year are compulsory.
· Inventorize your content. First, you need a quantitative evaluation of the content you already have. Where is it published? How many pieces are published? In which format? Which of them show up on the first page of search engines? Collect in an inventory list with data like link, author, publishing date, last update, keywords, etc.
· Content audit. This is a qualitative evaluation of the content you listed in the content inventory list. Which is the quality level of this content? Does it meet your actual quality standards? Is it in line with your brand? Does it answer properly to your audience’s pain points? Which pieces of content generated the most traffic and why? Which is the bounce rate? But the dwelling time? How are the social shares? Is the actual content converting according to targets? Search for explanations and answers to these questions.
· Competitor analysis. By examining competitors’ well-performing pages, you can understand which valuable pieces may be missing on your website. Use the SE Ranking SEO competition tool to investigate your rivals’ organic performance, find out which keywords work best for product or landing pages, and which are perfect for audience educational purposes. Also, make sure to check if there are any SERP features for queries you are going to target (like the “people also ask” section, featured snippets, or site links) and optimize your content for them as well.
· Identify the content gap. Search for topics that are not covered by your content and they should be.
Pillar 2: Establish Your Core Content Marketing Goals
The fundament of your own content marketing strategy is the goals that you want to achieve through your marketing efforts. These business goals are general high-level statements that your marketing efforts will focus on and are established by the top management for the whole organization. Such goals could be:
* Create brand awareness. If your company/business is new, your primary goal will be to create brand awareness, to reach as much as possible of your target audience
* Boost traffic for your site by x%. This could be accomplished through search engine optimization, via organic traffic, but it will take time to rank and till the results will be visible in search engines. Or via paid traffic, which will bring results quicker but will require a higher budget.
* Increase conversions for your products or services by x%. You need to influence and convince a larger number of visitors to your site to become customers and buy your products/services.
* Build a reputation as an influencer/leader for your company. Your brand is much more than the effective products/services you sell. If you create high-quality content, and deliver great products/services that help your audience and exceed her expectations, in time you could build a solid reputation and confirm the status of a leader/influencer in your industry.
From these overarching goals, the content marketing goals will be derived.
Business goals in general, content marketing goals included, need to have the following S.M.A.R.T. characteristics:
* Specific: Provide exact details of what you need to achieve.
* Measurable: Try to define a number or level that defines exactly your goal.
* Attainable: Your goal should be feasible and realistic
* Relevant: Choose a goal that is significant for your activity
* Timely: Always define a deadline for your goal
Source: House of Hunt
SMART goals, could look like this:
Till [Date] the [company]’s team in charge of content marketing will achieve [number]/ [metric] [interval].
Till March 30, 2022, Eagle Advertising’s team in charge of content marketing will reach 10.000 monthly new visitors for our blog.
The best approach on how to create a content marketing strategy that works is by using the right KPIs and contextualizing them with your brand. They must be aligned with your business goals, your strengths as a brand, and the life stage of your business.
They must also be tied to your company size because different businesses require different needs to meet the needs of a certain stage. For instance, if your business is fairly new, your content will be on creating awareness, so you should use KPIs that address this aspect and so on.
KPIs are important metrics that help you reveal the strong or weak points of your content marketing efforts (use a professionally executed content strategy template) that you should address in order to achieve your overall goals.
Such metrics show actionable insights such as:
Sales impact – B2B content marketing strategies zero down to which is the impact the content has on revenues. For this reason, you should develop effective systems for measuring sales impact across all your platforms.
Return on Ad Cost – Instead of doing a general calculation of revenue of the whole campaign over the ad spend, it’s best to take into consideration all the detailed cost factors e.g. the value of leads generated. Return on ad cost (ROAC) is the metric between return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS). The above-mentioned indicator offers you more insights into the effectiveness of the greater marketing budget and you will plan based on clear information and data.
Rate of voice in the market – how well do you connect with your audience? Do they consider you a voice that represents their views? This may be a difficult KPI to measure, but it can be pointed out in happy customers or audiences. Plus, if you have happy employees, then you’re winning at this.
Social impact – this is one of the content marketing strategy metrics that will contribute to your brand’s sustainable growth. This is because today people are all about better health and a better world. And what better way than meaningful content that adds so much value to social wellness? When your content adds to a positive social impact, then you’re on the right track.
Assess Current Position
The audit carried out should also show you your current market position. This is meant to answer the question of whether you’re achieving the goals you set for your brand. Some of the indicators of your market position include considering your content’s shelf life.
Is your content evergreen or has it been overtaken by time? It would be a good acid test for your efforts. You can also consider looking at cross-channel measurements. This means looking beyond impressions, organic traffic, or bounce rates. It means looking at whether your content feeds social platforms or whether it serves satisfactory customer service and so on. Does it offer more?
All these details will help you know your current state and where you need to tweak to get improved results.
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Pillar 3: Audience Research and Persona Development
Who are you trying to reach?
Your content is only as good as the leads and audience it attracts. You can draw thousands of views, but if only five of them are the right people who would use your product or services, it’s a waste of your team’s time.
Identifying who your content should be targeting will help your strategists to determine what types of topics, ideas, and keywords you should cover. What are the pain points of your audience and what is she interested in reading?
What characteristics should you identify about your audience?
Demographics: Age, gender, ethnicity, income, location, job title, etc.
Psychographics: Hobbies, interests, beliefs, habits, and more.
Challenges they face: What are they dealing with that would cause them to begin to search for your product or service?
Pain points: What in their life is causing a disruption or what problem does your product solve?
Where are they getting their information: If your audience is searching for a solution to their problems where are they turning to search for information?
What type of content do they prefer: What content format does your audience prefer to get the information they are looking for from?
How can we help: How can the content you create help, give your target audience the information they need?
You may have several buyer personas profiles, so adjust the template accordingly.
Your ideal – primary buyer persona/primary audience – the persons you should focus on foremost because they have the highest probability to buy your products or services. The content you create should be targeted mainly at the primary buyer persona.
Your secondary buyer personas. These are people that accomplish most of the characteristics of the ideal audience but are not quite ready to buy. You need to convince them, attract them to a sales funnel and convert them into customers. For these secondary buyer personas, your content should be more strategic.
To find out this information about your buyer persona you may:
· Check your Google Analytics in the Audience section if you already have an established audience.
· Make a survey to find out. Tools like Survey Monkey or Google Forms can help you in your efforts.
Map the Customer Journey
Identifying your buyer persona is only the first step. The next critical step is mapping your customer journey. Your customer or audience journey map is just the chance for your business to stand out through the creation of the right content that responds to them in a way that they really need. The thing that most content marketing strategy templates miss by a huge distance is that your customers are at different stages of buying your products or services.
Customers don’t just zoom in from discovering to buying. They move from awareness to consideration, to the new customer stage (acquisition), and possibly all the way to the loyal customer stage. And all these stages require different content for your content marketing efforts to be effective. Feel free to check my marketing content strategy template to organize your content creation efforts around the buyer’s journey stages.
How can you achieve this? Here are a few key factors to consider:
i. Your Content Needs to Be Customer-Centric
Your content marketing strategies should be about offering your audience a great experience. And any improvement you create must be geared towards enhancing this experience.
This means you do not start designing your ideas about the product, but rather around what your customers need and how you can meet their needs. It’s about looking at your business from the customer’s lens. Don’t assume what they need. Find out while understanding their personas.
ii. Your Content Will Require Data
Mapping your customer journey will require data such as geographic locations, user downloads, or even cancellations. This will not only show you the customer stage, but it will also show you the products or content that is doing well and the ones that need improvement. It’s this data that you will use to create personalized content that helps your customers go the whole 9 yards of purchasing your products or services.
The 3 Main Stages of the Customer Journey
a. Awareness Stage
A potential buyer would gain from accessing content that would offer them solutions to issues they’ve been grappling with. They may not be ready to purchase yet, but your well-crafted quality relevant content is what will build awareness and guide them to the next stage.
The content for this stage should be about making their lives easier. Focus on topics that offer them the change they didn’t even know would be possible.
b. Consideration Stage
This content answers the question “why now”. It’s about retaining your customers’ interest in your products or services. To achieve this, your content must be able to win their trust and confidence. They must see that you get them. So, this means even the tone of your content must be reassuring for them to deeply consider what you’re offering and move on to the next stage.
c. Purchase Stage
This final stage is about creating content that removes all doubt about you. It answers the question “why you”. Why is your offer the best for this buyer? Create content that shines, and shows your uniqueness. Are you eco-friendly? Are you pro-health? What makes you superior? Create content that perfectly balances their very specific problems with your very specific solutions, and you will win hands down.
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Pillar 4: Define the Content Pillars and the Subsequent Topics. Create the Content Calendar
The pillars of content or clusters of content are the skeleton of your content generation. The content pillars you create have to be related to the products and services you sell and respond to the questions, needs, pain points, and struggles of your audience related to them. Usually, by pillars of content, we understand the main topics or cornerstone topics that relate to your business. And they include a collection of subtopics that compose the pillar.
Let’s assume you have an SEO agency that provides SEO services for small and medium enterprises. Your main services are SEO-optimized content development, Link building, Local SEO, and Technical SEO.
Your content pillars might include:
– On-Page SEO
– Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
– Increasing traffic from organic sources
– Ranking Algorithms for major search engines
Each content pillar will have topics and types of content assigned.
Here is a content pillar example. A pillar of content like “Off-Page SEO” might include subtopics like:
– Top backlinking strategies
– How to successfully guest post
– Best practices to create an infographic
– Everything you need to know about Skyscraper strategy
Collaborate with your team to discover which of your client’s questions need to be answered. Speak directly with your clients, survey them or visit forums and questions and answers sites to find out.
My content marketing strategy template listed above includes a content pillar template to help you organize the topics in content clusters.
Identify the type of content you will produce
Nowadays, you can choose from a variety of types of content to attract your audience.
The content marketing world is a vast industry and goes far beyond the classical blog post, even if it is its foundation.
Among the types of content available you can pick:
* Articles and Blog Posts
* Videos
* Webinars
* eBooks
* Social Media Content
* Guides
* Reports
* White Papers
* Infographics
* Newsletters
* Case Studies
Pay attention to your audience preferences and align the types of content you produce with their interests and needs. If your audience is teenagers between 15 and 21, you should choose the video, if you target business professionals who prefer reading, ebooks might be the best choice for case studies.
Pillar 5: Create Design and Visual Content Standards
You need to create some design principles and standards to guide your designers while creating visuals for your brand. And your digital content marketing strategy is the place where you define it. Check the content strategy template to see. They are needed to grasp the message of your brand and translate it into coherent visuals and imagery.
Include the basic design elements like:
* Selection of fonts to use.
* Brand color combination.
* Logo-related requirements.
List here all the elements related to visual content that the marketing team should be aware of. Like dimensions of headings, quality of images to use, dimensions, and type of videos. Compulsory elements that should be present on each page, elements to totally exclude.
Consider using custom photos instead of stock to define your style. It will take effort and time, but in the end, it will be worth it.
Pillar 6: Identify the Channels to Promote Your Content
Deciding which channels you are going to use to promote your content is a task of major importance and you need to include them in your content calendar.
Always take into consideration being present when and where your audience hangs out.
The number one channel to consider is of course your own site, this is your main vehicle and one of the few that you own.
The second one is your mailing list. It’s overly stated that the mailing list is the most valuable asset of a business in our ever-changing digital era. You own your mailing list and on it, you have the most engaged persons with your business. If you decide to use your mailing list to promote your newly published content decide how many emails you are going to send and when.
Social Media is a sum of channels where you have to be present and promote your content. Choose and focus only on those social media platforms where your ideal client is present. You will not be able to present on all social networks, or you can but that will require huge efforts and resources are almost never enough. You have to pick among Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, Medium, Snapchat, and more. So, pick wisely and based on analytics. I would suggest focusing on 2-3 maximum channels and on those to have a bold presence.
For instance, if you target B2B established professionals, LinkedIn is the best option, if your buyer persona is young people under 30, Snapchat or Instagram are better options to consider. Consider using analytics for each social media network to find the insights that you need. Test each potential platform to see which brings in the best results. Most probably you will face a trial and error process till you find the right channels for your business.
Once the social media channels are decided, the following step is to create a schedule to promote your content.
Each piece of content will religiously respect this schedule.
A promotion schedule on social media channels might look like this.
Two Tweets three times a week, four weeks after publishing
One repost weekly on Facebook
One Pin daily for one month in group boards and own relevant boards
Another option for your social media promotion is to use paid advertising. These ads help ensure your content gets seen and setting them up is incredibly easy.
Other channels where you want to guest post. Create a list of influencers in your niche or complementary niches that are to be contacted in order to guest post on their sites.
If you want to be featured in major publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Business Insider, or Entrepreneur include that here. Your best bet for contacting these influencers is with a personalized cold email.
To organize yourself better look for a content calendar template that can guide you with promotion channel selection.
After deciding what type of content you need to create, long form, short form, the next phase is the execution phase, literally creating that content. The preparatory element of creating content is designing the process of content creation: the steps that are to be covered, their order, and their length of time.
The content production process comprises all the phases till the piece of content passes to editors and designers.
The content generation process includes the creation and the editorial processes and explicitly indicates who does what, in which order, and when. The persons included in this activity are the content manager, the writers, the editors, the designers, and the SEO specialists.
The flow of the execution process includes all the tasks in chronological order.
In general, the content creation process includes:
· Brainstorming the topic for blog posts – 2-3 days, eventually establish a meeting with the team at the beginning of each trimester and decide on the topics for the period
· Assigning the publishing date and filling the publishing calendar – 1 day
· Researching other resources on the topic – 1 day
· Organizing interviews (if the case) or gathering data – 3-7 days depending on the type of piece of content
· Researching and establishing the keywords to be used for this topic – 1 day
· Creating the structure of the piece of content – outline – 2 days
· Revising and approving the outline – 1 day
· Crafting the first draft of the piece of content – 2-3 days depending on the length, for 1000 words article 1-2 days, for 20000-word ebooks 3-4 weeks
· Revising the draft – 1-4 days depending on the type of piece
· Sending to the editor – 1 day
Take into consideration the length of this process when deciding the date to start the writing process for each piece of content, in the function of the publishing date.
After the content is created it passes through the editorial process. The editorial process organizes the steps of preparing your content for publishing, the publishing itself, and the analysis of the result.
Here is an editorial process flow example:
Editing content – 1 – 4 days
Requesting revisions to be done by writers if the case – 1 – 2 days
Creating the design for the piece of content – 1 – 5 days
Approving the design – 1 day
Send the piece of content to the SEO specialist – in 2 – 4 days
Publishing content – 1 day
Set promotion campaign – 2 – 4 days
Approve and execute the promotion campaign – according to the calendar and promotion strategy
Post-publication analysis of results
Pick a Content Management System
An excellent content marketing strategy example must have a content management system because content marketing is most effective when the process can be repeated, optimized, and tracked. A CMS acts as a repository where your content lives, thereby helping you streamline and manage all your campaigns in one place. It also enables you to update your content across multiple channels, lets you repurpose the best content and so much more to facilitate your content production process.
Resource Allocation
What is a content marketing strategy without sufficient resource allocation? Having established a content calendar that includes important factors such as content type, platform to use, and the right audience, the next important thing is ensuring you have the necessary resources to help you deliver on your goals. This involves identifying the digital tools that you will need to produce your content, knowing who will be in charge of creating content items, and so on.
Depending on the size of the team you’re working with, you can identify the individual that will be in charge overall. If you outsource these services, then you will have to factor in these costs as well. You may for instance outsource a video specialist, freelancer, or graphic designer if you don’t have them in-house or if you are a start-up that doesn’t have a team yet.
Pillar 8: Editorial Calendar
Your content production process ends with the publication of the content your team created. These calendars are valuable tools as they allow your team to organize their tasks accordingly.
Calendars should include all the content types you plan to create and the following details:
· title of the article
· scheduled date of publication
· content pillar it belongs to
· funnel stage of the buyer journey – awareness stage or decision stage
· format of the piece of content – blog, infographic, ebook, long-form content, short-form, etc.
· channels of distribution – where the piece of content will be promoted – social media channels, other sites, etc
Having a defined editorial calendar, you’ll always have ideas of content ready to be created and in progress. The editorial calendar is one of the major parts of your website content marketing strategy. And will be of major help to be consistent with your publishing schedule and respect it. Publishing content consistently and regularly helps you gain authority and return visitors to your site.
Pillar 9: Measuring Results of Your Content Strategy
One of the major challenges of content marketers is to measure the success and results of the content created. Of course, lately, the situation has improved dramatically, we have now analytics, but has bounce rate an impact on your content’s success, are page views a huge indicator of success? Well, arguably.
Here are some metrics that you want to consider:
· pageviews. Many page views translate that you managed to attract the right audience interested in your content and products or that visitors were searching for more information on a certain subject
· time-on-page. The longer the better. High dwelling time means the content was considered useful by the readers if it was long enough, for a short text might mean that it is difficult to consume, and readers spend much time depicting it.
· social shares. The more the better, as usual. Even if that will not necessarily translate into more business for you, it is certainly an indicator of success.
· bounce rate. A small bounce rate, well that’s another discussion: what do we consider a “small bounce rate”, means that the audience is interested in your content. And reverse a high bounce rate, which means that the audience was not interested. Though, it is not necessarily an indicator of the quality of your content. If your content ended up in front of the wrong audience, that’s just to be expected. If I end up on a blog about food for cats and I am not a cat lover, my visit will be a bounce rate.
KPIs to measure content marketing strategy results. Source: SmartInsights
Experience with your own content will learn you and your team how to identify problems and how to solve them.
After deciding what your measurement process will look like and which indicators will be used, you should also decide how often you will create the reports and establish some templates for these reports. It will be easier to conclude if you use a uniform template for the reports that will ease the comparison of metrics.
Pillar 10: Define Your Content Strategy Budget
All marketing activities involve a budget. When creating your content strategy, you need to have at least an approximate idea of how much it will cost to implement it. If you have the internal resources to execute it, or you need to hire help in-house or external consultant experts.
Determine how much it will cost to produce the content that you established in the strategy, how much it will cost to promote it, and if you are going to use paid channels how much budget you want to spend for this purpose.
There you have it, the 10 major pillars that sustain a successful content marketing strategy able to support your future growth and expansion.
How to create a content marketing strategy?
Do a content audit.
Inventorize your existing content, do an audit for all your articles, a competitor analysis, and identify the content gap for your semantic keywords.
Define your content goals.
Pay attention to setting some S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) goals. Assess the current situation and establish KPIs.
Audience research, persona development, and buyer journey definition.
Define your buyer persona (ideal customer) and her characteristics. Identify which are the steps that a potential client takes to become a customer.
Define the Content Pillars and the Subsequent Topics. Create the Content Calendar.
Identify the main content clusters and information that your client needs to solve his problems with your products/services. Or what subject to write about to attract your audience.
Create Design and Visual Content Standards.
Establish what principles and conditions are to be accomplished to create a cohesive brand.
Identify the Channels to Promote Your Content.
Where will you publish your content on your own site, on your social media channels, on tier channels, etc?
Content Production Flow.
Put in place a procedure to be followed when creating content.
Editorial Calendar.
Organize the identified topics in an editorial calendar with all the details, date of publication, format, stage of the journey, content pillar, and distribution channels.
Measure the results of your content strategy
Measure the established KPIs and see which are the results obtained and what is needed to improve them.
Determine your content strategy budget
Estimate a price for each activity included in the strategy and determine the budget needed to implement your strategy.
Content marketing funnel! Voila, some other fancy name, and apparently a Gordian knot that you need to solve. But wait, that doesn’t need to be overwhelming, if you approach the notion step by step, you will see it is achievable. Content marketing funnel explained for complete beginners.
What Is a Content Marketing Funnel and Why Do You Need It?
A content marketing funnel is a way of creating your content based on the phases of the buyer journey. Meaning following the steps that a prospect/visitor is following through the content of your site to purchase a good or service. In essence, users arrive on a landing page – from ads, emails, or organic search, and all the additional pages they are visiting until they buy is a content marketing funnel.
Along this path, a large part of the traffic that arrives on your site will drop off at different points, and in the final stage – the purchase stage – will arrive just a small part. This explains the form of the funnel, with a larger top and a smaller bottom.
Why does this happen?
There are a plethora of reasons – a bunch of them on your side like technical dysfunctions, incoherence between your ads and your landing pages, or reasons related to the customer. These could be: the visitor is just looking for information, he is not looking to buy; the visitor is not aware he has a problem that your product/service could solve.
That just means the visitor is not ready to buy yet. So, pushing him in a funnel to buy right away is simply not appropriate and will not bring the results you want.
The content marketing funnels should be constructed as client centric.
Their mission is to align customers’ needs with your business needs, in a win-win manner. You need to polish continuously your lead generation funnels, to identify where the “breaches” are in these paths. To fix them and anticipate the questions of a potential client and answer them even before he asks.
From your business point of view, the main purpose of a content marketing funnel is to translate as many as possible visitors into paying customers.
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Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
The number one question is how you attract a larger part of these visitors to become customers.
Through lead nurturing. Meaning answering all the questions, doubts, and concerns a potential client might have.
Why do nurturing leads count?
Research by Marketo confirms that 96% of visitors arriving on your site are not prepared to buy at that moment.
That’s more than huge, it’s enormous!
The reality is that leads that don’t convert at all are a burden on your marketing expenses, a fact that propels leading nurturing among the top priorities of any business.
48% of businesses confirm that a great part of their leads is involved in “long cycle” nurturing.
Businesses that best employ lead nurturing observe a 50% increase in sales and a reduction of 33% in costs.
Based on these numbers, the conclusion is obvious: users will trust and buy from you, only after you prove you pay great attention to and anticipate their needs.
Content Marketing Funnel Explained: How to Build an Effective Content Funnel?
In order to simplify the process of creating your content marketing funnel you need to clearly establish some details like what you want to sell through the funnel. How do you want to sell the product? Where do you find the qualified traffic?
What product will your funnel sell?
If you have just one product/service, the answer is obvious.
If you have more, you should make a decision. Aim to build a funnel for a specific service/product, not a general one. For instance, a writer should not consider building a funnel for “writing services”, but for “content marketing writing services for the real estate industry”.
Being specific will facilitate your efforts in defining the stages of the funnel.
Take into consideration several criteria:
· Popularity of a product/service
· Potential of that product/service to drive sales (a product that can lead to selling other products, or services that involve more work)
· Ease to sell
As a general rule, a sales funnel should sell one product/service.
How do you sell the product/service? From where?
Depending on the specificity of your business the place where you place your pitch is different:
· Long-form sales pages – for courses, conferences
· Pricing pages – for books, software applications, consulting services
· Product pages – for online stores
Where do you find the qualified traffic?
Firstly, you can count on the traffic you have on your site or your email list (if you have one). Your existing visitors already know about you and are already positioned somewhere inside the stages of the funnel.
· Partnerships with influencers and other specialists in your industry
Now that you have clarified the funnel basics, start with defining the content marketing stages:
The genuine art of converting means a flow and a funnel that doesn’t simply end with a sale. It’s a perpetual mission of reaching, keeping, and increasing your buyer persona base, using technology, content marketing, social media, email automation, etc. to satisfy better their needs.
It’s part of a broader marketing strategy that mixes lead nurturing, targets behavior uses retention tactics, and in the end, obtains referrals.
If you do research, you will obtain various good-looking versions like these:
Source: Google
The content marketing funnel has a logical flow — it starts with generating awareness for your brand and problems it solves. Then Captures the interest of those users searching for a solution to such a problem. Attentively guides the flow to a purchasing decision. And arrives in the final stage of taking action and buying.
To each of these stages of the marketing funnel, you have to assign corresponding messages, that are buyer centric:
Content Marketing Funnel Stage 1: TOFU
The question is: which is the awareness level of my prospect?
This stage is the first contact point, you have to present your business, your mission, and your offer. You need to inform the users that you exist.
Most often this happens when:
* Traffic is redirected to your site from an advertising campaign
* Backlinks link to your site
* Your business is mentioned in a video, webinar, or podcast
* Word of mouth is spreading – happy clients make advocacy for your business
* Search engines pop your business within organic search
The essential is that awareness emerges when your activity appears in front of potential leads in places where they spend time.
On his side the customer may find himself in the so-called various stages of awareness, depending on the acknowledgment he has of his problem, existing solutions, and the role of your brand.
The famous copywriter Eugene Schwartz pinpointed several stages of awareness:
Not aware: the user doesn’t consider he has a problem, nor is looking for a solution, and knows nothing about your brand
Problem aware: the user suspects he has an issue, but no clue about a possible solution
Solution aware: the user knows his purpose but does not know your brand can be a solution.
Product aware: the user is familiar with your business and brand, and knows that you can offer a solution, but hasn’t decided that your product is his best option. The user is considering various options.
Most aware: the user had decided in favor of your product and just needs to take action and buy.
How long is the funnel and how much you have to work to convince the potential client, depends highly on which level of the above spectrum he is. This refers to individual parts of the buyers’ journey and also to the whole funnel.
If the client is in the “totally unaware” position of course the funnel will be longer and more convincing elements will be needed. The best case, from the sales point of view, is the most aware position when the prospect is prepared to become paying client.
Depicting where the potential client is on his journey, will help you identify elements that the client responds favorably to and moves him a step further in the funnel.
From the very beginning is vital to know exactly (research is important) which are the pain points and desires of your audience.
At this point, you have to indicate how your solution is a benefit for clients from various perspectives. Potential customers are in different stages of the content marketing funnel and a multi-direction approach can help generate more qualified leads.
Top of the funnel content: – land on the funnel from a Facebook ad:
Source: Facebook
Or from an affiliate email:
You have to show a potential client which is the value you deliver and how are you going to do it. You need to put in front something that clients value, not what you consider they judge as valuable.
Content Marketing Funnel Stage 2: MOFU
The question is: which problem fixes my product?
As a general idea, what you sell is not the product/service itself, but its benefits, and the improvements that it can bring into your client’s life.
Thus, it is compulsory to clearly depict the problems and issues that your product solves for your client and how it will impact his life after such problems are eliminated. And create the corresponding content to provide answers.
Consequently, you have to do your homework and search in detail which are the pain points, desires, and needs of your prospects, how they see your product, which issues appear while using it, which are their exact requirements, which are the messages that resonate better with your target audience.
Ask your clients, listen to them, and also check on forums or question-and-answer sites like Quora to get some answers. A keen understanding of your prospects’ needs and behavioral targeting will support you in your endeavors.
Remember: you encourage action to help your prospects solve their problems and in exchange, you endorse your brand awareness.
Using the exact words that clients use to describe their situation proved to be the most reliable option, as it helps improve conversions.
Speak to your audience in their language with their own words about your offer, why is it valuable, how is it different from your competition, and why is it a better alternative. Identify and answer all objections and fears your buyer persona might have even before their questions pop up.
To generate a high-converting funnel, you need to educate your audience concerning the benefits of your offer.
Craft informative articles on your blog, and make video demonstrations, tutorials, or testimonials to emphasize the value you offer. Open up the conversation, show your potential clients you are always open to discussing and listening to their problems and that you are easy to reach, that you actually care. Ask for feedback. Gain their trust.
Most often a clear sign of interest is subscribing to your email list. If a visitor of your site gives you his email, in exchange for a freebie, for example, this is clear proof of interest.
Sparkling interest is crucial for migration to the next level of the conversion funnel.
The question is: What’s the leading need/desire that will make my prospect decide?
This stage relates to presenting prospects with your offer in a persuasive manner to make them decide if they buy or not.
The decision process is a function of your prospects’ purposes and desires. Even if their problems and struggles are the ones that are requiring a solution, their emotional needs are the real trigger of the decision.
Your message, to be effective should appeal to these deep emotional needs, the benefits of your offer should deliver at this level. Something like “we are the best in the world” or “we save you money” is not relevant enough.
You have to dig deeper to find meaningful answers. A way to discover this is to ask why until there are no questions left.
Practically this is a sales process. There are infinite options to arrive at this stage. Some ways are:
* Registering for a webinar
* A long-form sales page displaying the benefits of your offer, touching emotional needs, showing social trust, and testimonials
* Scheduling a free consultation where you speak about your offer
* An email series to warm the lead-up for the sale
Your Prospects Need to Take Action
Question is: why is my prospect still hesitating? Are there still unsolved concerns?
This is the purchasing stage. Prospects arriving at this stage will split into two categories:
· Those that are ready to buy, act and become customers
· Those that are not ready to buy, and you need to nurture them further
Not all prospects who arrived at this stage will buy, most of them will not, and that’s the reality. They will still have hesitations, for various reasons ranging from not trusting you to not being really convinced they need your product. Whether you like it or not, your visitors will have hesitations about buying from you.
It will be your task to minimize these hesitations by displaying the expected information in the right phase of the funnel. And how do you find that? What to say in which stage? Well, customer research is here to help you discover what to say, when, and also what makes your visitors stop and not act.
After passing through the above-mentioned sales funnel stages, from informing clients about your business, to rising their interest to having them engage in some form with your brand, it’s the moment to ask for the sale.
Now, your prospects should be prepared to trust you and your business. Use powerful attention-grabbing calls to action in emails, ads, and sales pages. Offer incentives to urge the need of buying, like limited discounts (20% discount if your buy in the next 15 minutes) or free bonuses.
The client bought it, end of story! Right?!
Wrong!! You should continue to engage your clients and transform them into evangelists of your offer.
And for those that finally didn’t buy, you have to continue your efforts by putting in place a marketing sequence. Send them a series of emails offering valuable information and propose another item from your sales funnels. Don’t waste such an opportunity!
The sales conversion funnels are in a continuous modifying cycle as clients modify their expectations and you should adapt your funnel to the new changing conditions. Improving user experience should be a top priority for you.
What will make your copy more compelling?
· Avoid ambiguity be clear and concise, people react better when they face known and calculated risks.
· Clear and common language is better than complex, people trust what they can understand quickly.
· Short and sweet, stay focused on the object.
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Further Explanation for Your Content Marketing Funnel: Test It
After putting in place a coherent content funnel strategy, creating and settling in your funnel, you should always be looking for ways to improve it. And testing is the best method to do that. Be aware that you should focus on each stage of the sales funnel, not just on the awareness one. The final buying stage is more than important also.
Since you may have multiple pages that need testing, you need to filter and prioritize them. Start with the best performing and improve them if possible. Take a look at the implementation necessities: Are they easy to do or challenging from a technical point of view and require lots of time? Which is the conversion value brought by these modifications? How likely is it to have more prospects that convert?
Provided that you choose which pages are to be tested, they should go live and the results to be tracked.
Firstly, you have to set some realistic conversion goals and pick a tracking system, like Google Analytics. Analytics tracks the users on your site and provides a series of information like sources of visitors, how long they spend on your site, which country are they from, and which device and browser they use to connect.
Tools like Google Analytics support you in testing, refining, and optimizing your funnel.
Here you have it – a detailed content marketing funnel explanation and a game plan to convert your next funnel into a journey that inspires your customers and multiplies your sales.
Frequent Asked Questions
What is full-funnel content strategy?
A full-funnel content strategy is a strategy that takes into consideration also the stages of the buyer journey and plans adequate content for each step of the content funnel (top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel).
What are the four stages of marketing funnel?
The four stages of the marketing funnel are awareness, interest, decision, and action.
What is an example of a marketing funnel?
An example of a marketing funnel could be the series of steps that a potential client takes when he finds out about a brand via organic search, goes to the brand’s website, reads some articles and case studies, subscribes to the newsletter, and after a while buys the products/services that the brand provides.
Ranking the highest possible in search engine results is a fierce battle. An interminable ever-changing list of on-page SEO steps and off-page SEO factors impact these results.
The main purpose of on-page SEO techniques is to naturally optimize a piece of content for search engines, in such a manner that it is easily found and listed in front of targeted visitors.
Here is a list of on-page SEO techniques that everyone should use to boost rankings:
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Most experts consider that the title of the post is the most important on-page SEO factor. Their argument is that if the title is not attractive and engaging enough to click through, or not optimized, the content will never appear in front of the user.
Others, like MOZ, consider the title tag as the second most important on-page SEO factor after content.
For best performances, your titles should follow the subsequent rules:
– Optimal length under 60 characters for proper display on the search results
– Use your keyword in the title once, out of the question to stuff a title just with keywords
– Keyword should be among the first words of the title, the first if possible.
Whenever possible include modifiers in the title. Words such as 2023, “guide”, “best” help improve rankings for long tail keywords.
In my view, the title of your post is paramount in the hierarchy of on-page SEO steps. The headline will make or break the success of your post.
2. On page SEO Step 2: Assign H1 Tag to the Title of the Article
The H1 tag is very important for SEO, so verify if your CMS properly added it to your title.
H1 tag should be used only once on a page and include the target keyword.
3. High Quality 1000+ Words Content
There is a huge debate about what that high-quality content means. As a consequence there is a myriad of indirect methods that in a certain way can measure the quality of the content: the number of visitors, repeat visitors, time on site, shares, comments, etc.
Useless to say that unique content is the norm. Avoid publishing duplicate content, for example for a guest post, because you have real chances of getting penalized by search engines.
High-quality content is easy to digest and attractive as designed. Organize the content in short paragraphs, emphasize keywords with a bold format, and use bullets to break blocks of text.
Nowadays the trend is to write long-form content as it was established that it ranks higher and is perceived as providing more value. Writing 2000+ words or even 3000+ words posts becomes the standard.
4. On-Page SEO Step 4: Enrich your content with visuals
Besides high-quality content, formatting that content is of out-most importance. Insert charts, videos, and entertaining images to retain attention, increase time spent on that piece of content and shrink the bounce rate.
Visuals improve the quality of content, making it more informative and attractive, thus boosting user interaction. Search engines highly appreciate that.
5. On-Page SEO Steps: Absolutely Include Images Optimization
Image name and image Alt Text should include target keywords. At least one of the images should include the keyword you run for. Again, this is a detail that helps search engines determine the subject of your post and it’s an on-page SEO technique that you should not ignore.
6. Insert Target Keyword within the First 100 Words
The first 100 words of your article should include the target keyword to help search engines identify the subject of your content.
Most probably this comes naturally, but just in case don’t skip it.
Concerning the keyword density in your post, there is no magic formula, but don’t overuse them, it’s subject to downgrading in search results. Use one keyword in the beginning and within the post where it makes sense, including semantic variations.
Here is what Matt Cutts from Google says relative to keywords density:
7. On-Page SEO Steps: Exploit the Power of Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords are related words or synonyms used by search engines to score the relevance of a page. Use a couple of them within your post.
8. Assign H2 Tags to Subheadings
Subheadings should also have tags, H2, H3, H4. The target keyword is to be inserted in at least one subheading.
Like in the example below:
9. Updated Content
Search engines are more interested in fresh content. As such updating content, especially for time-sensitive content is decisive.
Google, for example, displays the date of the last update.
The dimensions of the modifications made to a certain post are important too, removing irrelevant parts, and adding more content surpass just changing a few words. Update your post frequently and boost your rankings.
10. Insert External Links in Your Content
This seems to be a common mistake in not using outbound links. But it is a simple, easy SEO strategy to increase traffic. Its major advantage is that improves the quality of your content and helps search engines establish the topic of the respective page. External Links do not miss any on-page SEO checklist 2023.
It’s important to pay attention to the sites you link to and aim for those with high authority. Renowned sites like Forbes.com or Entrepreneur.com, or major actors in your niche, like HubSpot.com for Inbound Marketing, are more than reliable and trustful, as they provide quality content that your readers will highly appreciate.
And even more, your site will gain credibility.
11. Insert Internal Links in Your Content
If external links are very important, inbound links are also important. Interlinking is a strategy to keep the reader more time on your site while passing from one page to another. Inbound links prove that you are also offering supplementary information besides your page content.
Drop 2-4 links among your posts. And use as anchor text the corresponding keywords. Place them just since and when they are necessary and pertinent.
12. Insert Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing is not actually a ranking factor but has an indirect role. Social media buttons help expand the audience that arrives on your site.
13. On-Page SEO steps: URLs Should Be SEO Friendly
It is well known that the first 3-5 words that appear in a URL bear higher importance.
Consequently, the permalinks should be short, relevant, and include the target keyword.
Loading speed is an SEO ranking factor and a compulsory on-page SEO technique. User experience is highly impacted by the site’s loading speed. Statistics say that users would not come back to a site that loads in more than 4 seconds.
A marketing bundle or product bundling simply refers to combining products that sell separately into one bundle and selling it at a special price, while allowing the buyer the option of choosing the products individually or together as a bundle. You have probably purchased a bundle before; an excellent example is when your local fast food outlet offers you a “mega meal deal”, where you’re offered a burger, fries, and a coke for a fairly cheaper price as compared to when you purchase these items separately.
Types of Marketing Bundles
Even though as described above, the buyer gets an option of purchasing the product as a bundle or as an item; in the markets, there are still some products that do not offer this option. This breaks it down to two more kinds of bundling.
a. Pure Bundling
Adobe Photoshop is an excellent example. You only have the option of buying the entire marketing tools bundle and not just one tool. Microsoft Office Suit is another similar example; you can’t buy Word and leave out Spreadsheets. Simply put, there’s no option of purchasing a single item.
b. Mixed Bundling
This is the more successful type of bundling; it gives the buyer the option of purchasing an individual item or the entire bundle.
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What Makes a Good Marketing Bundle? – Main Qualities
In order to convince the customer that the bundle is indeed worth the effort, it should offer:
i. Monetary value – The buyer must see the value for his money, and the benefit of buying the bundle rather than single items.
ii. Functional – It must offer value to the customer as a combined set as opposed to individual items. It must meet a common need as a bundle.
So, What Makes Product Bundling a Brilliant Strategy?
Bundling always comes out as a win-win scenario for both the seller and the buyer, when done right, here are some benefits:
For the Seller:
i. It’s a Chance to Up-Sell
As a seller, you get to prompt the buyer to consider purchasing more products; this is especially interesting when you’re offering complementary products.
ii. Boost Your Average Order Value
This is a KPI that shows the average total of the orders placed over a specified period of time. When a buyer opts for the bundle instead of the stand-alone product, their overall order value goes up, meaning higher revenues for you.
Therefore when you’re able to convince the buyer to purchase more than one product, you increase your average order value.
iii. Inventory Management
This works in two ways, first, you can leverage bundling to raise the profile of a less popular or new product, this offers you a chance to have the product tested and you’re able to get feedback. Secondly, this would give you a great opportunity to clear slow-moving or old stock.
For the Buyer:
i. What a Bargain!
Buyers always like when they feel like they’re getting a good deal and saving money. Like a reward of some sort, and when this happens, they tend to associate your store with good deals. So, they become regular happy shoppers.
ii. Convenient!
What’s more frustrating than having to go through an entire aisle or list of complimentary products in order to choose the ones that make a perfect combo? This is how the majority of customers feel, but when you save them time by putting together such complimentary products or services, the versatility that comes with an easy purchase is not only convenient, but it feels good too.
iii. Time-Saving
This really is a no-brainer.
So, having understood the benefits and qualities of a good marketing resources bundle, how then can you go about making one that works?
Just like any other marketing strategy, you can employ, having a clear understanding of your customers is important. Before building your marketing bundle, get up-to-date data about their preferences on different demographics. This includes:
· The kind of advice or information that would be useful to your customers as to what to buy
· The kind of deals they’re looking for
· The amount of money that they would be willing to spend
· What products do they purchase simultaneously
· Which products would they be willing to spend a little more money for
· What products would give them value for money when included in the marketing bundle
For the market, find out the:
· Competing bundle offers and their pricing
· The estimated demand plus the marginal cost
· The supply-chain structure
· Possible risks.
With this data coupled with your own goals, you can make the offer as beneficial for both the buyer and the seller as possible.
b. Know How to Offer the Discounts
Make the benefit of this marketing bundle as obvious as possible to the buyer, this can be done by justifying the need to buy the bundle instead of the individual items. Remember the buyer may not necessarily require all the items in the bundle, but your discount may encourage them to pick the bundle anyway, this goes alongside the complimenting products, they really must be a great combo.
If this is not done carefully, you may risk not being able to sell anything.
c. Psychological Aspect in Pricing
Bundling your slow-moving or less popular products with the best-sellers is a smart strategy for both the seller and the buyer. The trick is in ensuring that the offer is irresistible and that it satisfies the customer’s needs. And as they say, a satisfied shopper is a happy shopper, they will spread the word.
Take Away
For a successful marketing bundle campaign, the seller must have up-to-date data on their potential customers’ needs as well as market dynamics. There are several types of bundling, pure and mixed bundling. Research has shown that mixed bundling performs better.
Bundling saves buyers time and offers them convenience while boosting the seller’s sales. So, go ahead and try bundling up, as a seller or buyer.
There’s no secret that the power of social media is incredible. Everyone knows about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram. However, when it comes to LinkedIn, we are talking about a special case. This social and professional network is a powerhouse, ready to unleash its benefits to your business’s advantage.
LinkedIn is a great tool to help you strengthen your presence on the market and expand your network. There are various LinkedIn best practices you can use to increase your business development. Some of them can be implemented right away while others will take a bit of time to show their efficiency.
The way you build your personal brand tells a lot about yourself.
The events of 2020 have seen many people out of work. But as the world economies struggle to get back to normalcy, LinkedIn being the existing top platform for professional connections continues to see a remarkable increase, especially among job seekers. And other professionals trying to channel the next career move. LinkedIn has put more weight and relevance on its digital training tools to help job seekers and other professionals better align themselves with emerging trends and opportunities.
So, with all things going virtual, what are LinkedIn’s best practices to help you connect better?
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Have you ever wondered why is LinkedIn so powerful for B2B businesses? First, according to the latest estimations, there are approximately almost a billion people using this network. Therefore, it is easy to imagine that there are over 830 million people with whom you can connect and share your ideas. Part of them is your future clients and partners. Plus, over 55 million companies have Linkedin profiles.
It is worth mentioning that 61 million LinkedIn users are considered to be senior-level influencers and over 40 million LinkedIn users are in key decision-making positions.
Moreover, LinkedIn is appreciated as a high-quality source of content. This makes users become very engaged when using it and count on it in their business decisions. Even though it is a valuable resource for any type of business, this doesn’t mean that success is guaranteed.
If you really want to have a competitive advantage when using LinkedIn, you need a forthright strategy. Since it is a marketing channel that can change the face of your business, it should be granted special attention.
Before we dig more in-depth, here is a short list of LinkedIn best practices for business that you can implement today:
· Develop SMART goals for your LinkedIn marketing strategy. Just like in any marketing strategy, your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
· Reach the right target audience. LinkedIn offers you various demographic data which can help you develop specific audience segmentation. Therefore, it will become very easy for you to personalize your messages and grow your audience.
· Create the right messages. Your messages should give answers to your client’s questions and provide solutions to their problems.
Now that you got yourself familiar with what LinkedIn means and how it can help you, let’s dive into more details. Use the strategies below and get ready to revamp your business.
LinkedIn Best Practices 1: Strengthen Your LinkedIn Profile
The first thing your clients and business partners see when they want to know more about you on LinkedIn is your profile. It is your business card and it should show you in the best light possible.
So, you need to pay close attention to the way you present your business, your story, and your services. Your LinkedIn profile logo and background photo are extremely important for the first impression. LinkedIn best practices for profiles encourage you to use recent photos, not exaggerate with powerful colors and use symbols that represent you. As long as you don’t complicate things too much, there’s nothing that could go wrong.
Other useful tips when it comes to your company’s profile are the following:
· Your LinkedIn company page should be always up-to-date;
· Your summary section should talk about your fascinating story. People like to read about others. They feel immediately when you are telling the truth, or you are just writing nice words. So, be real and speak from your own experience;
· Use your company logo and keywords to help clients identify your LinkedIn company page faster;
· Optimize your profile for search on LinkedIn by using your main keywords;
· Highlight your most important products and services and rearrange sections to align with your strategy.If you really want to stand out, try a high-quality video or explainer video to present your products/services.
· Ask your clients to share their experience with your products and services by writing reviews and testimonials. This is how you show your future clients that you are reliable, and your products are exactly how you present them to be;
· Attach a ProFinder Badge to your LinkedIn profile if you are a solopreneur or just starting up.
LinkedIn Best Practices 2: Use LinkedIn’s Educational Nature
Another remarkable thing about LinkedIn is that it makes it very easy for its users to publish articles. However, if you think that you will write some promotional content that will sell your products immediately, you are totally wrong. The people who are using LinkedIn are not interested in just another promotional post that encourages them to spend their money on a specific product.
LinkedIn users are rather more interested in how your products will help them solve their problems. They have several questions for which they hope to find the right answers by reading your articles. So, you should focus on educating your customers and giving them practical solutions to their problems. This is how you build your brand’s credibility and show that you are an expert in your field.
Best Practice 3: Conceive LinkedIn Showcase Pages That Target a Certain Buyer Persona
You have the possibility to create niche pages related to your main Company Page via LinkedIn Showcase Pages, highlighting specific products or a targeting specific audience. This helps you personalize user experience and communicate more effectively, as users have the possibility to follow just a showcase page, not the main company page or other showcase pages that your company might have installed.
Best Practice 4: Optimize Your LinkedIn Page for Search
Optimizing your LinkedIn Company page enables you to target your audience better and thereby gain better visibility among relevant audiences. You can optimize your LinkedIn page by using keywords though the whole profile and mainly through the company description.
Keywords – You can incorporate specific keywords and phrases that your target audience is likely to use when searching for your product or services. Ensure to insert them in your “About” overview. This will better describe what your business is all about.
Link it to your page – another way to optimize is to link your LinkedIn page to your website. Clean up all your team member profiles often to ensure they’re always up to date.
Post relevant content – this cannot be emphasized enough. When you share relevant content using all the relevant keywords and key phrases, you boost your chances for your LinkedIn page to appear on search results.
There have been many studies revealing that humans react better to visual context. We are visual creatures which make us understand visuals a lot faster than any text. Thus, if we apply these findings to the internet world, it is already a fact that visuals get more views than content. So, this is one point you should focus on in your LinkedIn strategy.
One of the LinkedIn best practices in 2023 which will continue to be successful in the following years too, is using infographics and charts in your articles. Your readers will find it easier to understand the information and remember it when they need it in the future. So, if you already applied this strategy last year, you should continue using as many visuals as possible in your content.
LinkedIn Best Practices 6: List Your Relevant Skills/Business Offer
This sets you up for quick wins, there are many life skills/benefits, scroll down and identify the ones most relevant to you. This is the best way to validate your description under your Headline Summary.
It also gives an extra nudge to others to endorse you since you come out as a professional and an expert. Therefore keep relevance by listing only your most relevant skills, and this is one of the continuous LinkedIn profile best practices that you have to refresh every now and then.
LinkedIn Best Practices 7: Tell Your Story Using Videos
Keeping your audience engaged and enticing her curiosity concerning your products is a tough job. Taking into consideration the soaring popularity of videos, you can use them to convince your prospects to return. Furthermore, it’s easier day passing for your clients to be able to watch videos from their desktop or mobile devices, no matter their location across the globe.
Here are some ideas you can use to create new videos:
· Create a demo on how to use your products;
· Interview an influencer in your industry/niche who is open to sharing his/her opinion on your products or services;
· Interview customers and publish their video testimonials;
· Create a video story of your brand.
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LinkedIn Best Practices 8: Leverage on LinkedIn Live
As statistics reveal, video performed so well that LinkedIn has recently rolled out LinkedIn live. It has 24 times more engagement than regularly pre-recorded videos. The main difference between LinkedIn live and other social media live events is that the audiences on this platform are part of a professional network. Thus, their main goal is to network further, learn and discover more in their related fields.
The LinkedIn best practices for live include:
Be prepped – ensure you’re well-versed on your subject matter to be able to give a sufficient response. Also, prepare well for the whole show ensuring quality sound, light, and stable connectivity.
Be authentic – be as genuine and real as you possibly can. Offer your audiences relatable and fresh content.
Consistent – Once you pick this new format, ensure to be consistent. Pick an ideal time when most of your audiences are online and let them know of a regular specific time that you will be going live. Whether you choose to do it weekly or monthly, let them know when to expect new content.
Be interactive – engage your audience as if you were all in a real room. Moderate the whole session in a lively and engaging manner and respond to them as much as you can.
When these LinkedIn best practices are followed well, you can utilize this format as a unique and interactive way to directly show your services and products in a better way.
LinkedIn Best Practices 9: Be Consistent
No one sustains that LinkedIn is going to bring incredible results overnight. It takes a lot of consistency and hard work to show your clients that you are a reliable business owner who puts them on top of his priority list.Therefore, you should pay attention to keeping your content fresh.
The publishing frequency is also important. So, if you post a new article at least once per week, then you are on the right track. In addition, try to always be the first who announces your loyal customers when something new appears in your niche. You will see that all these efforts will pay off in the end.
LinkedIn Best Practices 10: Share Thought Leadership Content
You can consider it authority marketing or thought leadership, but this is one of the most important LinkedIn best practices for business in 2023. It’s the kind of content that you need to create in order to build credibility, impress hiring managers, or reinforce your brand.
It’s about leveraging your best knowledge and expertise and offering solutions and answers even to questions your audience is yet to ask. Here is a quick guide on how to approach thought leadership content:
Product – You know your products best; you can therefore show this product expertise in a context that offers help and solutions to your audiences’ problems.
Industry – Share expert knowledge about your organization or industry, and give your connoisseur a take on new trends and technologies making news.
Organizational – Create content about your organizational stand or approach on various business aspects. Talk about employees and how to treat them, talk about your shareholders or other stakeholders in your business.
LinkedIn encourages users to use thought leadership content on their LinkedIn company page because it’s a powerful way to grow your audience.
LinkedIn Best Practices 11: Know The Best Time to Post
Unlike the rest of the social media platforms, LinkedIn does not have a specified time that can be considered the best time. With this said, there are certain times of the week that are definitely better than others.
Posting your content between Tuesday and Thursday is considered ideal. The ideal hours in these 3 preferred days fall between 8:00 am to 2:00 pm in your time zone. While the less recommended time to post would be on weekends or outside working hours. This is typically 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
To narrow it down a little further, depending on your business, the best time to post for B2C businesses is between 11 am to 2 pm. For B2Bs and most tech and software businesses should be mostly between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., obviously. For education and health care, the best times are between 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
But all the above suggested times are quite general, to really get that perfect time for your LinkedIn profile, use your personal data found in LinkedIn analytics. They will give you more detailed insights about your profile and how to best optimize it for excellent results.
Best Practice 12: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Employees
Your employees can become your strongest partners in promoting your business. Who else can better promote your products than your employees who know all details about them? LinkedIn best practices encourage entrepreneurs to listen to their colleagues’ ideas and publish them. Sharing your LinkedIn strategy with your employees will help you grow your business presence in your industry.
This is a good approach if you want to show your employees that you care about what they think, and you want to make them part of your business. They will become more loyal to the brand and be more open to contributing to your business’ growth.
So, adopt a smart strategy and accomplish a double goal: grow your employees’ productivity by listening to their ideas and strengthen your presence on the market.
Best Practice 13: Use LinkedIn Analytics to Measure Results
Even though you think you are doing things right, this doesn’t mean that you are really successful. You need clear data to show you how many people viewed your LinkedIn page, which were your most popular LinkedIn posts, etc. LinkedIn metrics will tell you everything you need to know when you analyze your LinkedIn marketing efforts, like:
· Your visitor’s demographics. You will know everything about the people who visit your LinkedIn page: where they live, which are their jobs, how old are they, etc.
· The number of page views during a specific period.
· How many unique visitors you had during the analyzed period?
· Identify what your competitors are doing and what their metrics look like.
· Engagement statistics.
· The number of new followers acquired.
If you belong to the LinkedIn Business Solutions category of clients you benefit from Content Marketing Score and Trending Content resources. The Content Marketing Score provides you with insights related to user engagement on your sponsored LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn pages, Linkedin groups, or Influencer posts if the case. And also showcase recommendation to implement in order to improve your numbers and the results of your LinkedIn content.
LinkedIn Best Practices 14: Study Other LinkedIn Company Pages
LinkedIn has a tool called Companies to Track. And no, this isn’t about snooping. This useful tool found at the bottom of the followers’ tab is great for helping you with your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
It shows you other businesses that are similar to yours and metrics such as their social engagement, number of followers, and follower growth. You can use this information as a yardstick for the performance of your LinkedIn company page. It can help you tell whether your company page growth is steady compared to other similar LinkedIn company pages with a similar average number of followers or if it needs tweaking.
You can use it to measure how well your content drives social engagement and the type of content that performs the best.
LinkedIn Best Practices 15: LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Updates
In case your budget allows it and you want faster results, then you can use LinkedIn ads to amplify the power of your content. LinkedIn offers you a bunch of features allowing you to target and refine the target audience you want to communicate your message to. For instance, you can target specific job titles or industries. Therefore, your messages reach exactly the type of people you need in order to grow your business.
You can find out in the video below more details why LinkedIn is a prominent channel for B2B advertising:
Best Practice 16: Create Your Own Group
Creating a group can be a smart decision only if you have a strong number of followers who will form a solid foundation. People look for evidence before they join a group. Therefore, you need to count on your connections who can convince new followers to become active in your group.
And of course, you need to be aware of your competition. There are many groups on LinkedIn, in fact too many, especially promotional ones. This means that you have a mighty competition. If you want your group to be successful you need to bring a new and interesting idea to the table. Moreover, apart from promoting your products, you need to create discussion topics and encourage people to share their ideas.
NowLinkedIn Groups integrate into the main site and mobile apps, they are more user-friendly, more engaging, and integral part of the prime LinkedIn experience. Groups benefit from an admin functionality and have the capabilities of being managed via Android or iOS apps.
So, if you are planning to have a group on LinkedIn this is a great moment to start.
Best Practice 17: Nurture Your Connections
If persons from your connections list take some minutes to say something positive about your business, then you should show them how much you appreciate it. Always leave a comment when you receive feedback from one of your connections. If the person who commented is not on your connections list, then this is a fantastic opportunity to connect with them. You can also stand out by replying to the people who send you a connection invite. People are so busy with their activities that they don’t pay so much attention to the power of these small actions.
There is no doubt that LinkedIn is a powerful tool that can boost your business. These best practices will help you use your talent to its fullest potential and show your clients that you have something to say in your niche.
If you use this platform for your personal profile, you can also apply the tactics listed above. LinkedIn is great when you want to stay updated with the latest trends in your industry.
Conclusion
Implementing a LinkedIn strategy is definitely not as difficult as it might seem at a first glance. It is a powerful tool for those who want to leverage their business. These practices show you that this is an achievable goal. The above-mentioned LinkedIn best practices for business in 2020 will help you build a stronger profile and reach more customers than ever before.
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