“I tried what you told me and it is not working. What should I do?”
At one point or another, every brand addresses this question to their digital, creative, social media, or SEO agencies. They ask if it worked (like you said) for some other brand, why isn’t the same happening to them?
The simple truth is that digital marketing strategies that worked for one brand might not work for another. In other words, your brand will not experience success simply by imitating a set of digital marketing strategies.
It’s one major reason why some of the world’s leading agencies and brands have started exploring content marketing seriously. Think about the times you have mentioned to someone how you are different from your competitors, and you will have your answer.
Try to understand this. Your…
- Business is distinct
- Target audiences are unique
- Products/services are different
- Expectations are diverse
- Costs are variable
If the same differs, why should you as a brand keep pursuing the same old digital marketing strategies, just like everyone else?
In this article, we are going to discuss Content Marketing and why it is the absolute go-to option for some of the world’s best brands and agencies.
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Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Content Marketing: Meaning and Definition
Content Marketing is a digital marketing strategy that leverages creating content, which is informative, educative, engaging, and relevant. It consists of creating content in the form of text, images, videos, infographics, and other forms to communicate with target audiences.
A content marketing strategy starts with a content and SEO audit of your website. If you are looking to generate a free website SEO audit report, click on the link.
Think like this. As compared to digital marketing strategies like PPCs that focus on product pushing, content marketing helps in answering important queries and doubts of your target audiences. According to experts, there are four major reasons why content marketing is paramount for marketing efforts today:
- It helps in building the brand and credibility of the business. Consumers start identifying the brand from a resource standpoint.
- Content marketing strategies help present the brand in its industry. By covering all probable pressure and pain points of the consumers, the brand position itself as an expert.
- From a revenues and sales perspective, content marketing helps drive recurring sales and builds a steady stream of recurring customers.
- It is a long-term process that helps the brand building and establishes its digital assets. Every effort that you put into content marketing stays with you.
In a world where businesses are trying to ‘hard sell’ all the time, content marketing presents a more humane and ethical approach to marketing and brand building.
Top Content Marketing Strategies You Need to Try in 2022
In this section, are listed approaches to help brands, agencies, and business owners understand which content marketing strategies they should try in 2022:
Blog/Resource Section Development
Inbound Marketing is here to stay. If you are a business looking to drive meaningful traffic to your website, you need to invest in your blog. A brand’s blog needs to emerge as an extensive resource on all areas and issues in its industry niches.
Try to create a mix of content pieces. You can try informative guides, listicles, steps, and FAQs that will be helpful to your target audiences.
When potential customers discover your brand through your brand’s resources, they will start trusting you more. This credibility will ultimately help with generating sales.
Guest Posting or Blogging on Authority Sites
Take any industry; you will find a list of authority sites that customers in the respective niche trust. You just need to leverage the already-established trust and credibility of these platforms.
Getting published by these authority sites might be difficult, but there is one way you can gain an entry point. No site wants to turn down valuable and quality content.
If you can negotiate a topic that the site owner feels would be great for their audiences, you will be able to get a guest post. Use it wisely and insert your brand’s links. This will drive traffic to your website.
Pursue Q&A Platforms Aggressively and Meticulously
The past few years have seen audiences turn to platforms like Quora, Reddit, and others in the hope of getting unbiased opinions.
If you can establish your presence by offering meaningful information, you will start getting recognized as an asset on these platforms. The more views and comments your posts fetch, the better it is for your reach and exposure.
If interested audiences are convinced of the solution you are offering, they will not hesitate in clicking on the links that redirect to your website (focus on taking them to the blog sections).
User-Generated Content Should Be a Top Priority
What a brand says about itself matters, but not as much as what its customers and users say about it. People are more likely to trust your businesses’ consumers.
Therefore you need to make this a focal point of your content marketing efforts. Create a stellar and detailed customer testimonial section on your website.
Fill your social media pages with customer videos highlighting the positive aspects of your brand’s products and services. Potential customers will feel encouraged to try your brand based on what existing users are saying.
Sustain Social Causes on Online Platforms
There is no doubt that individuals have strong beliefs and opinions. This is specifically true of Millennials and Gen Z who seem to be far more aware of their existing social, political, cultural, and economic realities.
By making your brand an active advocate around a social cause, you will automatically strike an identification with consumers who feel the same way as your business.
People want to buy from a brand that understands them or at least they think so. Align with a social cause and make it part of your content marketing efforts. It will help in bringing positive results to the business.
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Use Tools and Software to Strengthen Your Efforts
Using technology in content marketing is not as mainstream as it should have been. Meaning it is an area that can be leveraged and focussed upon for increased success.
Optimize your content for voice. You have seen how home assistants and connected car technologies are becoming a part of our lives. When creating content, focus on voice search best practices and ensure that you are engaging with the latest technologies.
If you start now, you may of the chance of enjoying a first-mover’s advantage. By the time your competition catches up, you will be far ahead.
Present a Humane Image of Your Brand in Front of Your Audience
If you have been reading the news, you might have heard about unrest in some top companies like Facebook, Amazon, or Google.
These are behemoths who are getting called out because of the unfair treatment applied to some of their employees. Try to use content marketing to showcase your team members and employees.
Make them your brand ambassadors and let them speak on behalf of your brand. This will help establish an instant connection with the audience. Plus, it will make your employees feel wanted and special in the business organization.
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Keep Updating and Repurposing Your Old Content
As a business, you know how your industry is changing better than anyone else. Let’s say, for example, you have a resource article on your blog whose title is: ‘The Top 10 Digital Marketing Strategies to Pursue in 2020’.
With so many newer strategies emerging, why not update the article and make it ‘The Top 15 Digital Marketing Strategies to Pursue in 2022’?
The supplementary added information shows that you are up to date with the latest developments. In terms of search engines, this will be voted positively and improve your organic search traffic.
Focus on Personalizing Content for Your Target Audiences
Any form of content that goes out from the brand side should be part of your content marketing efforts.
If you are a brand that employs email marketing strategies, you need to start using names and personalized email copy content. Make the users feel that you are talking to them directly face to face. Another way this can be achieved is through using data analytics.
Ecommerce platforms can harvest data and present personalized interfaces to the users. This will go a long way in improving the user experience.
Make Content Marketing a Part of Your Post-Sales and Support Teams
Brands often tend to forget about their customers once a sale is made. This sours relationships and discourages existing customers from making new purchases.
Your content marketing has to be tailored in such a way as to help customers get detailed information on products even after the sale is completed. The key is to provide them with content that can show how to get the best experiences from the product or service they have purchased.
It also speaks wonders about your company proving that you care about your customers after the sale. And it opens the way for repetitive sales.
The Final Takeaway
Customers do not crave products and services anymore. What they look for are positive experiences. Brands need to move beyond just products, sales, and revenues. And in turn, start focussing on the kind of interaction they are having with their potential and existing customers.
Content Marketing can help you achieve this successfully. By following the above-mentioned strategies for your brand, you will be able to position your brand as a thought leader in your industry niche. But content marketing requires a lot of planning and meticulous execution, it is an ongoing effort. However, there is no question, it will guarantee success in the long run.
