Find a way to capture your target audience.
Next, research your audience and find out what they like and what keeps them entertained. If you have the know-how and the means, set up consumer personas to allow you to get even more precise in addressing pain points and interests for each type of person in your broader target.
Not only will you have to research your audience, but you’ll have to research the market. Research is not a one time action, you need to exercise it continually to get the most raw and fresh data from the market. You can use the data from your site, social media and more to get a realistic picture of what your audience, industry and the opportunities available for you to venture into.
Consistently trying new tactics and fresh methods based on the data you gather about your audience will help you maintain a steady stream of new connections. The key to success is to use what you know, build on what you learn, and always be on the lookout for ways to expand.
Write compelling content that your target audience will love.
Establish yourself as a thought leader in your field.Great content marketing will help establish your brand as a trustworthy expert in your industry. You can start by offering a free resource with all the basic information, and then lead to paid content as well.
Seek Opportunities to be OriginalTo capture your audience’s attention there needs to be something about your content that stands out. Try approaching your topic from a different angle, sharing a refreshing (or even controversial) opinion, or adding an original image or video. It takes a little more imagination, for sure, but the rewards will be worth it.
Adam, great ideas. Creating is the first step. Your point 10 is spot on. If we lived in the Field of Dreams, “create and they will come.” The reality is if content is advertising, we need to manage the distribution to retain existing and attract new audiences. Study what ‘clicks’ with your audience and re-invest your learning back into improving your content. Thoughts?
Use social media to reach your target audience.
Your best bet is social media because results are extremely fast and immediate but never underestimate the power of email and RSS. This is a task that cannot be done manually that’s why you need to use the right tools to help you reach your target audience.
To do this, look at your existing routes to market, and analyze the weaker areas. Can you utilize social media, the press, or your existing visitors? Can you leverage industry authorities to share your content through their own networks? Could you approach the authors of your data and encourage them to promote it?
You can also create ads through Google Ads and showcase them to your target audience across the internet. Or you can remarket your products and services to people who have shown interest in them previously. This too can be achieved through targeted advertising.
Offer valuable content, such as e-books and courses, that can help your target audience grow.
This is where you can be more specific. Explain exactly how your content will help the company meet its goals. If your goal is to gain new customers for a training course, for instance, your objectives may be to increase traffic coming to your website from content related to that training by 50% and to improve that traffic’s conversion rate by 20%.
Provide the reason to your customers why they should choose you and what difference you are making for them. Make comparisons and show that you are providing the best product and services. You can generate content that increases the interest of prospects (or leads) towards your company’s products and services.
Build brand loyalty. This is a no-brainer. With a better-equipped content marketing strategy, you can create a consistent message, a uniform brand voice for your customers. This adds up to improved brand awareness and high levels of brand loyalty in the long run.
Test different marketing strategies to find the one that works best for you.
Hey, nice article about “content marketing Strategies”. I will definitely follow this for my company to give the best possible services to my customers. Keep on adding this type of valuable content again and again. Hope to read more from you. Thank you!
Every business is unique. What works for one website might not necessarily work for another, so what’s important is that you find the blend that works for you. Focus on creating high-quality content, then test these strategies to see what works for your audience.
Most marketing budgets today don’t allow businesses to pursue every distribution channel at once. You need to carefully select channels that are most likely to bring strong returns from your investment. So look for opportunities to diversify your strategy by first researching your audience. Identify niche sub-channels where you’re able to cut through the marketing noise, such as on YouTube, social media groups, etc. Then you can diversify your strategy knowing the payoff will be worth the investment.
Monitor your progress constantly and make necessary changes as needed.
Make checking Google Analytics (or another analytics program) part of your routine, and track the metrics that indicate overall performance. If things are going well, keep doing what you’re doing—and if not, use that data to revise your strategy to be more effective.
How? What I do is set a timer for 20-30 minutes and just use that time to create, create, create. No pausing or self-censorship allowed. If I run into any issues that threaten to derail my progress, I simply include the mark “[TK]” — an editing mark that roughly translates to “to come” and indicates that you’ll revisit it later — and carry on with my work. Once my time is up, I go back and make any necessary changes. (I also run a document search for “[TK]” so that any marks I missed don’t make their way to my clients.)
This isn’t a quick process, but it’s a necessary one. Once you know what has worked well in the past, you can build on that success. Otherwise, you may end up repeating mistakes that made past content less useful. This way, you can compare those missteps with what worked and figure out how to correct them.
Remain creative and keep up with the latest trends in content marketing.
You don’t want your content marketing ideas and efforts to go to waste, right? So, try mixing up things to keep your readers intrigued and coming back for more. Let’s say you can try a mix of blog posts, videos, webinars, podcasts, ebooks and more to keep your audience engaged. This is because focusing on one type of content is often an ineffective way to grow an audience.
If you are looking to take your content marketing strategy to the next level, then there are many things to consider. Keep your overall marketing and business goals in mind at all times and make sure that everything from concept to distribution is considered with these goals in mind.
Always Be LearningRemember, content marketing is a cycle. Every time you build something new you get an opportunity to deepen your research (and knowledge). It’s common for this to spark ideas or even challenge your original strategy. Plan on it. Keep an ideas file, or a special tab in your keyword research spreadsheet where you can capture these concepts for later use.
Stay organized and keep all your marketing material in one place.
Apart from the talent pool that you have, you also need to check if you are lacking in any resources or technology you may need to make the process smoother. If yes, get those tools and get started with your plan. Furthermore, you will also need to look at your marketing budget and plan for your resources, talent, tools and execution plan accordingly. As a business, you need to ensure that there are no loopholes or setbacks which keep your team from achieving your content marketing goals.
One of the biggest problems encountered with content marketing is that once content pieces are produced, they can exist in glorious isolation on the website on which they are hosted. Distribution is everything, so you need to make sure that you forge a clear path for those you want to engage with your content.
Of course, unless you have a single person handling all your content marketing and communications, you need to clarify your brand voice with your entire team in one central, easily accessible document. Otherwise, you run the risk of different writers using conflicting perspectives and tones.
Collaborate with other professionals in your field to increase your success.
Research is the best way to understand what you should be doing and how to do it well. It is always good to look at your own industry leaders, but it also doesn’t hurt to look further than your own backyard. You can find enlightenment in the most unlikely places and finding inspiration is never a bad thing.
Ask yourself: What are you and your team really good at? What are the patterns that your competition are falling into that you can disrupt? Are there people in your audience that you aren’t serving? What have you created that you’re the most proud of?
You may want to consider writing down your answers and bringing in other perspectives from within your company or even outside of it. These questions can help map out your focus and connect it back to the overall vision for your company. Plus, having clear goals makes it much easier to know when you’re achieving them.
Always remember to have fun
One small change can lead to a different kind of happy, a mixture of sad and angry, or an entirely different emotion or “color.” One color, just like one emotion, can have a variety of shades, which American psychologist Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions” shows:
New Years may have passed, but Valentines Day and St. Patrick’s Day are both right around the corner. Although these are both days that have actual history behind them, they are probably most notable for the wine and beer hangovers that accompany their days-after.
