Business Growth & Marketing Ideas
November 8, 2021
Content marketing can include the following:
Content marketing, by definition, is promoting content that your company created that will allow potential new leads and customers to discover, learn, and engage with your brand. If the content marketing that your currently performing isn’t working as well as you’d like, here are five tips that will allow you to refine your efforts and increase audience engagement. Know Your Audience Unsplash " width="300" height="200" /> Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash When was the last time you took a good hard look at your audience? If you’re writing content for the sake of writing content, there’s an excellent chance that your audience is ignoring your message. You need to provide your target audience with content that speaks directly to them and acknowledges and solves their unique pain points. The best way to go about this is to create a buyer’s persona for your customers. For example, let’s consider a B2B buyer’s persona. It could include the following:
Once you have your persona created, you can start tailoring your content specifically to Brandy the Buyer. This will ultimately cause her to engage more with your content and could lead to increase sales opportunities. In addition, you’ll also know where to post your content—in Brandy’s case, on Instagram and Facebook is where she hangs out. This will also allow you to narrow down the ideal social media channels to post your content.
Before you write your content, you should consider the buyer’s journey. For example, for those who have never heard of your business before, they’re at the top of the funnel or the discovery phase. For this segment of your audience, you should write content that will allow them to learn and research. White papers, case studies, and blog posts are all effective ways of reaching this new audience—and will enable them to make a more informed buying decision. Be sure to include potential objections and pain points of the new buyer and intelligently answer them without the use of marketing speak. This will help improve trust and allow them to move down to the bottom of the funnel, where they will convert.
You can repurpose the old content you’ve written by either updating it or turning it into another marketing piece. For example, take an old blog post you wrote several years ago and see if it’s still relevant. If not, make the necessary changes and promote it on other channels such as social media or your email list. You can also take that same blog post and turn it into an infographic. This will save you both time and money because you just need to make some changes to create an infographic.
“Dumpster diving” is a phrase commonly used by content marketing experts. It means you find another blog post (on another website) and then rewrite it. It doesn’t add any value as it says the same thing as the blog post you found. Thought leadership content, on the other hand, is highly valuable as it contains new information or thought pieces that you won’t find anywhere else. The only downside to thought leadership content is that it can take anywhere from 2-3x longer to write than good ol’ dumpster diving. However, the additional effort is well worth it. For example, pretend that you own a soap manufacturing company. If you look at the blog posts of your competitors, it’s pretty much the same stuff. But what if you performed a test as to which soap brand got rid of more germs? After your testing, you’d write a blog post that lists your findings. This is the type of content that people love to read. It’s original, and they can learn a great deal from your thought leadership.
Video is one of the most powerful forms of content marketing out there. Fortunately, it doesn’t take a Hollywood studio to produce a great video. All you need to do is select a topic, write a script (notecards are especially handy), and then record it on a semi-new smartphone. Today's newer phones have internet-quality cameras that will allow you to record video up to 4k in resolution.
Get a head start on your marketing plans for the new year by stepping up your content marketing game by using the above five tips. To learn more about how AlphaGraphics of Downtown Raleigh can help with your sign and marketing needs, you may email us, request a quote, or call us at (919) 832-2828.