18October 2023
Content marketing is the use of blog articles, videos, and more to attract buyers, build trust in your company, shorten sales cycles, and help people buy your products and services.
The businesses that get the most out of their content marketing invest in creating an internal team to create high-value content and manage it well. A team of in-house experts can capture your company’s voice and subject-matter expertise better than a freelancer or an agency.
Identify Your Audience
To create content that resonates with your audience, you first need to identify who they are. To do this, you can use a combination of research methods like keyword research and competitor research, as well as direct customer feedback like surveys or interviews.
You also want to consider their demographics and psychographics. Demographics can be as simple as their age, geographic location, and gender, but it can also include things like how they prefer to get their news (tabloid vs. reputable), what their interests are, and how they navigate the buyer’s journey.
Using this information, you can start to build audience personas that can help guide your decisions about what to create and how to present it. These personas can be adjusted and improved over time based on feedback from analytical tools, comments, and other research. This is a critical step that many marketers skip, but it’s a crucial part of creating content that drives results.
Create Content
When you create an informative article about investing, for example, it appears in front of 1+ million potential customers every year. That helps establish your brand as a thought leader and credible information source. And when a customer sees that other people also find your content valuable, they’re more likely to trust your advice and become a loyal customer over time.
You can create content in a variety of formats, from blogs to infographics to videos. The key is to understand your audience and what type of content they’re most interested in. You can even get inspiration by studying what your competitors are doing.
You need to create content that addresses the different stages of the buyer journey. The awareness, consideration and decision stages all require a different approach. For instance, you can inspire advocates with an offer like “one month free when you recommend our payment software to a friend.” That’s a great way to encourage new customers and boost your sales.
Promote Your Content
Once you have your content, it’s important to promote it. This can be done through social media, online forums, or paid advertising campaigns. Paid advertising can be especially helpful if you want to target specific demographics, such as age, gender, or location.
When you’re promoting your content, it’s also important to measure your success. You can do this by tracking metrics such as website sessions, new visitors, and referral traffic. By measuring your performance, you can identify what’s working and what’s not, and then make adjustments to your strategy.
In addition, you should track the different types of content that work best for each stage of the customer lifecycle. For example, blog posts, articles, podcasts, and videos are great for the awareness stage while whitepapers, webinars, and case studies are ideal for the consideration and conversion/decision stages. Finally, it’s important to measure the advocacy stage by tracking how many customers recommend your product or service to their friends.
Measure Your Success
To measure success in content marketing, you need to identify which metrics are relevant to your specific goals. This involves meeting with your team to discuss your overall business goals and determining how your content marketing efforts contribute to them.
For example, if your goal is to increase sales, you should be sure to track metrics that lead to sales, such as on-site time or page views. These metrics can be tracked using tools like Google Analytics or BrightEdge Data Cube.
Another important metric to monitor is Returning Visitor Value (RRV). This metric indicates how much your website visitors enjoy and value your content. Increasing this metric is often the result of improving your site’s usability or implementing SEO best practices.
Once you’ve identified the most important metrics to monitor, it’s vital to have a process for collecting and reporting on this data. The right content marketing measurement tool can help you track your progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and communicate these findings with your stakeholders.