I know what you’re thinking. Content marketing strategies. That means writing stuff down. On paper, right? Well, yes. There are, however, perks to having documented content marketing strategies in place at your business or organization. For one thing, content marketing is impactful. Content marketing leaders can see 7.8 times more traffic than non-leaders. For another, it also costs way less, but generates up to three times as many leads.
There are a number of things you may want to consider doing when it comes to drafting up (yes, on paper) tactics for successfully navigating the content marketing waters. There are a few tried-and-true examples worth following that you should jot down somewhere. Such as:
1. Talk to Your Customers
One of the best content marketing strategies is knowing who your audience is. Before you sell anything (or ask for donations), you have to know who your ideal customer is and how to say things to them. The only way you’re going to know that is by talking to people. If you have any customer sales representatives, ask them what people are calling in about. What are their pain points? You might be too small to have customer sales reps, but, say, if you own a store, you can ask your employees on the floor what people are wanting and what they’re returning.
So don’t be afraid to get out there and talk to people. Once you have some data in hand, you can even go as far as creating customer personas. You can actually map out the ideal sets of people that you want to service. Doing this will give you great insight into just who you’re selling to, which will make your messaging on point.
2. Create Content Your Audience Needs to Hear
Once you know what your audience wants, you can figure out — and start creating — the content that they need to hear from you. You don’t want to be too sales-y here; you want to create stuff that’s interesting and informative first. You should be aware, however, that there’s a lot of competition out there. You thus have to strive to produce the very best content in any given topic area. You want to make content for your visitors that is worth sharing or even revisiting on occasion. While trying to go viral is like capturing lightning in a bottle, if you’re producing useful content, then you’re more likely to rack up bigger visitor counts on your website.
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Tug on the Ol’ Heart Strings
Regardless if you’re sharing content or creating it, you want to be sure to always be appealing to your audience’s desires as part of your winning content marketing strategies. If you create an emotional connection, your audience will be more likely to be influenced by you and become receptive to you. Remember that “gut feelings” often override intellect and rational decisions. So use love, fear, jealousy or other emotions as means of creating emotional tension to sell your product or service. Use the emotional connection to resonate with your audience. This means you can share views that your audience agrees with or you can rile them up and get their blood flowing. Be very, very, very careful, though, if you take this latter route. You don’t want your efforts to blow up in your face, after all.
4. Don’t Forget to Share Your Content
This is probably going to seem like a “well, duh!” kind of thing, but once you have good content in hand, you want to be sure that you’re promoting it. Tailor your promotion based on the type of content you’ve produced. For instance, if you have a really good video, YouTube is probably the best place for it. Have a blog posting about something that solves a need your audience might have? Fire off the Tweets and Facebook posts. Basically, you just don’t want your content in languish in a netherworld, hoping that people will magically come and find it. You want your content to be clicked on and shared, so be sure to do some sharing yourself.
Contact Us
Still having trouble coming up with a winning content marketing strategy? Contact us today. We’ll help you create the roadmap to navigating your customer’s needs, and get you well on the path to coming up with content that will satisfy, every time.
{{cta(‘243acfe1-5c08-4509-8f9c-09f7d7705bd6’)}}