Are you struggling to draw more customers to your business? You're not alone.
Written By Daena King
Oct 2022 / Reading Length: 6 minutes
Are you struggling to draw more customers to your business? You’re not alone. Almost 70% of businesses are struggling to boost leads and traffic this year, too.
With Google constantly changing and evolving, you need to remain creative. With a content marketing strategy, you can draw new people to your website. Then, you can wow them with your content to turn visitors into sales.
Not sure where to start? Here are the nine tips you need for an effective content marketing plan.
With these tips, you can boost brand awareness, leads, and sales. Instead of falling behind the competition, you can get leagues ahead.
Give your business the boost it needs! Discover new content initiatives with these nine tips today.
Before you can start developing your content marketing strategy, you need to know who you’re creating content for. Otherwise, you’ll fail to create pieces that appeal to your customers. They could turn their attention toward competitors who better understand them instead.
Take the time to learn as much as you can about your target audience.
You can gather demographic information from your Google Search Console or Google Analytics. If you use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, consider your targeting. How do you differentiate your customers?
Do you have a broad audience of existing customers? Consider customer and market segmentation.
Segmenting your target audience will help you better personalise your content. Otherwise, your content might not appeal to the reader’s interests.
You can segment customers based on:
Think about the problems your customers face daily. How can your product or service make their lives easier? What are their most urgent needs?
Once you better understand your audience, you can develop an informed content marketing strategy.
It’s also important to understand the customer’s search intent. What are your customers looking for online? What information do they expect to find?
Try using tools like Google Trends and Keyword Planner to learn about their search behaviours. What content are your customers already looking for online?
Start creating a list of topics you can cover within your posts. You can also use tools like Ahrefs, Answer the Public, and SEMRush. Focus on keywords with high search volume and low competition.
In fact, you can use your competition as part of your research. What posts are your competitors creating? What questions are they answering?
Once you gather your keyword research, you can find new ways to address the customer’s problems. Show your customers you care about your needs. Your content will show them you can offer the help they’re looking for.
It’s not enough to start creating content and posting online. Instead, establish SMART goals as part of your content marketing strategy.
For example, maybe you want to generate 25% more website traffic using SEO by the end of the year. Other goals include:
Understanding your goals will help you determine the best tactics for accomplishing those goals. For example, let’s say you want to boost product sales. You can create content that shows consumers the value of your products.
You can create teaser trails, product demo videos, eBooks, and customer testimonials to drive sales!
Now that you know your goals, you can focus on which content initiatives will drive your success.
Where do you plan on posting your content? It’s important to consider your distribution channels before you start creating content. Otherwise, you might not realise your formatting is off until it’s too late.
Take a look at the Acquisition section in Google Analytics. There, you can determine which channels your visitors already arrive from.
Where do your customers spend the bulk of their time online? Are they focused on one or two social media platforms? You don’t have to spread yourself thin.
Once you determine which distribution channels to focus on, take a look at the content that’s already available. Which posts do your customers respond to the most? Do they prefer lengthy blog posts, videos, or infographics?
Customers on LinkedIn might prefer research-oriented blog posts. Consumers on Instagram and TikTok, however, might prefer video content.
Make a list of the formats you want to focus on before you start creating content.
As you develop your content marketing strategy, think about your messaging.
About 77% of content marketers create educational content to nurture their audience. About 90% of the most successful marketers prioritise the audience’s informational needs over sales/promotional messaging.
Don’t use sales language within your posts. Instead, focus on educating your customers.
Take a look at the questions they’re asking. What information are they looking for? Show customers how your product or service can solve their problems.
Then, find content that can provide them with the information they need.
For example, you can create demo videos, how-to posts, or helpful tutorials. Finding ways to educate your audience will show them you’re reliable. Otherwise, they could turn away from sales language.
Many people skim through posts, searching for the information they need. You can make life easier for your readers by improving a post’s readability.
First, consider your content format, including:
For long-form content, try to use heading subheadings. Keep your information organised. Write shorter paragraphs and sentences, too.
Otherwise, use bullet points and lists to make the content easier to skim read.
Don’t forget a strong call-to-action (CTA) at the end of your post. Your CTA will compel readers to take action. Keep your CTA concise and compelling.
You’re not stuck with only using text. Instead, supplement your blog posts, infographics, and eBooks with eye-catching images.
Adding images to your posts can improve reader recall by up to 65%. You can even earn 94% more page views by including relevant images.
Avoid using bland stock images. Instead, focus on high-quality, unique images that are relevant to your business. Use imagery to show off your product or service.
Keep your branding in mind, too. Your brand will set you apart from other companies in your industry. Keeping your brand consistent can boost brand awareness and recognition.
Develop brand guidelines as part of your content marketing strategy. Your guidelines should include your:
Make sure every member of your marketing team has a copy of your brand guidelines. That way, everyone remains on the same page.
An inconsistent brand, on the other hand, could confuse your customers.
As you start writing content, keep EAT in mind. EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Adding EAT to your content can establish your credibility in the industry.
It can also help you build brand trust and loyalty. Beyond that, it’s one of the most important SEO ranking factors for 2021.
You can establish EAT in your posts by:
Do you already have old posts on your blog? Make sure to update any links you included with recent information, too.
As you start creating content, keep up with the latest trends, too. For example, video content is becoming more popular. Try posting live videos or consider virtual and augmented reality this year.
For 66% of people, video is the top source of information. In fact, 93% of businesses gain new customers through branded video content. People spend nearly seven hours a week watching online videos.
Companies that use video marketing grow almost 50% faster than those that don’t. Meanwhile, 81% of businesses already use video for content marketing.
About 89% of businesses are satisfied that video content gives them a good ROI.
Almost 70% of consumers use videos to learn more about a product or service.
Videos can help you attract new customers, boost conversions, and improve your ROI.
Almost 70% of all online experiences begin on a search engine like Google. In fact, search engine optimisation (SEO) drives 1,000% more traffic to websites than social media.
If you want to drive more traffic to your website content, you’ll need a strong SEO strategy. You can work with an experienced SEO agency to optimise your content for search. Then, you can attract more traffic, leads, and sales.
You will need to make sure that your content is updated regularly, this is because it will help keep your content fresh which will improve your SEO. It will improve your SEO because Google will recognise that you have updated older content and it will improve the rankings for those updated pages because the content is fresh and up to date.
B2B Marketing is when a business is trying to sell their services or products to another business, B2B has a number of benefits, especially when compared to B2C marketing, to find out more about B2B marketing, check out the article below.
You should not limit yourself when it comes to marketing, you should take advantage of both content marketing and social media marketing.
AI will help improve the insights and analytics you have on your digital marketing campaigns.
