We have all heard the hype around how content has been touted as the king of marketing. But what makes content marketing the king? And what should you do as a business to get your content marketing initiatives right to reach your goals? This article will not talk about the seven things that you should do right to get your content marketing game on-point. Instead, we will take a route that is more analytical. For, content marketing best works when you market the right content in the right place at the right time.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on creating relevant content, which addresses the needs of its target audience, and is published/distributed in the right places at the right time. The end goal of content marketing could vary from increasing followers (audience) for the brand, driving traffic to the website, or generating conversions in the form of lead generation or sales according to the goal of the company. 

Notably, the key to generating the most return on investment in content marketing begins with developing the right content. 

A good piece of content is a good story:

Storytelling is an essential aspect of content marketing. Your target audience’s attention span in social channels is less than 2 seconds. Hence, your story has less than 2 seconds to keep the user hooked to your story.

Design:

Design plays an integral role too. Design is that element that captures the user’s attention even before they start reading the copy. A good content marketing campaign has a blend of intuitive design and compelling copy.

 Distribution:

If you’ve created a great design and captivating copy in your next campaign, your job is only half done yet. The other half lies in distributing that piece of content in the right place to get the maximum reach.

 A good cake truly receives its recognition only when people consume it and not when it’s kept away in the fridge. – Saye Shekhar – Sr. Journalist & Commentator

A good content marketing agency knows which cakes should be served to evoke reactions.

A Right Content Strategy Can Boost Business Growth:

What differentiates content from a content strategy? It is the existence of an end goal. Your content marketing strategy should not be that one post that goes out occasionally at the request of your sales team. The process should focus on what your company is trying to achieve and how content is used to achieve it. Once the goal is established, you can move on to the ‘How’ part of the equation.

While many amateur content marketing agencies focus heavily on creating an editorial calendar, a blog calendar, a social media calendar, and start listing a bunch of distribution avenues. The real players of this game understand that it is imperative to produce the right content that aligns with the purpose of the company.

Your content strategy should have:

 1. The end goal that you wish to achieve. 

 2. A clear user persona (age, gender, geography, income, etc.): 

A clear user persona helps you curate content in a way that is relatable and acceptable to the community of users you wish to reach. Using one strategy for all approach will not always work.

 3. Right Goals:

Goal setting is essential, for, it will help you measure success or failure. Content marketing involves a lot of A/B testing and getting the right pulse will come after a few failures. Setting goals at the beginning of the campaign helps you measure your progress and make analytical decisions on whether the strategy delivers results as expected. Or, is it time to analyze what went wrong and start a new strategy that does.

4. The Channels in Play:

Content marketing envisages a platform that clubs social media marketing (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, WhatsApp, Quora, and more), SEO, blogs, guest posts, podcasts, interviews, email marketing, and performance marketing, among others. That said, it is not essential that as a business, you start publishing your content in all these channels. With your target audience’s persona, you will know which channel is the most effective for your brand. If you are a B2B organization, posting your content on LinkedIn will significantly impact when compared to the same content posted on Facebook. 

As a practice, choose the right channels you wish to achieve your objectives.

 5. Broad Horizons:

If your objective is to attain 1000 new conversions for this month, do not expect all of it to come from one source. Diversify your communication and curate content relevant to the platform you are publishing it on. A good way to go about this would be to get 15% from LinkedIn, 7% from email marketing, 25% from SEO content, 20% from social channels, and 33% from performance marketing. This diversification ensures that your organization as a brand makes its presence felt on all the channels your user would be present on and that brand recall is on point.

Types of Content Marketing

Blogs:

Blogs are still one of the leading channels for content marketing. Focus on the problem you are trying to solve with blog articles. While SEO and Keyword analysis are essential, it should not be the crux of your article. Users are looking for solutions and let your blog be the differentiator from the 100 others by providing it.

Infographics:

A good infographic can go places. It helps you convey a lot of information on a relatively smaller canvas. Infographics are an excellent way to get your content shared and generate backlinks to your website.

Podcasts:

Plan your podcasts in advance, pick the niche you want to talk about, and ensure that your podcast talks about a problem statement and shows impetus on how you think your approach to that particular problem can solve things. When distributed in the right channels, a good podcast can garner a lot of audiences.

Video Content:

Albeit expensive, a large audience prefers video content over text. Ensure that your video content is engaging. Mix it up with a few memes, text notes, and other exciting stuff that keeps your users coming back to your channel for more.

Social Media Content:

Social media content is for that quick response. This is where you get your users to react to your content. The attention span is small, and the reaction to good content is immediate. An excellent way to keep your users on social media engaged is by repurposing the content that you’ve used on other platforms and using it here to keep the mix fresh.

In this article, we have spoken about the benefits of content marketing and how a good content strategy can help your organization achieve its goals. If you are a new business that is just setting up its marketing initiatives or looking to revamp your existing brand, then, we at The Go-To Guy! can be of great assistance with our content marketing services.

Get in touch with us today, and we would be glad to walk you through our expertise and how our collective experience can alleviate your brand to the place it aims to be in.