Content refers to any visual, video, text or other form of material that is used for the purpose of engaging the audience.
The need to create a compelling content strategy cannot be underestimated today – when there is a paradigm shift in the marketing sphere. The conventional marketing practices have been replaced by ever-evolving digital marketing tactics.
Since, content gives customers a reason to visit your brand`s website, it is extremely important to be aware of some key tips that will help you in developing a captivating content strategy.
Target Market Segmentation
As a brand, your content should serve two purposes:
- Creating awareness for new customers
- Offering support, information and guidance to existing or returning customers
Besides, consumers of your content may fall in different stages of the buying journey. Therefore, the first step in devising a successful strategy is to define the target market for each type of content. This can be achieved by creating a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional description of your customers based on their demographics, profile, and the data that you gather through research – such as which sites do they visit more often their interests, and the things they consider important. The buyer persona helps a brand to develop targeted content for each segment of your potential customers.
Creating Interactive Content
The importance of two-way communication with the customer(s) cannot be emphasized enough. It helps the customers build a relationship with the brand, which not only helps in increasing the engagement, but also ultimately leads potential customers to become your paying customers.
You can engage customers through:
- Live webinars or informative sessions
- Not only allowing, but also responding to customer comments on your blogs, articles and videos
- Asking for their response to brand-related quiz questions, opinions on interesting alternatives, and general knowledge questions on platforms like Facebook and Instagram
Using Multiple Content Marketing Tactics
Presenting content to your target audience in a variety of styles prevents them from losing interest in your brand. While your writing or communication style MUST be in line with your brand`s identity, the type of content marketing tactic employed, does not have to be monotonous. It is recommended that you use a mix of few tactics that best fit your content genre and brand identity.
Some of the most popular tactics for content marketing are:
- Blogging
- Videos
- Infographics
- Social Media
- Webinars
- Podcasts
Keeping your Content Organized
Staying organized will help you keep a check on your content, and make it easily accessible for reference, revision or sharing purposes. Many businesses create good content, but keep it so disorganized that they have trouble finding and uploading it timely. As a result, they lose track of the timeline, and fail to engage customers at the relevant time, event, or festival.
The first step in staying organized is to categorize your content as informative, educational, or promotional, and the type of medium it will be shared on – such as blog, website, or social media channels.
Once the category is defined, it will help to tag and save your content by topic, genre (whether the tone is professional, casual or funny) and longevity (the time period till that information will remain relevant).
Measuring your Performance and Conducting a Content Audit
It is very important to monitor the performance of your content marketing strategy to understand what has worked well for your brand, and which area needs improvement. The quality of your content can be evaluated by the following indicators
- Traffic generated to the website/page
- Engagement Metrics
- Number of sales and the number of conversions assisted by the particular medium where relevant content was uploaded
An overall review of your content strategy is must at year-end. This will help you decide on your future goals related to your business.
The Benefits of a Content Audit
- Highlights content that needs to be revised, updated, or deleted
- Checks for broken internal links, and identifies those that need to be fixed
- Checks if your content is meeting the requirements of Search Engine Optimization, and gives insights about the new rules that can cause search engines to make your content appear on higher levels than they already are.
Every brand needs to create an effective content strategy because without it, the entire effort can go in vain. For example, if the content you generate does not result in desirable customer behavior, it will not only be a waste of resources and time but also slow down the pace of meeting your business goals. Therefore, it is very important to know the fundamentals of a compelling content strategy. We hope you find them helpful.
