What is content marketing & how can it help generate leads?
Content marketing is a useful approach to digital marketing that has a marked influence on any business’s marketing strategy. It can attract, engage, and inform an audience through attractive and diverse sources of content, such as articles, videos, podcasts, social media posts, and newsletters. When a content marketing strategy is executed successfully, it can increase your client base and nurture relationships with prospective and existing clients.
Creating quality content and directing readers towards it is only half of the battle, however, and there are several important elements to a successful content marketing strategy that must be taken into consideration. Without quality content, the campaign will likely fail, and similarly, without a well-thought-out campaign, even the best content will never be found by the target audience.
Why Having a Content Marketing Strategy is Important for Your Business?
Content marketing is a straightforward but lucrative method of digital marketing, and one that businesses can’t afford to ignore. At the core of a successful content marketing strategy is the creation of meaningful content. That means conceiving, planning, designing, developing, delivering, and managing the content. An effective content marketing strategy will begin by answering some key questions, such as why the information being disseminated is important, who will create and manage the content, and what the target audience is. Only when these questions are answered can a content marketing strategy begin serving a business effectively.
When developing your content marketing strategy, it is vital to keep track of pain points – the specific issues your audience members encounter. Each piece of content you create, whether it be a video or blog post, should be optimized for organic search so your results will appear higher up in search engine result pages (SERPs) This can be achieved by including relevant keywords: short tail, longtail, short-term, long-term, product-defining, customer defining, geo-targeting, and intent-targeting.
Developing a unique tone of voice can also play a beneficial role in your marketing strategy. This can be done by using personal stories and providing helpful tips that you have used instead of focusing on your competitor’s content. Furthermore, a unique, persuasive call to action (CTA) will grab your audience’s attention and convert an existing lead into a customer. A compelling call to action with clear, succinct messaging will also move users down the sales funnel faster.
The Purpose of a Content Marketing Calendar
Just as a calendar helps us keep track of our day-to-day tasks, a content marketing calendar is a valuable tool to help you manage events, assess your content output, and check publishing dates. Whether you are publishing content for a blog, social media page, or any other source, a content marketing calendar will assist you in managing activities, deadlines, and goals.
Department heads are responsible for updating and sharing the marketing calendar by including relevant information and ensuring other team members can access it. A content marketing calendar lets decision-makers know whether a specific topic has been covered or not, when the publication date for a particular piece of content is, and to plan ahead with the coming weeks’ content in mind.
A well-planned content marketing calendar also clarifies ownership and creates accountability amongst team members. Marketing initiatives and deadlines will not be missed when each team member knows who is working on what, and nobody wants to be the team mate that consistently misses their deadlines for all the team to see. Another benefit is its effectiveness in managing the visibility of your company’s message. Blog posts, paid ad campaigns, and email marketing campaigns can be organized and tracked by the entire team, allowing everyone to get on the same page about priorities, talking points, and messaging.
If you really want to expand your content marketing calendar, you can include marketing budgets in the content details. You can list the budget spreadsheet, costs, and resource time for each marketing activity to track your budget and expenses. This will help you analyze the cost of your content along with its quality and performance, to weight up your next campaign priorities and tactics.
The Need for Content Marketing
Content marketing is a must in today’s fiercely competitive digital marketplace. If you are operating online and not utilizing content marketing, you are missing out on a fantastic method of establishing your brand identity and nurturing a community of loyal customers. Blog posts, white papers, infographics, and videos can make your brand stand out when coupled with compelling content.
Additionally, as seen, an effective content strategy will help you track and analyze data and see what changes you can make to craft content that is even more gripping than what you pushed last time around. This data will help you understand your target audience and what they react well to, which will help you increase your return on investment (ROI) by optimizing your campaigns according to this updated audience data.
But remember, for your content marketing campaign to be truly effective, you need to constantly work to improve your search engine results, keyword rankings, and engagement metrics. Follow these key steps and you’ll quickly see just how effective, efficient, and lucrative content marketing can be.
Need a Content Marketing Agency to Generate Leads?
Like it or not, content marketing is a vital component of any online business’ digital marketing strategy these days. Reading up on the topic is a good start, but putting your newly-acquired knowledge into practice can be a daunting task. When this feeling hits, it can be best to rely on the knowledge and expertise of experienced marketers who are well-versed in the nuances of content marketing and creating successful campaigns.
If you’re ready to start utilizing content marketing, reach out to inSegment, Boston’s leading full-scale digital marketing agency with an entire team of dedicated content marketers ready to help you launch your next campaign.
Contact inSegment today to take your content marketing to the next level.
