General SEO

Content Marketing is an approach that helps you create relevant and high-converting content to attract an audience and make it take the final action. Companies use it not to sell goods but to help visitors solve their problems.

This strategy is especially important for increasing brand awareness and generating sales for your business. Thanks to content marketing, your brand will gain recognition and authority among its prospects.

In a nutshell, it will allow your business to stand out among other competitors and attract people’s attention.

According to experts, it isn’t enough for a brand to have an online presence but to be noticed and remembered by potential clients.

What does content marketing strategy stand for?

The Content Marketing Strategy is an in-depth plan that helps you use your content in the best possible way to meet the customer’s needs. Today, it is considered a necessity for accomplishing company goals and objectives.

Why is it important to create a content marketing strategy?

It is crucial to create a viable content strategy to ensure a constant flow of new leads and site traffic for your company. Among others, with a well-thought-off content marketing strategy, you can improve your social media and search engine optimization performance.

Successful content will not only drive more traffic to your website but also improve your brand awareness and educate your potential buyers. In a way, it helps build a bridge of trust between your leads and other stakeholders.

Types of Content Marketing Formats

In this section, we will cover the most important content formats that you can include in your strategy.

Types of Content Marketing

  1. Blogs
  2. Video content
  3. Case studies
  4. Ebooks
  5. Templates
  6. Infographics
  7. Social media
  8. Podcasts

Here’s what you need to know about each one of them!

1. Blogs

One of the most popular types of Content Marketing formats is a blog post, often referred to as an article. Like with any other content form, blogs need to be fresh and engaging content to captivate your audience. It’s also important to post blogs frequently in order to drive new customers to your business.

The ideal blog post length should be from 1000 to 2000 words, which can vary based on audience preferences and topic. Keep in mind that the length of the blog post plays a crucial role in converting your visitors into future buyers. The common wisdom is that more is better, although this isn’t always the case.

2. Video content

Marketing experts consider videos as the most impactful medium to engage with your target audience and share your brand story.

Even though you need to invest some time and effort in their creation, this format will produce the highest ROI. Videos are an excellent method for explaining complex topics in a more visually-appealing manner.

3. Case studies

A case study is a detailed analysis backed up by data, which shares specific insights about products or services. The best thing about this form is that it carries a certain authority with it. A typical case study usually shows the following:

  • The problems faced by the customer before trying out a product or services
  • How a customer has solved their problems by trying out products and services
  • Pre and Post customer purchase experience

Keep in mind you can use case studies for other things as well. For example, you can use them to measure the impact of specific social policies, political changes, economic and legal factors, etc.

This highly-effective tool has become very popular among marketers. Case studies can come in many different forms and usually include direct testimonials and quotes from your customers. You can shape them in the form of ebooks, blog posts, podcasts, infographics, and video content.

4. Ebooks

eBooks are fantastic not only for attracting qualified leads but also increasing your topical authority. They are a highly converting and downloadable type of content offered to website visitors in exchange for their contact information. By making a complex topic more digestible, your company can establish a reputation as a trustworthy source.

To make the most out of your Ebooks, you should utilize advertising tools to increase your reach and visibility.

Although they can be applied at different phases of the buyer’s journey, they are most often used in the initial ones.

5. Templates

Templates are another practical content marketing format designed to attract highly qualified leads by offering great value. They are most commonly used during emailing campaigns and other types of outreach.

Templates are great time savers. This customizable form helps you maintain consistency while creating content, makes you more efficient, and reduces the risk of leaving out important information.

6. Infographics

If you wish to organize and present your data in a more compelling visual style, infographics could be a perfect choice. Moreover, they make the data more understandable even to uneducated users.

Many experts also use them for link-building campaigns due to their unique and interesting appearance.

7. Social media

No matter what type of business you’re running, you can always benefit from social media.

Being used by so many people worldwide, social platforms are some of the most important distribution channels for reaching potential buyers and generating leads. Among others, they also allow you to increase trust with your consumers and improve brand awareness.

Here are some of the channels that marketers love:

  •       Instagram
  •       Facebook
  •       Youtube
  •       Twitter
  •       LinkedIn
  •       Snapchat
  •       Pinterest

Your choice of the ideal platform usually depends on your business. For example, Instagram is a great tool for design companies, while TikTok is more suitable for industries that benefit from short-form videos.

Try to find the social media networks your target audience is using, and according to that, readjust your content strategy.

8. Podcasts

A podcast is an audio medium you can include in your content marketing strategy, especially if your ideal customers don’t show interest in written content.

The podcast industry has constantly been growing over the past couple of years. The great thing about this form is that you can use it while exercising, walking or driving to work, or doing some other daily activities.

To make a successful podcast, you have to find interesting guests and create a unique format. Moreover, a podcast’s success also depends on advertising, marketing, audio production, etc.

7 Steps to developing a content marketing strategy

Here are 7 basic steps that will allow you to create an efficient content marketing strategy:

Step 1: Identify your audience and focus on storytelling

Identifying your target audience should be a good starting place to create your content marketing strategy.

Make sure to provide your potential consumers with valuable content before they go through a buying process. You should focus on covering topics that are appealing to your audience rather than creating content that only praises your products and services. Moreover, try to incorporate your brand storytelling into every article that you make.

The main objective of storytelling is to create an emotional attachment between your brand and your audience.

Here are some of its most important aspects:

  • Define the problem and offer a viable solution
  • Show the purpose of your brand and its human side.
  • Place emphasis on your brand’s unique value
  • Create an emotional attachment and evoke empathy
  • Reveal your vulnerable point

You need to understand that your product and services aren’t the things potential buyers are looking for. They use them only as a means of improving their private and work lives.

Once you have found a solution to readers’ problems, you can produce valuable content that will turn your prospects into future brand advocates.

Step 2: Analyze historical content performance

Here are some tips you should follow to define your content marketing objectives:

  • Identify your company’s top-level marketing and business goals. This can help you understand what areas have the potential to grow and make you more focused on planning small and achievable goals. It is important to set the right and clearly defined goals.
  • Think how content can help you achieve these business goals
  • Identify the key content marketing metrics for continued success. There is no such thing as a set of metrics that can guarantee content marketing success. Therefore, you have to create them based on your company’s goals.
  • Your final objective is to detect your underperforming content, so you can improve it.

You also have to remember that your finances have to align with your marketing goals. Although you might think that content is the best way to advertise your company, it shouldn’t interfere with your daily operations or jeopardize cash flow.

When it comes to goal-setting frameworks, applying the CLEAR goal-setting method (collaborative, limited in volume and duration, emotional, appreciable, and refinable) will help you become more active in a rapidly-changing environment.

Step 3: Do a content audit

A content audit is a process of reviewing and improving your current website content.

Its main purpose is to make the most out of every piece of content and identify the strong and weak points of your content strategy.

Some of the benefits of an effective content audit are:

  • Identifying problems in your writing
  • Content quality assessment
  • Identifying content for improvement
  • Detecting content gaps
  • SEO improvement
  • Powerful content
  • Increased conversion rates

After performing an audit on your existing pages, you can learn how to create content that will have a more profound impact on readers.

Step 4: Build a top-level editorial plan

Proper planning will help you utilize and distribute resources adequately. It also allows you to identify content that requires more time than predicted.

Prioritize your actions

In order to have an efficient plan, you will need to set priorities.

The things you need to focus on are as follows:

  • Earnings potential
  • Marketing campaign flow
  • Introduction of new products and services
  • Assets that are required for your campaign

Find new content ideas

When thinking of new ideas, try to opt for long-lasting, relevant, and compelling topics. These are also referred to as “evergreen” content.

Take into consideration these two things when you can’t decide which topic is worth choosing:

  • What benefits can your target audience get from it?
  • How does the topic affect your bottom line?

Once you have selected the right topics, you can start with keyword research.

Create topic clusters

Topic clusters are crucial for several reasons. Besides organizing your articles, they are a fantastic way to create SEO-friendly content.

Topic clusters are a group of interlinked pages, with a pillar page that covers one particular subject. This type of model is especially useful if you aim to create more authoritative content or boost your performance in Google.

Research your competitors

With the help of competitive research, you can analyze the top competitors within an industry and how well they’re doing. Monitoring your competition should be a daily part of your practice if you want to run a successful business.

There are different free tools that can help you identify your competition’s target audience, their positioning, what type of content format they use, keywords they target, etc.

Create your content funnel

The purpose of the content marketing funnel is to drive website visitors from less relevant pages to more relevant sales pages.

As the name implies, it’s a type of funnel that drives them from one section of the website to another one. Marketers use them to create the so-called “Buyer’s journey.”

In other words, most people won’t buy products and services immediately upon reaching your site. Instead, they’ll have to go through several pages of content until they do so.

Step 5: Create your content

Creating high-quality content should be among your priorities if you want to spark prospects’ interest. Originality is another important thing to make sure your content is perceived as highly compelling by your target audience.

To gain the trust of your readers, make sure to talk about your own experiences, what kind of research you used, and share valuable insights.

Sometimes you’ll have to repurpose your existing content pages to attract new readers.

To meet and exceed the expectations of every customer, make sure to use multiple content formats. However, don’t go overboard. You can easily start spending time and money on numerous different formats, none of which will ultimately reach its full potential.

Step 6: Plan content distribution

Once your content is done, it is time to share it with your target audience. This is where content distribution starts shining.

This is the process of sharing and promoting your content by using different types of marketing channels and media formats. Ideally, you should find out where your audience is hanging to maximize the reach.

Step 7: Constantly analyze performance

Measuring your performance will reveal what type of content appeals to your audience and whether or not your marketing efforts are effective or not. Constantly tweaking articles, videos, and other content will eventually help you discover the winning formula.

If you ever need help with your content marketing, contact MiroMind today!

General, SEO
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