You may often have heard the saying that ‘content is king’ and that is still very much true.
Content marketing poses many benefits, including improving brand awareness and engagement and establishing your authority as a thought leader, but only when done correctly.
Essentially, you need the correct tools and a solid content strategy to help you produce content that is going to help you stand out, reach and resonate with your target audience, and encourage them to invest in your brand.
Executing your content marketing correctly can see you generate three times as many leads at 62% less cost than other traditional marketing methods.
Not sure where to start? Check out our seven tips for upping your content marketing game…
1. Understand your audience
Before creating any digital content, it is important to ask yourself, ‘Who am I creating it for?’
You may already have a basic understanding of your target audience, but it never hurts to do more research.
There are various market research methods you can use to delve deeper and really understand what your target audience needs, wants, and pain points are.
These include:
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Surveys
- Social media listening
- Customer reviews
- A/B testing
- Buyer persona research
Once you have gathered your insights, you can then create your audience personas.
Audience personas are a fictional representation of your target audience which are created based on the research and analytics surrounding your audiences’ goals and behaviours.
Useful insights to gather to create your audience persona are:
- Age
- Location
- Interests
- Education
- Income level
- Values and beliefs
- Lifestyle
- Social media activity
- Where they consume their content
- Pain points
Addressing your users’ pain points is perhaps one of the most important factors to consider throughout your content marketing, as it helps increase your brand’s authority, builds trust, and gives your content a purpose.
Once you have gained a more in-depth understanding of your target audience, you can ensure you are creating helpful and relevant content tailored to them.
2. Plan your content
The power of a well-crafted content strategy should not be underestimated when it comes to successful content marketing.
A content strategy can help you plan and structure your content based on your business goals and target audience.
Additionally, a content strategy holds you accountable and ensures you publish content regularly so you can track and analyse your progress effectively.
Your content strategy should also include a content calendar, which is a useful tool for managing deadlines, keeping your content organised and consistent, and strategic planning.
3. Create high-quality evergreen content
After working hard to create compelling and engaging content, you want to ensure that it has long-term value and remains relevant. That is where evergreen content comes in.
Evergreen content refers to content that does not require frequent updates, will not become outdated quickly, and will always be of interest to readers.
An example of evergreen content is a blog on ‘things to do in North Wales.’ The information in this post will not change too frequently and requires minimal effort to update every now and again for relevance and avoid content decay.
This example would be used as a pillar page on your website, from which you could then create in-depth cluster content such as ‘things to do in North Wales for families’ or ‘unusual things to do in North Wales.’
Creating effective evergreen content, such as guides and how-to posts, you will get consistent traffic, rank well on search engine results pages and generate leads for longer periods of time.
4. Outperform your competitors
Like any aspect of digital marketing, it is essential that you are always keeping up to date with what your competitors are doing.
Carrying out competitor analysis can be a fantastic way of improving your content marketing, as you can see what content your competitors are producing and identify any content gaps you could target.
You can also look at your competitors backlinks, which can help you identify link-building opportunities for your own website and gain an insight into what tactics they use to obtain their backlinks.
This can then help you formulate ideas to add to your content calendar, so you can build on these opportunities and drive further traffic to your website.
5. Create gated assets
Gated assets are primarily used to generate qualified leads by offering pieces of content in exchange for a user’s information, such as their email address.
These assets can take many forms and include e-books, webinars, case studies, templates, and whitepapers.
Although it may feel like you are giving away valuable content, what you are actually doing is gaining authorised access to potential customers who you can nurture and engage with moving forwards.
You can also track and analyse the data collected from gated assets to organise your users into segments based on information such as their interests or occupation to help improve your targeted content marketing efforts.
6. Ensure your content is accessible
When carrying out any form of content creation, it is essential that it is inclusive and accessible to all.
AudioEye published their Digital Accessibility Index report, which highlighted that digital access for the 1.3 billion people globally with disabilities was not up to standard.
Ensure that your content marketing is accessible and that it can be understood and interacted with by a variety of users, including those with disabilities.
If you are unsure about how to make your content marketing accessible, you can refer to The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and check if your content meets the criteria.
7. Promote your content on social media
In today’s digital landscape, social media is a powerful tool that you should be using to take your content marketing to the next level.
There are many benefits to promoting your content marketing on social media. One of the main benefits is that you can interact and engage with your audience in the comments section.
Other benefits of utilising social media can include:
- Increased audience reach
- Improved brand awareness and visibility
- Connecting with other industry experts
- Creating influencer partnerships
- Monitoring trends
- Encouraging user generated content
- Gaining real-time feedback
While social media does have all these benefits, they will not work nearly as well if your target audience does not use the social network you are posting on, so be sure to choose the right one!
Need help with your content marketing?
If you think your content marketing game could benefit from a much-needed boost, get in touch to see how we can help.
We also offer free acquisitions workshops, where you can receive expert advice from our experienced marketers, a personalised action plan, and resources you can use right away.
Book today to avoid disappointment!
