Effective content marketing. Strategy and useful tips

How to implement effective content marketing in business

Recently, content marketing has been taking a leading position in the field of digital. Advertising is becoming more and more automated, but the price for it continues to rise. It is increasingly difficult to adapt to the algorithms of social networks, which change regularly, and competition is growing rapidly.

Despite this, people are still looking for the right information in social networks, watching videos and reading posts. The focus is only on useful and high–quality content.

That is why promotion through posts is an integral part of the company’s strategy. Read more about content marketing later in the article.

What is content marketing?

Before you get acquainted with the features of promotion, briefly about content marketing. In literal translation, this concept means filling or content. It is the content that fills the interface: texts, videos, pictures, animated images, information graphics, podcasts, etc. This definition is quite versatile, it includes different types of materials used by Internet users.

Content marketing is promotion through content. In other words, you don’t just create a certain text, but write it to increase sales growth, awareness, or to attract potential users.

How does it work? Let’s say you offered some valuable service or product for free. This will allow you to improve user trust and outperform your competitors. This is just one factor. Very often people need help, recommendations, inspiration or ordinary entertainment. And today they find all this with the help of the World Wide Web.

Useful and entertaining content fascinates, attracts a lot of attention and can even become an addiction (for example, serial fans). When a famous brand is engaged in its creation, it receives an incredible number of loyal fans in a short time. And in a natural way, without outdated advertising techniques and mind-blowing discount offers.

Content Marketing strategy

If you want to get the most out of content marketing for your company, then work carefully on your strategy.

Carry out the preparation as follows:

1. Formulate the task. Answer the question for yourself: what do you want to get from the content? Write down everything in numbers so that you can understand whether content marketing will be effective. At the same time, focus on the average indicators of the channels on which you are going to promote your materials.
2. Link the content to the customer’s journey. At all stages of the sales funnel, people need different information. And this fact should not be neglected. The purpose of introductory content is to accumulate views and represent the brand, and publications for enlightened users are to boost sales.
3. Decide on the methods of promotion. Nowadays, when there is a lot of different information around, it is very little to just create good content. The ability to promote it is important. To do this, choose the most suitable platform for advertising.
4. Form the content. After completing the preparatory work, defining goals and objectives, KPIs, becoming attached to the client’s journey and choosing a platform for promotion, you can start creating content.
5. Study the results. Carefully monitor the promotion statistics and pay special attention to the most successful areas.
6. Refresh the content. After publishing a certain material on a website or a page on social networks, do not forget to monitor its relevance. Suppose that a user gets to your article from a search network and discovers outdated statistics for 2015. He will immediately leave the site and will not try to return to it again. If the material is actively read and can be updated, then promote it. After a while, you will be surprised at the possibilities and results of this method.
7. Apply it again. Let’s say you’ve created interesting material. It becomes very popular, but after a certain period of time it is gradually forgotten. To revive useful and entertaining materials, re-publication is necessary. Make a video clip, a multimedia presentation, an information graph, a podcast or a mini-post for social networks based on the text material. Then promote the created product on new platforms. Thus, you will get the maximum benefit from one record and at times you will be able to expand the coverage.
8. Observe a certain style. Effective content marketing is impossible without the simultaneous use of different promotion channels. This means that users can view your publications not only on corporate blogs, but also on social networks or on other platforms. At the same time, it is necessary to observe the style of your brand in order to be remembered for a long time and make the desired impression.

Rely on this instruction when planning your personal content marketing strategy. Don’t forget about the main rule: a great plan is half the success.

What is the effectiveness of content marketing?

It’s time to move on to the main question: is effective content marketing necessary for business, or is it a temporarily popular direction from which you will never get the desired results. The numbers will help answer it, because it’s hard not to trust them.

It is worth emphasizing that content marketing is a long-term strategy. Of course, there is a possibility that your first post will attract the attention of a huge number of users and increase your sales. But you understand that in order to achieve what you want, you need to regularly create entertaining content. Therefore, be set up for constant and logical work, because only in this case you will get the maximum benefit from content marketing.

Let’s move on to a specific case:

Well–known marketer Neil Patel has accumulated data from more than 180 companies whose field of activity is content marketing management. These companies belong to various industries and sectors (B2B and B2C), but it is important that they have been engaged in content for about 10 years. Thus, with the help of accumulated data, it is possible to observe the effectiveness of the strategy both today and in the future.

The main focus during the analysis is on the company’s blog, which is considered an important tool of content marketing. How to properly and effectively run a corporate blog is a separate topic for the article.

Thus, for productive content marketing management, it is important to remember the following.

Traffic from social networks is gradually decreasing

Think about how the effectiveness of promotion in social networks changes?

Unfortunately, it is getting smaller and smaller. This is due to algorithm updates, which leads to a rapid reduction in coverage.

If you are serious about doing content marketing in social networks, think carefully a few times. Over the years, it will become increasingly difficult to get on these platforms without an advertising campaign.

Focus on SEO

Most owners of well-known and large media resources and blogs will tell you that their companies receive the maximum amount of traffic through search engines. Statistics state that most often it accounts for more than 50% of visits.

No less effective are targeted transitions (they are associated with content fans, because the more famous and powerful the brand, the more of them there are) and links. Pay special attention to the most popular channels, while not forgetting about other directions.

On average, a blog accounts for 60% of organic traffic. Over time, this number continues to grow, as search engines actively increase the output of informative and meaningful content.

Create a team

At first glance, content marketing is a way of promotion that does not require any material investments. However, this is far from the case. Qualified and experienced specialists are needed to systematically create useful content.

To save and preserve reserves in order to redistribute available resources, it is best to work with authors on a remote basis. However, there should be people in the team who will be responsible for the work of all employees, including remote ones. Only such a team can work productively on a corporate blog.

Publish as many articles as possible

According to Neil, in the corporate segment, on average, 22.8 articles are published per month. That’s 5.7 per week.

Surely you have noticed that many companies write quite detailed articles. In order for the content to occupy the maximum positions, its volume should be at least 3-4 thousand characters.

On the other hand, it would be wrong to assume that the length of the content will determine its place in the output. Not every professional author will be able to write more than 20,000 characters of meaningful and non-boring text. Difficult to understand and large-scale topics are recommended to be divided into several publications.

In addition, voluminous content will allow you to attract more users. According to statistics, more than 20% of potential customers learn about the company for the first time through its blog. And their number continues to grow rapidly.

Conversions are increased by readers

Actively reading the blog, the user trusts the company more and more and wants to perform any actions.

Users who read a blog are much more likely to become your customers than visitors who have never read it. Thus, without wasting your finances on an advertising campaign and running a corporate blog as usual, you can increase conversion.

Do not think that potential customers will appear immediately after one post. To attract more users, try to create new publications often.

However, just creating good content is not enough, you need to encourage readers to take certain actions using e-mail, remarketing, promotions, overlays, etc.

Don’t be afraid to use new formats

Companies mostly choose text materials in their blogs, so it is very difficult for beginners at the beginning of the journey. To be remembered, try other content formats: videos or podcasts are very popular today.

At the moment, a blog is becoming an increasingly effective way to attract leads and customers, which is why you should not neglect this strategy.

Beginners are encouraged to post guest posts on other platforms. This will attract more readers and bring your post to the top positions.

Over time, by increasing the content, there will be much more readers, and your company’s blog will take a strong position, delighting with positive statistics. To do this, it is enough just to have patience and talented specialists.