A content marketing mix is a set of content that’ll help captivate and engage ideal audiences for your brand. This may include blogs, videos, infographics, and more. However, you can’t just put out content for the sake of it. It’s important to have a plan and to have a clear goal as to why you’re putting out a certain type of content. Not all types of content will work in your favor. The goal is to create the right blend to convert or retain your target customers.
Creating the perfect mix
The perfect mix isn’t the same for all brands. You need to create your unique mix based on what makes your target audience tick.
Understand the needs and interests of your audience
You should learn and understand what your audience needs, what pain points they’re dealing with, and what their goals and concerns are. This way, you can make sure that you’re putting out relevant content that’s valuable to your customers.
The best way to engage your audience is to create content that provides answers and solutions to possible questions and problems they’re having. It should contain information that’ll catch their attention and keep them interested. If your audience finds one of your posts interesting, they are likely to share it within their network.
Set a clear goal for your content
You should be clear about what you want to achieve when creating content. Knowing what specific goal you’re aiming for can help you plan what type of content to put out and how to create it.
Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Create awareness about an important subject? Drive conversions and boost sales? Plan your goal and, to make sure that this will contribute to the overall progress of the business, measure the performance of each content you post.
Check available resources
The content marketing mix you create should be something that your team can handle and afford. Creating a mix that’s too grandiose and complicated might be too much for a small team to manage. The risk here is that there might be delays in posting content or you might overspend, hurting the business’s finances rather than increasing it.
If your team is too small for the content marketing mix you’re determined to manage, you have the option to hire in-house team members or seek the services of freelancers.
Refine your content marketing mix
Once you have come up with a mix, test it to check if you need to adjust and revise your strategy. You wouldn’t know how effective it’ll be for your brand until you try it out. Make sure to take note of areas or types of content that didn’t work as they should and make significant changes and test it again.
It’s important to monitor the performance and results of your mix and to create a chart to plot them. This way, you and your team can easily review the data and determine which strategies, approaches, or content types need tweaking.
Stay consistent with your mix
It’s important to be consistent with your content mix as this is the best way to make your brand recognizable and to gain your audience’s loyalty. Put out a consistent amount of content and follow a consistent schedule.
Make your content speak in a voice that’s consistent with your brand, regardless if it’s a podcast, a vlog, or an infographic. Make a list of questions that you can answer in any type of content. Use a format or style that’ll make a mark on your audience’s memory.
If you’re planning to make a change, in your brand or the content you put out, prepare your audience for it by posting teasers before the grand launch.
Content types for your unique mix
There are different types of content you can add to make the perfect marketing blend. Some of the most common and most effective are:
Blogs
Blogging has been the golden standard in content marketing. Through blogs, brands are able to communicate with audiences around the world in a fast-paced digital world. Is it still effective? As long as people are spending most of their time online, it’ll be.
If you’re blogging for your brand, make sure that it’s interesting, well-written, and helpful to your marketing strategy. You can make new blogs or update and rework blogs in your archive.
Videos
Video marketing is very popular nowadays. It makes information easier to absorb and remember. Most people are visual learners. It’s more effective to understand something they see than to have to imagine it from written text.
In the past, creating videos was something only well-budgeted marketing teams can create. Now, using an online video editor, you can create professional-looking videos for free.
When making videos, it’s important to keep them short but meaningful. Audiences prefer watching short-form videos like those on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts because they don’t have to commit too much of their time to one video alone.
No budget for voice talent? AI voiceovers are now available, allowing you to apply the narration yourself. It’s also important to add subtitles or captions as a lot of viewers watch videos on silent mode, especially when they’re in public places.
Tips for applying your content marketing mix
- Coordinate your content marketing with SEO and social media. Working on each one individually might make your overall brand look and sound inconsistent and irrelevant. Plus, uniting them can help minimize time and effort on your end.
- Post to as many platforms as possible. There are many digital platforms out there and the most popular are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Posting all your content in all those places can help increase your reach and attract visitors to your website.
- Generate content in-house. Outsourcing is a helping hand most marketing teams will find beneficial but it can be detrimental to your brand efforts unless you’re willing to convert the content to match your brand voice every single time. Content should be generated in-house as it’s a more affordable option and it can guarantee consistency.
- Personalize your content. If your content is so generic that it looks and sounds just like any other blog or video out there, then you’re doing nothing that’ll create a huge impact on sales. Personalize the experience for your target audience to convert them into loyal customers.
- Narrow your target audience. It’s natural to want to reach everyone but promoting to a more specific audience is more effective. Even if so many people see your content but aren’t generally interested in it because it isn’t something that would benefit them, your content won’t generate leads. But if you’re targeting a specific audience, like mothers or kids, it’s more likely that your efforts will be repaid almost a hundred percent.
It’s all in the mix
Mixing and matching the right set of content for your marketing strategy is no easy task. But once you create the right mix and test results show that it’s effective for your brand, future marketing efforts won’t be as burdensome. Don’t be afraid to test the waters. Who knows? The most unconventional mix might just be the most profitable for your brand.
