Today’s online market makes it almost impossible for anyone to be seen or heard. With content saturating the web, it’s more important than ever to use strategies that set you apart from everyone else. Here’s what you need to know to make sure your content marketing campaigns aren’t drowned out in the sea of competitors.
Well-defined target market
The most important thing you’ll do before launching your content marketing campaign will be to define your target market. You need to know them inside out.
- Who are they?
- Where do they hang out?
- What are their pain points?
- How can you provide them with a solution?
Knowing the answer to these questions will help you narrow down your target market. If you have an existing business, study your current customer base.
- What do they have in common? You should also study your competitors.
- Who are they targeting?
- Is there a way you could drill down further and find a niche they are overlooking?
By really understanding what your customers want you’ll be able to customize their experience and set yourself apart from your competitors.
Engaging content
Now that you know who your audience is and what they desire, you can craft your content in a way that speaks to their wants and needs. If your content can evoke a reaction from your readers, then chances are you’re on the right track. Content that connects will create a loyal following.
Just remember that people have short attention spans. The average person will spend about 20 seconds on your website before deciding if it’s worth their time. That’s why it is CRITICAL to populate your website with content that engages your target audience.
SEO
Studies estimate that 93% of online experiences begin with search engines. With statistics like that, Search Engine Optimization can’t be ignored. SEO is the strategic approach to increasing the number of visitors to a website by getting a high ranking on the search result pages of a search engine. The goal of the search engine is to give the searcher the best answer possible in the fastest amount of time.
Getting your content to rank is a vital component of any content marketing campaign. If your content can bring value to your target market, search engines will start to recognize you as an authority, which will help with rankings.
Promotion
Promotion might be the trickiest element of any marketing campaign to master. While there is certainly no shortage of social media platforms to choose from, the focus should be on quality and not quantity.
Rather than try and promote your content on every social media platform that exists, try and stick to three or four (at most). Learn how to use them. Take advantage of every benefit they offer. You’ll get a bigger return on investment by focusing your energy on fewer methods.
Conversion tracking system
Now that you’ve defined your audience, created killer content, optimized your content for search, and promoted the heck out of it, it’s time to establish a system for measuring your campaign’s success. You’ll want to track certain metrics.
A good place to start is with consumption, sharing, leads, and sales. The data doesn’t lie. The numbers will tell you how your campaign is performing. And knowledge is power. This information will be able to tell you what you’re doing right and what needs improvement.
These five components will give a strong foundation to any content marketing campaign. It will take some time and some experimenting to get the content marketing mix just right, but the more you do work with it, the easier it will become and the sooner you’ll be on your way to creating successful campaigns.
4 Responses
What tools do you use for A/B testing or conversion tracking? I’m looking towards getting an app to help A/B testing, but their doesn’t seem to be much in the way of choice. I’m curious if there is a favoured tool that 343 use?
Here are two articles with some suggestions for A/B testing.
https://level343.com/acquisition-and-the-kpis-to-track-it-metric-measuring-part-deux/
https://level343.com/split-testing-improve-results-without-spending-more-money/
Hope these help!!
Great piece of information, but the best thing to write engaging content.
Thanks for saying so Robin!