the ultimate content marketing guide · this might be through social media channels, targeted...
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The ultimate contentmarketing guide
Growth Architects
Introduction
Gone are the days of messenger pigeons and people relying on public telephone boxes to get in touch with the outside world. Today, it’s all about content marketing.
Why? Well, today’s consumers live in a digital world, which means they can retrieve all the information they could ever desire at the touch of a button, putting them in control. And, they have become immune to traditional outbound marketing methods – such as billboards and television advertise-ments – and they expect brands to tailor communications based on their preferences.
I’ve written this guide to give business owners and marketing managers everything they need to know to create a content marketing strategy that’ll increase audience awareness and engagement, whilst driving business growth.
By reading the guide you’ll learn:
• The importance of content marketing• The benefits of it and why you should care• How to achieve content marketing success • How it works for other companies
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Content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertisingContent Marketing Institute, 2017
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Seth Godin once said: “Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left” and it’s easy to see why. Check out these statistics…
• Content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising (Content Marketing Institute, 2017)
• 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep (Demand Gen Report, 2016)
• 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day (eMarketer)
• Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%) (Aberdeen)
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing (DemandMetric)
• 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing (CMI)
Statistics and factsThe importance of content marketing
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47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales repDemand Gen Report, 2016
What is content marketing and why should you care?
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) identify content marketing as…
“…a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
In addition to this, it’s about communicating the…
• Right message• To the right audience• On the right channel• At the right time
But, why should I care?
Well, content marketing has been proven to help boost your search rankings, increase traffic to your website, and position you as a thought-leader, which in turn helps to push your customers down your sales funnel to a purchase.
• Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing (demandmetric)
• Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than those that don’t (impactbnd)
• Websites with blog content have 434% more search engine-indexed pages than those that don’t publish (techclient)
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How to achieve content marketing success
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A strong content marketing strategy involves four key stages. We’ve identified them below and given you a description of what to do to achieve content marketing success.
1. IdentificationTo begin developing your content marketing strategy you need to conduct research to gain insight into your audience, your objectives and how your business provides the solution to your audience’s pain points.
So, ask yourself, what are you trying to achieve from content marketing? This might be brand awareness, increased website traffic, or increased levels of audience engagement. Whatever it may be it’s essential to define your objectives at the beginning of your strategy development so you can focus your efforts on what you’re trying to achieve and ensure all your activity has a specific purpose.
Next, we recommend mapping out your ideal customer, so you understand what online and offline channels they engage with, what’s important to them, and how they’ll find and use your content. To do this you must begin by identifying their pain points and challenges, as this will enable you to create content that provides the solution to their problems.
Then, research into what social channels they’re most active on, what publications (online and offline) they read and turn to for information, and if they are members of any groups. Once you’ve found these, you can then analyse the types of content and topics that are achieving the most interactions. For example, maybe “how to” videos or vlogs are performing the best, or maybe first-person diary-style blogs achieve the most comments – by delving into this information you’ll be able to tailor your content to suit your audience’s preferences. And, you’ll be able to identify the gaps in information, and fill them with your content.
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2. PlanUsing all the information you’ve gathered; the next stage of the content marketing strategy is to create an activity planner.
At Origin, we produce content marketing activity planners for three to six months, as we feel this gives us enough time to really run a campaign effectively and produce enough content to identify top performing trends.
Things to include:
ObjectivesPossibly the most important section of your activity planner, it’s crucial that you include your objectives for your content marketing activity so that they are always at the front of your mind, and you can ensure that all the content you produce will help you achieve your goals. And, your objectives may differ each month, so it’s good to highlight this.
PersonaIf you have multiple personas and audience types you wish to target, it’s useful to identify which piece of content is relevant for them. This will help you focus on what’s important to them, it will make sure you include the relevant information, and it will help you see if you have equal weighting of content for each persona.
Monthly themeTo focus your efforts, it’s good to create a topic “theme” for each month. The theme should relate to your audience’s pain points, the different aspects of your business offering, or something that is trending in your industry.
Content amountOnce you’ve decided on your monthly theme, you’ll need to map out the amount of content you plan on producing, and you’ll be able to produce every month. It’s good practice to create a monthly large “premium” or “pillar” piece of content, which is supported by smaller pieces of “cluster” content. This way, you’ll be able to maximise your content production efforts and breakdown the larger piece of content to get more use out of it.
Content formatsNext, you’ll need to decide the content formats you’ll produce. There are many types of content formats available, depending on your audience preferences and what you’re trying to communicate. This includes – guides, blogs, social media postcards, video, infographics, checklists, templates, vlogs, images, case studies, white papers, ebooks, reports, webinars, research, presentations, quizzes and polls and podcasts, to name a few. It’s good to include a mix of content to keep your audience engaged, and unique (content that hasn’t been seen before online), rich (visual content – images and video) content is favoured by online algorithms, meaning it’ll be pushed up social media timelines.
How to achieve content marketing success
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51% of B2B marketers prioritise creating visual assets as part of their content marketing strategy HubSpot, 2019
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3. Amplification Once you’re happy with your content marketing activity plan, it’s time for the exciting part – production and amplification.
This is where your team will begin researching into the topics identified in the plan and crafting engaging content based on the tone of voice and messaging that appeals to your audience.
And, it’s good practice to ensure your content features a mix of promotional-led content that highlights the key features and benefits of your products, as well as informative, knowledge-sharing content that’ll help teach your audiences something they may not already know. This type of content will help position your brand as a thought-leader and will enable you to build credibility and trust amongst your audiences. In addition, it’ll encourage them to turn to you when they are in need of information in your industry.
We’ll ensure all your content is all uploaded to your website and published on relevant third-party sites, to position your brand as an industry leader and figure of authority.
Then, we’ll push all this unique content on the channels that your customers use the most, to ensure your messages and communications get right in front of them.
This might be through social media channels, targeted advertising, email marketing, PR publications or via direct mail, and it’ll help create multiple touch points with your audience to ensure your brand and service offering is always at the front of their mind and visible when they’re ready to purchase.
And, it’s worthwhile looking into hashtags and keywords too, so you can use them in the content you’re pushing out to increase the likelihood of your audiences seeing it.
How to achieve content marketing success
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4. Review and refineThroughout your content marketing activity, you should continuously track and monitor all levels of audience interactions to check how your content is performing.
To do this, dive into your social media analytics and uncover the level of likes, comments, shares, follower growth and engagement levels of all content you produce and push out. And, look at the impact that all this activity is having on your website, and content click-throughs.
In addition, identify which content types and formats are favored by your audience. This will ensure that the content you’re producing and pushing is getting the desired impact, and it will enable you to refine your activity moving forward.
How to achieve content marketing success
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Check out the illustration below which maps out a content marketing strategy that we conducted for one of our clients. It presents how content can be used across different formats and creates multiple touchpoints for audiences.
Don’t just take our word for it…
CONTENT MARKETING FORMATS
INFOGRAPHIC
BLOGS
DISPLAY ADS
SOCIAL POSTCARDSSOLUTION VIDEO
PREMIUM CONTENT BOOKLETS
LEAFLET
DIRECT TWITTER POST
LANDING PAGE
VIDEO BROCHURE PRODUCT GUIDES & DEMOS
LINKEDIN INTERACTION
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At Origin we understand how to align your content to your customers, and we have a dedicated content marketing team that can create and distribute relevant content to attract and engage your audience.
Our tried and tested approach to content marketing is based on the steps within this guide, and our team consists of social media experts, copywriters, PR professionals and SEO specialists.
Contact Origin’s content marketing team todayTo find out how our content marketing team can support your business today, just drop us an email on [email protected] or call our head office on 01926 422002.
Or, you can connect with me on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/chloemchughhill. Chloe Hill, Content Marketing Manager at Origin.
How can Origin help you?
