As the digital marketing landscape changes, the diminishing effectiveness of traditional marketing becomes more and more prominent. And especially with the rise of social media, many companies are now starting to discover the power of content marketing and embracing its prowess.
Contenting Marketing is one of the most effective methods to connect with your target audience and stand out from your competitions. However, implementing Content Marketing into your broad Marketing plan is not an easy task, especially when there is a need to produce content that has quality, and yet able to engage your target audience.
According to the Content Marketing Benchmark report in 2015, almost 90% of the enterprise marketers are focused on creating more engaging, and higher-quality content. It is no wonder that the content marketing industry is the fastest evolving area of digital marketing in today’s world.
Here are three golden tips that I have identified to help you optimize your content marketing strategy:
Tip #1. Targeting your Audience Correctly
As a content marketer, you must learn to define your audience and understand them. Knowing the types of content that will interest your audience will ultimately ensure that you will produce the right content to captivate and engage them.
Content marketing is about shifting the emphasis away from the action of selling the product, but instead it focuses more towards selling the idea of that product. By learning how to curate relevant content from the web or producing relevant original content, you can provide your audience with information they want and need, and subtly bring out your brand message to them. When you can continually provide content that resonates with your audience, you ensure a higher chance of conversion.
Tip #2. Power of Visuals
Content marketers should invest in visual content. We live in a visual world. When it comes to Content Marketing, visuals help in allowing the audience to absorb information better. Studies have shown that visuals are processed 600,000 times faster than text. The evolution of digital tech also allows content marketers to use different types of multimedia such as videos, infographics, and compelling images to tell their stories.
Whether you are telling a story through videos or still images, power visual storytelling makes Content Marketing more effective as companies can build a closer connection with their audience, hence developing greater awareness and grasp of the marketing message. Furthermore, it creates a better opportunity for content sharing among peers, or via social networks.
For example, more and more companies are engaging YouTubers to churn out interesting, yet informative videos to engage their audience. And such videos encourage social sharing, which gives companies a wider marketing outreach.
Tip #3. Repurpose your Content
In order to get the most out of the value of the content you are providing to your audience, you must understand that content must be repurposed to be distributed in different formats on different platforms to target different audiences.
Through repurposing, you can cross-promote your content across multiple channels. For instance, you can include a link to your blog post or an infographic about the same topic on your YouTube video, which sends visitors to your website or your other owned media. This targeted traffic reinforces your brand message and increases the chances of successful conversion.
Repurposing also extends the longevity of your content. Your audience may stumble upon your content after it has been repurposed, through a different channel. Also, repurposing evergreen content stretches the life-cycle of your content even further, as it remains relevant for years to come. While news-related content has a distinct shelf life, articles related to useful tips and advice can continue to stay applicable over a longer period.
What’s Next?
As the consumers start to be less interested in promotional content and more drawn towards thought-leadership quality content, companies will begin to invest more into Content Marketing.
Therefore staying ahead of the curve is important by always exploring new platforms and methods of marketing, and never get too comfortable.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War