5 Ways to Get the Most from Content Marketing

Content marketing is essential to your business’ success as more and more people resort to the Internet to obtain information and answers. Creating content that is informative, generates leads and sales can be intimidating to even the experienced content marketers. According to Internet Live Stats 2021, there are more than 1.8 billion websites on the world wide web and counting. So you must be wondering how do you stand out in a sea full of content and information online? If you are trying to bring more viewers to your website and in turn generate more sales through successful content marketing, then continue reading. Here are 5 ways to make your content marketing more effective. 

1. Have a plan

A plan acts as a foundation to your content marketing strategy. Know what your business’ overall objective is for the content, the purpose of each kind of content, and what value it provides to your readers. The pandemic has impacted many businesses and has caused organisations to adjust their content marketing strategy as a result. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 94% of content marketers changed their strategy in 2020 as a direct result of the pandemic, significantly restructuring their messaging approach and adjusting their editorial calendars. 

Creating an editorial content calendar will be an essential part of this pre-content plan. When publishing content, different platforms require different frequency of posting. For instance, Twitter demands multiple posts a day while on Facebook you can get away with posting once a day. 

2. Know your audience

If the content you share with your audience are on matters that they do not identify with, you will not get many sales or conversions. Understanding your target audience is important; you will have a clearer picture of what content to write, the nature of the content and when and where it should be posted. When writing for your audience, keep your content pertinent to the industry you are in and concentrate on how your business' products or services can help resolve a consumer’s problem. 

With so many media platforms out there, it is wise to just focus on the ones your target audience uses rather than choosing all the popular ones. It is highly unlikely company directors would be on TikTok but LinkedIn would be an ideal choice. Save your time, money and effort by being selective and avoid spreading yourself too thin. 

Google Analytics and Facebook Insights are useful tools to get an idea of the demographics of your website visitors. When you have a better understanding of the people who visit your company’s website, you can better assess what kinds of topics and what style content you can use in blog posts, social media posts and website content. 

You can target your content even further by creating consumer personas that represent each of your company’s demographic groups. Write content pieces addressing the questions, concerns and interests of each persona. These labelled consumer personas will help pinpoint what tone and messaging will resonate with them. 

3. Quality over quantity 

This is the ultimate debate in content marketing. It can be tempting to constantly share content. However, your audience does not necessarily want more content, they want high-quality content that is valuable and informative. A large amount of low-quality content only takes up space and visitors will easily lose interest. 

There is a belief that more content equals more traffic to your website, simply because there is more of it to catch readers’ attention. This may be true to an extent however, what businesses need to thrive is not more traffic but new customers. It is vital to drive traffic, but you need to drive the appropriate traffic. Having one hundred visitors to your website who fit your ideal buyer profile and are likely to engage once they visit your website is far more valuable than one thousand visitors who ultimately have little interest in your offerings. 

4. Experiment

Which type of content grabs your audience’s attention? There are many content types, text being the most popular. Video is becoming a common medium that companies are utilising more. Using a range of content types helps enhance your company’s chances of reaching more people in your diverse target audiences. So, experiment and find out what works best for your business. Try images, videos, polls, testimonials, surveys, infographics, competitions, case studies and much more. 

5. Optimise, evaluate and improve your content 

Content, like other facets of Internet marketing, is improved when it is properly optimised for search engines. To make your content more effective, try to target one or two keywords. For text content this is easy to do. However, for images and videos this requires more work. Keywords should be included into ALT tags, file names, meta descriptions and hashtags. 

Regular analysis of your content will allow you to see the patterns between your most engaging content. These patterns will then shape and inspire future content ideas. It is also important to see which content does not engage your audience. If some of your content is not as effective as others, you can revisit and revamp it later on in your content strategy. 

A powerful content marketing strategy is a process that can take time and effort to properly execute. Here at Primeria, we can write and distribute effective and valuable content for your organisation, including copywriting, videos, images, infographics, how to guides and more. Contact us today to find out how we can take the responsibility of producing valuable content off your hands so you can focus on your business operations.