Content marketing is on the rise, and organisations devote more and more of their marketing budgets to creating targeted material, it is clear content marketing is an approach worth considering.
Investment in content marketing sees organisations create and distribute relevant material to inform and engage a specific audience, with the objective to direct profitable customer actions. Rather than relying on the one-way advertising messages of our marketing past, organisations are now looking for ways to develop deeper two-way connections with audiences.
This objective throws up challenges for setting goals around and crafting the right content to market their brand.
1. Producing engaging content, and enough of it
Consistency is the key when it comes to engaging your audience over the long term. Create content that works across a variety of channels including print, such as magazines and white papers and digital, such as your brand’s website, blog and social media.
Your content marketing strategy should include knowing where, when and how to distribute each piece of content for each campaign. Each audience segment will have different content and channel preferences. But make sure you don’t flood your audience with too much content. Research their media consumption habits before creating your content calendar.
2. Matching content to the brand vision
The first step of a good content marketing campaign is to work out the story you are telling about your brand. Without this vision to refer back to throughout the campaign, your content will not hit the mark and may actually negatively affect your audience’s perception about your brand.
Personalised content is imperative. Relevant content targeted for each audience segment will result in better engagement. This, in turn, drives the customer actions you are looking to achieve. Each audience segment will have different content needs and also different channels where they will connect with your brand’s content. In other words, engage your audience by producing content that speaks directly to those you wish to target.
3. Getting management buy-in
Many organisations are using content management as a way to present their business as a thought leader. If this is a goal for your organisation, increasing the way your brand connects with its audience is an easy sell for you.
An organisation’s overall content marketing strategy should be set at a senior marketing level to ensure it matches the brand vision and overarching marketing objectives. This also means senior management is more likely to agree to the strategy.
4. Resourcing content marketing well
As mentioned earlier, producing the right type of content, and enough of it, is a major challenge for marketers. If your organisation doesn’t have an in-house content team, this challenge can be solved by outsourcing content creation to a content specialist. These type of agencies can help you to produce consistent content for your brand. Many organisations invest 25 per cent of their marketing budget on content marketing, indicating the importance of this strategy in current campaigns.
5. Effectively measuring your content marketing
Rather than leaning on measures like pages views or content downloads, an effective content marketing strategy needs a clearly defined system to demonstrate ongoing results. Such methods could be data capture programs, lead nurturing systems, conversion tools, web analytics, social listening and surveys. Maximise ROI by using as many relevant channels as possible and commit to regular reviews to ensure your content is hitting the mark and still matches your brand vision every time.
