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CONTENT MARKETING 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. Whether you’re a marketer at one of the world’s biggest businesses or a small-business owner, chances are you’ve heard the term ‘content marketing’ thrown around quite a bit. That’s because it has increasingly become one of the most popular marketing methods for organizations of all sizes. So, what exactly constitutes content marketing? It can take a lot of different forms but the common denominator is content. Whether it is an infographic, a blog post or a video - content marketing is all about creating meaningful content as a way of attracting customers. 76% of marketers use content marketing as a part of their respective strategies. Source: B2C Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America. Truth is: This very ebook is a form of content marketing. It is us sharing our marketing knowledge to help inform our audience (you) about a new marketing trend. We are proving our knowledge and in turn we hope to see a few more leads. It represents an interesting new relationship between customers and businesses. Consumers want more than just a transaction. They want to engage, they want to learn, they want content. Okay, so now that we have your attention with that poetic opener, it’s time to get into what we do best: Laying down the best tips and tricks for SMB marketers looking to jump on the content marketing train. First, lets talk a little bit about what getting involved with content marketing looks like. LET’S GET STARTED It can be admittedly intimidating to begin the journey into content marketing. But the practice of it is not much more complex than your typical marketing efforts. The majority of the work actually happens before you even start posting content. FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WANT The first step to any marketing effort is defining what you want to get out of the content. Why is content marketing something you want to do? Do you want to be a thought leader in your industry? Do you want your customers to engage with your brand more? For starters, this should be viewed through a broader lens. But when you start rolling out content it is something you’ll need to consider for every piece, explained Litmus’ content marketing manager, Lauren Smith to the Content Marketing Institute. Having an understanding of the individual goals you are trying to achieve will help inform a lot of the creation process. SERVE, DON’T SELL This is a mindset that many SMB owners need to adjust to. When it comes to content marketing, the material doesn’t take the form of a traditional ad. You aren’t directly selling a product, you are aiming to address your customers’ needs. What issues do they face? What industry questions can you answer for them? Before you begin your content marketing plan, do some research in your space and figure out what content would best serve your audience. Smith suggested looking at competitors’ content or tracking well-known industry thought-leaders with Google alerts. This kind of preparation can arm you with the necessary ideas to map out a well-informed content calendar. CREATE A CONTENT CALENDAR Speaking of content calendars, it’s important to have a set plan going into content marketing. Consistency is key here. Creating a content calendar involves more than just mapping out dates. It involves a conversation about which platforms have the most traffic when. What content performs best on which channel? Does your audience frequent Facebook or Twitter more often? Do customers prefer blogs or newsletters? Once again, this involves some heavy research. Luckily, the majority of the necessary information is readily available via past marketing data, online resources and competitor examples. IDENTIFY THE METRICS The last prep step involves figuring out how you are going to measure the successes and failures of your content marketing goals. These metrics will obviously vary based on your desired outcomes. Smith explained that businesses trying to boost brand awareness would want to track new visits and inbound links. For companies trying to improve engagement levels bounce rates and pages per visit may be good places to start. Marketing without measuring is like playing in the Olympics and ignoring the awards ceremony. You need to clearly define your metrics to understand whether your content marketing efforts are taking home the gold or bottoming out in the loser’s circle. Alright, now you have all the tools you need to start creating content. But you don’t want to create just any old content. You want your materials to live among the content marketing greats. But the question remains: How do you knock your content marketing out of the park? We’re talking optimizing your content to get the most possible attention. Turns out, this is something plenty of marketers struggle with. While 76 percent of B2C marketers use content marketing currently, only 37 percent claim they have an effective strategy in place, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs’ B2C Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends. 4 TOP to optimize your tips & tricks CONTENT MARKETING WORK IN THOSE CTA’S When it comes to content marketing, calls to action have the potential to be a marketer’s best friend. This involves a couple of layers. In a broad sense, every single piece of content you create should have some kind of action item, explained Forbes contributor Neil Patel. This means actively determining what you want your readers to do after reading a post, watching a video, scouring an infographic etc. Without a concrete CTA, readers can be pulled in the wrong direction after interacting with your content. Crafting clever CTAs allows you to better guide your audience through the sales funnel and ultimately makes your content marketing more effective. Once you have decided on the action, you must decide how to implement CTAs. Some businesses choose a simple approach by simply stating what they want their readers to do next. This often takes the form of a closer sentence such as “To learn more, sign up for our weekly newsletter!” with a hyperlink to a sign-up form. Other businesses take a slightly more advanced approach by creating CTA buttons and embedding them at the end of the post. Hubspot contributor Gal Rimon claimed he was skeptical about the power of these kinds of CTA additions. However, when he started using them on his blog his company brought in twice as many marketing qualified leads. Use your content marketing materials to draw in readers for your other content marketing materials. BLOG IT OUT Blogging is a very powerful tool in terms of content marketing. Lots of businesses use their company blogs as an opportunity to share tips and tricks and establish themselves as thought leaders in their spaces. This can be as simple as sharing ideas for fun pizza recipes or as complex as creating a how-to post on properly repairing a car engine. Whatever the content, blogs are a great channel to create come valuable materials for your audience. And the marketing return is impressive. According to Hubspot’s 2015 State of Inbound report, marketers who leverage blogging report an 82 percent higher ROI from inbound marketing than those who don’t. Blogs have some serious potential to improve your marketing efforts as a whole. Not only can this materialize as concrete conversions but higher levels of engagement and lower bounce rates. Rimon noted that blog content can also serve as material for other key content marketing assets. He suggested taking particularly popular blog posts and creating infographics, eBooks and other engaging material. This not only saves time in terms of content creation but hits on a hot topic in a more visually appealing manner. UNDERSTAND THE POINT When it comes to content creation, planning should be a crucial part of every post. Marketers need to have a strong understanding of what content is going where and why. According to Patel, many marketers inadvertently sabotage their content marketing efforts by not mapping out a piece’s purpose and aligning it with the sales funnel. Without such alignment, your content will just float out in the world and never really help bring in conversions. Each of the three main stages of the sales funnel requires different kinds of content. Here is a brief summary of each: nurturing and starting a conversation with your audience. Think eBooks, case studies and white papers. Top of Funnel: This content tends to simple and engaging. It is created to answer a common question or open up the door to more conversation. Patel noted that this usually takes the form of a blog article or how-to video. Bottom of Funnel: Unlike the other two forms of content, bottom of the funnel material is less about value and more about sales. While it doesn’t have a specific form per se, its ultimate goal is to nail the conversion. This intended outcome will inform the tone and format of the post. Middle of Funnel: Instead of simply answering a question this kind of content addresses a problem and positions your product as a solution. However, subtlety is key as the most effective MoFu content is rarely about the hard sales pitch. This stage of the relationship is about lead The major takeaway here is that you need to understand what the content you are creating is aiming to do. If you don’t, you risk simply creating content for content’s sake. FIND WHAT WORKS One of the biggest mistakes content marketers make is focusing on the wrong platforms or materials. While in the beginning stages of content marketing it makes sense to try out various channels and content types, you need to pay close attention to what is working and what isn’t. Just because a particular platform is popular for other marketers doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your audience. Don’t waste your time and money investing in platforms or material that don’t work for you. If blog posts on LinkedIn create the most conversions for your business put your money there. If videos sent out as a part of an email campaign generate the most leads focus on those. Content marketing is all about investing in what works for your audience so make sure you’re not wasting your marketing spend on anything else. THE BOTTOM LINE Content marketing is a powerful force for businesses of all sizes. It proves your value to your customers and ultimately sets you up on a path to better marketing ROI, higher levels of engagement and increased customer loyalty. While setting out on your content marketing journey can be initially intimidating, the rewards are well worth the risk. By keeping these tips in mind you can ensure your content marketing efforts soar. Something else we can help you with? Just ask, [email protected] We love marketing, we do this every day. Veteran Experience. Modern Perspective. movingtargets.com 800.926.2451