If you had to ask any marketing expert about what their fail-proof, go-to marketing strategy involves, they will probably all answer “content”. Just like Bill Gates purported a couple of decades ago in his essay “Content is King”, content marketing is still the pillar of an effective, successful, future-ready marketing strategy. Keep reading for some great content marketing tips.
But to excel at great content marketing that drives tangible results (read: conversions and sales), you need to be aware of the latest trends and incorporate them into your content marketing plan. Our essential guide right here will offer you the top 5 best content marketing tips to follow in 2021 and beyond.
1. Understand Your Customers (and Their Journey)
Content can only hit the spot if you tailor it to the right type of customer. This means that, regardless of the actual quality of your content, if you don’t know exactly who you are addressing, you might be wasting valuable time (and money).
Therefore, as a first step, you need to thoroughly think about your audience. Who are the people that are going to view/read/consume your content? How old are they? Are they mostly men or women, or a mix of both?
Writing down all these features will enable you to build your so-called “buyer persona”. This is your ideal customer, the person who you believe will want (or need) to buy from you. When creating your buyer persona, remember to also add some emotional traits.
For example, are they new moms, dealing with sleep deprivation and the back-to-work dilemma? Are they single men looking to feel more confident in life, and searching for their other half?
Once you have identified your ideal customer, you will know almost immediately what kind of content they need in order to be (gently) persuaded to buy from you.
To go the extra mile, you should also consider tailoring your content to the specific stage of your customers’ journey. The content you create to win new potential buyers, for example, will be a lot different compared to the content that you craft to strengthen the loyalty of your long-established ones.
To simplify, remember that your content should be ATTRACTIVE to potential leads, ENGAGING to customers who are considering making a purchase, and REWARDING to those who have already bought from you.
Some very attractive content marketing ideas for new leads are product explanation videos, whereas blogs or social media posts can boost engagement, and email marketing can lead to new purchases through special offers, deals, and promotions.
2. Aim for Longer Content
It is true that this is the era of social media content, but did you know that, when it comes to search engine search algorithms and user search behavior, longer-form content actually works better?
So, next time you are about to write a blog post, check its length. If it is only a couple of paragraphs long, and you feel like you haven’t offered enough value or information, then flesh it out. Remember, though, that fluff is your sworn enemy: don’t just write long posts for the sake of it, or the quality of your content will suffer. Google’s search algorithm is heavily dependent on the user’s experience when they land on your site. If they quickly exit, because the content quality is weak, that will have the opposite effect.
You’ll want your content to answer specific questions that people ask, and to contain a few, well-targeted keywords that can make your post or web page pop up at the top of Google searches. Writing hyper-specific blog posts or web content will also strengthen your authority and credibility in that particular topic, driving more people to come back to you as a trusted source of information and inspiration.
3. Keep an Eye on Consistency
One of the most challenging aspects of content marketing is the ability to maintain and keep your content current and relevant. In a world where keywords change at the drop of a hat, and what is trending today might no longer be trending tomorrow, this can prove quite difficult.
However, some SEO experts state that you can use simple tactics to make sure that your content stands the test of time. For example, you should remove the year of publication from your URL, but remember to add it to your title.
Similarly, you should schedule your calendar to review your content once a year in order to keep it current. This means that you might need to update some of the meta tags, but sometimes a content refresh is also required.
Doing all this will help you to maintain higher levels of consistency, which will not only help you to rank in the SERPs, but also present yourself as a reliable and trusted author.
4. Refresh, Reuse, Recycle – the Art of Repurposing Content
One of the most amazing values of great content is the fact that it enables you to reuse it across different media and channels. For example, once you have created your blog post, don’t stop there: repurpose it for your Facebook and Instagram account, or shoot a YouTube video on the same topic.
This will allow you to make the most of all the content that you create, as well as reach out to more people and different customer segments, in a fraction of the time. Say, for example, that some of your customers are video lovers, whereas others are super-active on social media, and others read your blog every week.
By offering all of these categories the same, high-quality content in their preferred format, you will delight, inform, and convince them to stick around for longer.
5. Hyper-Personalize Your Content
Crafting content that is aimed at the specific person who is reading it is the ultimate way to drive value and promote sales. Think about your own experience. When you visit a website often, and this offers you an increasingly more personalized experience every single time, you feel valued, important, and looked after. Now, you’ll need to deliver the same feeling to your customers.
Keep monitoring and analyzing user activity on your website – who is visiting, which page they are looking for, how long they spend on your site – and start building different online experiences based on all these different metrics. You can do so either manually or with the assistance of personalization software, to automate the process and cut the time and effort required.
Content Marketing Tips: Ready to Write Content that Captures, Convinces, and Converts?
With our content marketing tips, you will be able to craft content that truly attracts more leads and persuades more people to buy from you.
Do you need more marketing help or insights? Contact us today, and we will be delighted to support your growth through creative content marketing.
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