Consumers are often looking for informative content that educates them. Content is an effective way to create brand awareness and attract new customers. It creates new opportunities for businesses to engage with their target audience. Content marketing focuses on creating and publishing useful and relevant content for the target audience. Not only does it help attract new customers, but also plays a key role in building long-term relationships with them which in turn increases ROI.
According to HubSpot, 70% of companies invest in content marketing. Content marketing enables you to create different types of content that your customers find appealing. There is tons of information online that consumers can easily access. Hence, making your content stand out can be challenging. Creating quality, unique, and useful content is important for a successful strategy. In this article, we will discuss some best practices for content marketing that helps you create a successful strategy that resonates with your target customers.
But first, let’s look at the importance of creating high-quality content.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Audiences revisit your website
High-quality content can capture the interest of the users and keep them engaged. Content can help you attract new visitors to your website. If users find your content useful and relevant, they are more likely to visit your website again. Unique and quality content increases the amount of time users spend on your website. It creates a positive experience for the users which encourages them to revisit your website.
Generate quality leads
Your website will have many visitors. But not all of them have the potential to convert. With the help of content, you can attract quality leads. Quality leads have the potential of turning into paying customers. To capture these leads you can place CTAs or call to action buttons within your content. These CTAs can help convert visitors into leads.
These CTAs can lead the visitor to a relevant landing page where they can download a piece of content or book a free consultation. These are ways in which you can collect the user’s contact information which enables you to reach out to them. With the help of content, you can attract quality leads who are likely to invest in your business.
Visibility for your business
Content helps you increase brand awareness. Leveraging SEO or search engine optimization strategy for your content can make it more visible on search engine results pages. SEO is an important part of your content strategy. It can help search engines access your web pages and display them to users looking for that information.
Build trust and credibility
Great content can help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. When you create content addressing various topics relevant to your products or industry, target audiences view you as a credible source of information. Through content you are helping customers solve their problems and educating them. This enables your audiences to trust your business. Your content should provide audiences with the relevant information they need.
Customers are more likely to invest in brands that are industry experts. It helps customers trust the business. Content marketing is a great way to resolve customer problems so that they can trust you.
Create loyal customers
Content marketing has long-term results. It is not like any traditional marketing strategy that promotes a product to influence audiences in making quick purchases. This type of marketing does not guarantee that a customer will remain loyal to your brand. Content marketing can be a longer process, but it gives long-term results. It aims to create value for customers. Offering personalized content creates a good experience for customers with your brand. This encourages them to keep investing in your business. Content marketing helps you create meaningful relationships with your customers.
Attract, Engage, Delight
Content can be used throughout the buyer’s journey. This ties up with the point discussed above. When you offer personalized and valuable content to your leads based throughout their buying journey, you will gain a loyal customer. Content like blogs can be used to attract users to your website. These users can be converted into leads with the help of content like eBooks, newsletters, webinars etc. Leads can be further nurtured with case studies or brochures on products or services.
Even after the leads are converted into customers, you can continue sharing valuable insights to keep them engaged. This shows the customers that you have not forgotten them after they have paid you. Delighted customers continue to invest in your business for a longer period.
Here are some best practices for content marketing you can adopt for successful results.
Best Practices for Content Marketing
Know your customers
To create a personalized content strategy, you need to know your target audience. Many marketers think they know their customer, but often make mistakes when it comes to targeting the right audience. The best way to identify your target audience is to create buyer personas. Buyer personas allow you to map out all the characteristics of your target customer. This is useful in understanding what type of content your audiences are looking for. It helps you get better acquainted with their problems and challenges.
Buyer personas help you target your ideal customers. This enables marketers to carve out a personalized content strategy for their customers. Content plays a key role in not only attracting new visitors, but also influencing their buying decisions. Address your customer’s challenges in your content. Provide them with information and solutions that are useful. Hence, it is important to know who you will be targeting.
Don’t just advertise
The aim of a content strategy should be to educate audiences with relevant and useful information. This information helps users solve their problems. When you create content, you should focus on providing your audiences with the information they need. Content should not be about advertising your products or services alone. First, you need to establish yourself as a trustworthy source of information. Then the audiences will trust your business and think about purchasing your products or services.
Content should solve user’s problems, answer their questions, and offer useful resources and tips that make their lives easier. Offer them information about various topics in your industry to educate them. Audiences appreciate this type of content. You can talk about your products or services, just don’t make your entire piece of content about it. Provide users with informative content that encourages engagement.
Create pillar page and topic clusters
Topic cluster is a content strategy technique that helps you rank better on search engine results page (SERP). This type of content can generate more traffic on your website. Topic clusters are a collection of related web pages that link back to a pillar page. A pillar page is a page that covers all the sub topics relevant to one broad topic. The topic clusters cover all the subtopic in-depth. Usually, it is hard to rank for a broader topic on a search results page. However, with the help of a pillar page you can rank for general topics.
For this technique you need to conduct a keyword research to find out all the subtopics related to a topic. Select keywords that your target audience is looking for. Start creating blogs based on these subtopics and link them to the pillar page. This enables search engines to see that your pillar page covers all different topics. When you have extensive information on a particular topic, your web page is going to rank better on the search results page. It also helps your audiences find all the information they need and creates a good experience for them.
Avoid creating duplicate content
Sometimes when creating content, you could lose track of the topics you have already covered. If you have a blog, ensure that you keep track of all the topics you have covered in the past to avoid duplicating it. When you repeat content, it can harm the ranking of your webpages. Writing on similar topics can lead to keyword cannibalization. Which means that you have blogs or articles on your website that can rank for the same search query in Google. This can happen if the topics are too similar, or you have optimized them for the same keyword.
When writing for a broad topic as discussed above, ensure that you optimize all the different subtopics with relevant keywords. Different subtopics should focus on different search queries. This way you do not risk losing your ranking on Google. Moreover, audiences can also find information on various topics that educate them.
Keep your content up to date
Review your content and always keep updating it with the current statistics and information. One best practice is to review your content every year to keep it fresh and relevant. Since you need to keep updating content, ensure that you do not add any year or dates in your URL. Avoid changing your URLs. Include the year in your content title. This practice can make it easier for you to update your content and optimize it. Always remember that the URL should remain the same so that you don’t need to re-earn backlinks. Moreover, you don’t have to create redirects.
Use different content formats
When creating your content strategy consider the different types of content you can leverage. There are several forms of content that can be used to reach your target audience. According to a HubSpot survey in 2018, 54% of consumers wanted to see more content from brands or businesses they support. There's no doubt that video has become a powerful content tool and continues to influence people.
Moreover, HubSpot reported that Infographics are the fourth most used type of content marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute, Infographics have had the biggest increase in usage among B2B companies in the last four years, now at 67%. As seen from these statistics, visual content plays a significant role in influencing audiences. Audiences like to have quick information that does not require them to pay attention for a longer period. It is good to write in-depth blogs, but also experiment with these visual elements to keep your audiences’ attention. Share these various types of content on your social media platforms to drive more traffic to your website.
Measure your performance
Analytics is an important aspect of any successful marketing strategy. Data can give you useful insights on the performance of your campaigns. Analyse the performance of your website to see which pages are gaining more traffic. Take a look at the type of keywords you are ranking for. Monitor the performance of your important landing pages. There are many areas you can analyse and track to keep a check on your performance. Analytics can give you insights that can be used to improve your strategy in the future. Don't overlook this step and consistently monitor your progress.
There is no correct way to implement your content strategy. However, adopting these best practices for content marketing can help you create a more refined strategy. Content marketing will keep evolving and changing according to the behavior of your buyers. When implementing your campaigns keep your target customers in mind. Customers should be at the center of your strategy as you need to create relevant and personalized content for them. A good content strategy focuses on solving the problems of its target customers.
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