The cool thing about content marketing, aside from it’s an inexpensive form of marketing that works, it’s an investment that generally pays off over and over again. And, if you create multiple ‘evergreen cornerstone’ content, they’ll work even better for you, year after year. Generating content isn’t only about marketing though; it’s also about having a place, or hub, to showcase your work, optimization, getting it in front of people, all while making it valuable, relevant and engaging to build your audience and list. Here, we’ll cover four steps to content marketing success, i.e., content marketing 101. Let’s first define what exactly is content marketing.

What Exactly Is Content Marketing

Content marketing is not an invention that started when the internet took off. It’s been around in various forms since the beginning of marketing and advertising, eg., ads, tv shows, movies, and even in magazines via ‘advertorials.’

Essentially, this strategy is simply to create and distribute valuable, relevant, engaging, and consistent content to a specific audience with the goal of persuading them to act on your calls to action (CTA).

What’s powerful and special about content marketing in our current time is that you can distribute your materials online for free. That, of course, is due to the power of the internet. You don’t have to pay for an ad or to promote/boost your posts if you don’t want to. A few examples of content you can market are:

– Blogs/ Vlogs

– Email Autoresponder Messages

– Videos and Webinars

– Case Studies and Interviews

– eBooks, eReports, and White Papers

– Checklists and Cheat Sheets

– Social Media Posts and Updates

– Infographics, GIFS, Memes, and Images

Content marketing is rather simple, really. You share information to support your audience and create an experience, whereby, they engage with the content, feel satisfied and return for more.

1: Set Goals For Each Piece Of Content

Your job when using content to market is to understand your ideal customers’ buying cycle. The basic buying cycle includes awareness, consideration, and decision. However, many marketers like to add more to the buying journey, because there’re many steps in each of the three basic steps of the buying cycle.

For example, they may list the buying cycle as awareness, research, consideration, purchasing, and retention, instead. However, you decide how to define your customer’s buying journey. The more specific you are, the more targeted and effective your content marketing efforts will be.

Some examples of content marketing goals include:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase solution awareness and knowledge
• Drive targeted traffic to your website
• Build your email list
• Generate sales
• Convert leads to customers
• Drive upselling
• Improving retention
• And more

Determine the goal for each piece of content before you even start creating titles, keywords, and the actual content and know where to distribute the finished product.

2: Showcase Your Content

When engaging in content marketing, one of the steps is to choose platforms to publish and promote your content so that you can achieve your goals. Which platforms you should utilize will depend on the goal of the content, where your customers are in their buying journey, how they like to get information, where they hang out, and other factors.

There’re a lot of choices when it comes selecting platforms, but for many business owners, there’re three that will help your content marketing efforts: your website/blog, autoresponder, and social media platform(s).

Website/Blog

Blogs are interchangeable with websites and should be thought of as the same. The content you place there will be designed to bring awareness to the problems and solutions that you’re promoting to your ideal audience. It should be focused on informative, valuable, and educational content that helps your audience become aware of their problems and the solutions that you offer.

Email Autoresponder

When you choose an email marketing software, it’s imperative that you understand the terms of service of the platform. For example, if you plan to engage in affiliate marketing, some platforms don’t allow it, others encourage it. Read the fine print. Select a software that has room to grow, that you find easy to work with and understand, and that has the features you need now and in the future. Invest in a platform instead of using free versions. You need the features, and you need ownership.

Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms such as, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., are great for promoting your content. Choose one, maximum three, that your research shows your audience uses. It’s a good idea to set up a presence on other platforms, but focus on those one to three, until you know what works.

The type of content you put on social media should be designed to promote the content on your website and landing pages, so you can drive traffic and convert them into buyers.

Using social platforms to publish and distribute your content is an important part of effective content marketing that you shouldn’t skip.

3: Build Your Email List

The money is in the list. You’ve heard this many times, I’m sure. The reason is because it’s true, since the advent of email, and it’s more true today. Using content marketing to get people on your list is the best way to accomplish building your list, so you can nurture your audience with more content and convert them to customers and eventually turn them into brand advocates.

Provide Different Entry Points to Your Email List

To move more people to your email list, you need to have as many entry points as possible for your audience. Wispond cites that: ‘Studies have shown that business websites with 10-15 landing pages tend to increase conversions by 55% over business websites with less than 10 landing pages. And those with more than 40 landing pages increase conversions by over 500%.’

I’ll hazard a guess that they’re bigger sites, so, don’t be imtimidated by this data. However, make specialized landing pages for each product directed toward each member of your audience.

One product may have five or more landing pages, due to the audience you want to attract. For example, if you guest post on an expert’s site, you should create a specialized landing page for anyone who clicks through to your site from the article you posted.

Create low Price and Free Entry Level Products and Services

Your audience needs to build trust with you, and one way to do that is to give away freebies or promote low-cost products that grab their attention. These products can be in the form of workbooks, checklists, cheat sheets, video tutorials, discount codes, PDF guides, printables, trials, and more.

Plan Your Autoresponder Content

It’s not enough to just get people on your list, you must be prepared with autoresponder content in advance. You’ll need welcome, thank you, and educational emails to go out upon registration. Beyond that, you’ll need to plan for autoresponder content for pre-purchase, during purchase, post-purchase and beyond information, to go out to your list members based on how they signed up, so that it’s complexly personalized and relevant to them.

Promote Your Information

It’s not enough to create the landing pages, the freebies, or the low-cost and entry-level products, you must promote them, too. Promote your freebies the same way you promote your highest-priced items so that they get the attention they deserve. For instance, on social media, in your profiles and bios, on your website, within the content you create for your blog, in certain Facebook groups, your own communities and groups where your audience hangs out, guest posts, and within your emails.

Check the Numbers

Check the numbers and mind your data. The data you gather about your audience and their behavior through the various platforms you use, matters. It’s the only way to be sure you’re using your time wisely and getting results from your actions.

4: Get In Front Of Your Target Audience On Social Media

The most effective way to please your customers is to provide what they want, where they want it and in the format they want it. Therefore, create content that impacts your ideal audience and share it where they like to hang out on social media.

Know Which Platforms to use – There’re so many social media platforms that are very effective, but you only need to use the ones that are likely to attract your ideal audience. Avoid using more than three at the outset, if not you’ll get overwhelmed. Really, it’s recommended that you focus on one until you’re sure you’re getting a ROI. Nevertheless, it’s important to look at the demographic information about the audience that use each platform.

Use Compelling and Vibrant Imagery – Social media is a visual medium for the most part, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or the more obvious Instagram and Pinterest. Thankfully, it’s not hard to take or find great images for your posts. Canva.com is a great starting point.

Create Headlines That Grab Attention – No one likes to be tricked into clicking, so always create headlines that grab attention, but are straight forward and honest about what’s behind the image.

Customize Your Posts for Each Platform – Don’t create one post and adjust the image size for all social platforms. Instead, consider the personality of each platform and personalize each post with a new headline, new image, and new excerpt from the main content you’re sharing.

Know the Right Times to Share – Your audience will be more likely to view your content at specific times on each platform. Do some research and testing. Each platform will often have information to guide you about the best posting times.

Share More Than Once – Sharing the content you worked hard to develop is an important component of content marketing. Don’t share each piece just once. You may need to actually share it more than once per day, and continuously. For evergreen content, set up automation using software, such as Hootsuite.

Ask Questions and Engage With Your Audience – When sharing content on social media, don’t make it a one direction experience. Ask questions relative to the content to start a discussion. Always find ways to engage with your audience.

Advertisements – While content marketing is very effective without paying for ads, you can speed up your progress by paying for advertising. Do make sure you have everything in place and do your due diligence before investing in ads.

Leverage Communities – Not only should you use other people’s communities to engage with and share your content (in line with their rules). But consider creating and build your own niche community.

Influencers – You don’t have find influencers who have a million or even 100,000 followers to be successful. You can work with influencers with smaller audiences of 10K or more.

Social media shouldn’t be skipped if you want to succeed in content marketing in our current time. It’s essential to your content marketing efforts and success.

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Summary

It doesn’t matter if you have a product-based, or service-based business, using content marketing will serve to build your business, advance your branding, and increase your revenue.

So, ensure you set goals for each piece of content you create, set up platforms, invest in a reputable autoresponder to build your list and stay in regular contact with your subscribers and prospects. In addition, get in front of your target audience on social media, interact and engage with them to build likeability and trust.

Further, review your data. This is important, as if you cannot make a connection between actions and impact, you won’t know if, or, where you’re wasting your efforts.

Finally, if you plan out in advance what you intend to create for every product, service, promotion and in between, using a content-editorial calendar, you’ll create effective material on a regular basis. and give oxygen to your content marketing efforts.

Content that is educational and engaging will get you the results you desire.

 

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© Cherry-Ann Carew

Cherry-Ann Carew is an Online Business Coach, who supports emerging business owners simplify their start-up journey and helps existing businesses scale to the next level, so that they can earn uncapped income and live life on their terms.

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