Content marketing is here to stay. Over 91 percent of B2B utilize content marketing to reach customers, according to the Content Marketing Institute. The way businesses promote and advertising their brand is changing in response to changing consumer tastes. Around 70 percent of consumers now say they would rather get information about a company or business from a blog or informational post instead of the traditional print or digital advertisements. This means businesses looking to increase their presence or build their brand are being increasingly shown the benefits of employing content marketing in its efforts. As more consumers seek great content and begin to associate them with brands they love, here is how to successfully use content marketing in your brand building agenda and avoid those all too common content marketing failures.
Build A Content Marketing Strategy Based On What Your Audience Wants
Building a brand involves telling a story. Storytelling remains one of the most powerful forms of advertising and a very effective way to capture audience attention. In fact, science has shown our brains are hardwired for storytelling. In reality, 80 percent of consumers want a brand with a story behind it and many industry experts have tipped brand storytelling as the future of marketing.
However, businesses must tread carefully here. While you want to create a brand identity, you also want that identity to resonate with your target audience. This means doing your market research, listening to what your audience wants, and planning your content strategy around it. For instance, when choosing the type of content to include in your content marketing strategy, don’t just use trending articles and expert suggestions. Instead, utilize platforms such as social media and statistics on what consumers are tuning into. Alternatively, you can ask them directly using social media polls.
One Of Your Best Tools Is A Business Blog
The world of content marketing is vast, and for smaller businesses, it can be confusing. The blogging arena has exploded in recent years. Now there are millions of blogs competing for consumer attention and clicks online. Starting a business blog is a great way to tell your brand’s story and remain in control of how your audience views you. According to Demand Metric, businesses with blogs produce 67 percent more leads per month than those without. Consumers also want to read content that is based on trusted information.
In addition to ensuring your blog’s theme and message correlates with your overall content marketing strategy, businesses should aim to include goal-oriented information. So while your blog content must offer worthwhile information, your content should also evoke an action from your consumer such as subscribing to your mailing list or checking out a product in your online store. Therefore in each of your blog content, a strong action evoking line is needed. You also want to embrace consistency. Customers look for consistency in a brand’s product quality, advertising, and content marketing efforts. Having a consistent approach including regular content posting timings, a streamlined theme, and identifiable graphics across all platforms all work towards building brand association.
View Your Content As Parts To An Overall Data Analysis
One of the biggest mistakes made in content marketing is the underutilization of marketing data. If you want your content marketing efforts to remain relevant, you need to beyond basic indicators like web traffic or blog readers per post. So while your website bounce rate will tell you the number of visitors and time spent, it does not give you deeper insights such as whether the content you are publishing is what your consumers are looking for.
It’s important to view your consumer metrics as parts of the content marketing puzzle. Go beyond the basic metrics like page views or users and opt for more advanced analysis such as segmenting your traffic according to demographics, products, or keywords. To gain more insight, you can also add in metrics such as medium or opt to separate mobile users from desktop traffic.
Last but not least, plan your content ahead of time but be flexible enough to adjust it leading up to its publication. Research by CoSchedule showed that planning content is the most difficult step for many content marketers. Utilize some of the content marketing tools on the market like BuzzSumo, that analyses the content that would be most effective for your brand or Portent’s Content Idea Generator for high-level titles and ideas. To help with consistency, use a scheduler like CoSchdeule’s Marketing Editorial Calendar.
Taking these steps will help your brand satisfy a key demand: the provision of quality, consistent consumer-oriented content. Moreover, be prepared to adjust your content marketing strategies in an organic way that aligns with evolving trends for the best customer experience.
