Product pitches focused on sales and talking about features only address pain points for people who know they want to buy. What about the people who’ve identified that they have an issue but can’t articulate the problem, let alone understand the best solution? If your sole focus is on pitching your products, you’ll miss out on connecting with people who are looking to solve problems your brand can help with.
Education is what creates a better customer. Content marketing is a powerful tool you can use to drive traffic to your website, generate leads, establish client relationships, and more. Content marketing done well helps increase brand awareness, customer retention, sales, and up-sell opportunities. That being said, a strong content marketing strategy needs to include specific goals and plans to accomplish those goals. Here are some specific, goal-oriented content marketing strategies that can help your brand:
OPTIMIZE CONTENT
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is, at least, a secondary goal for all content, if not the primary goal. Well-written, relevant, informative content helps to build brand and consumer relationship. But SEO is much more than just picking a keyword or two to throw into your content where it may or may not make sense.
If you are a WordPress user, you can use a resource like Yoast SEO to provide specific feedback on how well your optimization efforts are going. The website hosting platform, Squarespace, also has built-in tools to help understand the performance of your site in regards to SEO.
Semantics are becoming increasingly important as the average consumer creates search queries much in the way they would speak the request. The growing popularity of voice search will amplify even more the need for content specialists to focus on user intent of keywords versus the keywords and phrases themselves.
To provide high quality and in-depth experience for your site visitors, you’ll need to create content that solves a problem, that motivates people, and connects with their pain points, emotions, and needs. Simply answering a question is no longer enough. Your content must engage visitors and guide them towards the next action desired.
The key will be to create content that comprehensively answers any questions your target audience might ask in a search. Take that one step further and anticipate possible follow up questions and create content that provides answers to those queries as well. These extra layers of content are what will help your site rank higher as Google and other search engines focus not only on content quality but also on the depth and breadth of a site’s content.
One way to optimize your content is to provide solutions to question keywords. For example, if you sell a variety of dog harnesses different question-based keyword topics you might write about might include: How do I know what size harness to buy? Focus your content on how your harnesses best fit different breeds of dogs and different types of energy levels. Another example might be: How do I know it’s time to replace my dog’s harness? Focus your content on how to spot wear and tear of harness material, the clasping mechanisms, and so on and emphasize the importance of keeping our pets in their restraints for the safety of our beloved animals.
Offer informational posts, links to your products at the end of the posts, and reasons why those harnesses are perfect for their dog’s needs. Write a separate post for each type of breed because they’re all different keywords. This strategy works because it helps to establish trust, demonstrates value, and then immediately offers your product as a solution to a problem they are currently experiencing.
DRIVE TRAFFIC FROM MULTIPLE CHANNELS
Content marketing is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website. To maximize potential traffic, don’t just rely on SEO, actively distribute your content on multiple channels.
Sharing brand content on social media to get your content in front of an active audience. You also increase the potential for new audience members because social content is so easily shared and passed on to a larger group of consumers. Keep your social posts visual heavy and use the comment section to describe the value proposition of your content.
Guest post on other sites. The key is to target sites that are credible and relevant to your target profiles. You usually benefit from at least one link back to your own non-promotional content which can send numbers of relevant users to you. Guest posting also provides you backlinks which help with SEO efforts.
Email relevant content. Subscribers don’t necessarily want to receive an email notification every time every post goes live. But if you segment your target audience and send out specifically relevant posts or an email with a targeted post paired with a written message, it can be well-received.
ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY
Building credibility and trust is a strong goal for content marketing. An excellent way to do that is with “expert posts” that feature advice from known influencers in your field. These posts are even more powerful when you have advice and quotes from multiple experts. This strategy helps show your brand’s connections within your industry and your ability to get a quote from someone of a high caliber.
If you are unable to get direct quotes from individuals, you can quote a small passage from their posts and speeches. The key is to provide credit to that person and to link to their site. This still provides the benefit of establishing industry connections and demonstrates that your brand is following credible people. The links can also put you on the radar of those influencers which may make them more likely to share your content.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S A BIT MORE…
In addition to the specific strategies discussed above, there are a few other things you should consider with every piece of content you create:
Include a call to action to encourage the readers of your content to take action whether it is an email, blog, or social post. Align your call to action with the goal on which the content is focused so that it is relevant and obviously within the context of the content.
Make sure you have a specific goal in mind for each piece of content. You can use a blog post, webinar, newsletter, etc. to accomplish multiple goals but the key to the most effective content is to have a specific and singular focus for each piece of content.
Distribution is important – if your content isn’t getting in front of people, it will never help you accomplish your goals. But even more important is to ascertain the impact of your various content marketing channels. Use Google Analytics and in-platform resources to track your referral traffic and understand which sources are performing the best.
CONCLUSION
Content that is goal-oriented and provides a solution to a challenge of your target audience is some of the strongest content your brand can push out. The most effective way to accomplish specific goals is to put in place strategies that optimize your content and to follow that up by having a clear and concise call to action that encourages readers to take the next step.
The experts at Strategy Driven Marketing would love to use their experience and expertise to help you create and distribute high-quality, engaging content. Contact us today to learn more about how we can provide assistance and take some weight off the shoulders of your team!