How to create an effective digital content marketing strategy. Here’s a fun fact: 68% of online experiences begin with a simple search, and 53% of shoppers say they constantly research the company or product before purchasing. And what do they look for when they search? Practical, helpful, and relevant content to help them make the best possible choice.
This research is why content marketing is one of the most effective and powerful marketing methods. If your business doesn’t produce content, your competitors will, making it easier to attract your customers.
Read on to learn why you need a digital content marketing strategy for your business and how to create one the right way.
Why Does Your Business Need a Content Marketing Strategy?
Content is the foundation of digital content marketing because it’s one of the most effective ways to grow online and establish a strong brand presence. Content marketing includes writing blog posts to newsletters, videos, and social media posts.
If you’re looking to become an authority in your niche, attract your ideal customers, and be the first brand, they choose when they decide to buy, you need a content marketing strategy. Luckily, creating one from scratch can be reasonably simple if you have a solid plan and clear goals.
Set Your Content Goals and KPIs
Every piece of marketing content should have a goal to help your business grow. For example, social media posts should always have a call to action, lead to a link, or be another step in the sales funnel. Likewise, every blog post should be a part of either a series or a content pillar to help make visitors a targeted lead.
Setting Content Goals does not mean saying you should spend all the time with your content but instead use it to build trust and credibility with potential customers. In addition, setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can help you optimize and plan your content, so it always serves a greater purpose.
Analyze Your Target Market
When creating digital content, you have to know the target market. Analyze and define your target market to understand what content is suitable. You can have a few different buyer personas: customers with different demographics, needs, and preferences, and for each type, you’ll need to create different content.
For example, if you’re selling candles, you may have two different kinds: one type comes in fun colors, vibrant scents, and playful packaging. The other type is a more luxurious scent with black and gold packaging and a neutral color.
These two products have two different target markets, so the content you create in blog posts, videos, newsletters, and social media posts will be very different.
Know Where You’re At Currently
Before creating an effective content marketing strategy, you need to assess your current situation. For example, does your blog and website look professional? Do you need to re-design them?
What about your social media presence and engagement? How many followers and email subscribers do you have? Do they read your emails or don’t open them at all? Once you know your current standpoint, you’ll know what to do in the future and make a content plan accordingly.
Make an SEO Plan
Search engine optimization and your content marketing strategy are two sides of the same marketing coin. You need content to optimize with keywords, meta titles, and meta descriptions. On the other hand, you can optimize your website for speed, user experience, and mobile-friendly design, but you still need content to keep visitors on the page.
SEO without content and vice-versa is incomplete and won’t get you far. For this reason, you need to develop your content strategy and SEO simultaneously and use them strategically.
Create a Content Plan
Content creation and posting can be overwhelming, so you need a content plan. This content plan is a document where you’ll write down every piece of content you’ll create, along with deadlines and dates of posting. A plan will help you stick to a schedule to achieve your business and content goals.
You can make a content plan using Excel sheets or pay for specialized content planning software. Not sure how to approach this? Consider hiring a digital content agency to help you create the right content plan and calendar for your company’s needs.
Use Email Marketing
One of the best digital content tips for any business is email marketing. Email marketing is hands down the most effective and affordable marketing method for capturing leads.
For successful email marketing, you need an opt-in magnet or a freebie as an incentive for visitors to leave their email addresses in return for your offer. When visitors leave their email addresses, they usually permit you to contact them again. As a result, you can send newsletters, sneak peeks of new product launches, discount codes, and freebies valid to your subscribers.
Track and Measure Your Results
To make sure your digital marketing techniques work, you need to track and measure the results they bring in. Website Analytics is the best way to see where you need to improve your efforts, which content performs best, and what’s lacking or underperforming so, you know not to waste time and money on it.
If you set goals and KPIs, tracking these will help you create a more effective content strategy in the long run. You can track everything manually or use marketing tools, and software specifically made for this purpose.
Craft Your Unique Digital Content Marketing Strategy With These Tips
Whether this is your first business or you want to improve your existing one, content is still king if you will attract new customers online and build strong brand awareness. With these tips, you can create a digital content marketing strategy that’ll move your business forward and take it to the next level.
Want to boost traffic to your website and make your content efforts pay off? This article talks about the best ways to increase web traffic quickly and easily.
