April 24, 2019

The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing For Your Business

A Comprehensive Guide That Will Help You Achieve Results!

Businesses use content marketing to strategically place themselves online to attract a targeted audience. Ultimately, content marketing drives profitability while enhancing the customer experience.

Why is content marketing vitally important for a business to succeed in today’s digital world?

What is Content Marketing?

Content is curated consumable information that is shared with a very specific target audience. The ultimate goal for content marketing is to enhance the lives of the end user.

Content marketing is the strategy used to promote branding through awareness. It provides a bridge to connect the brand with the target audience.

Businesses use various content platforms for marketing their product. The digital era has reversed the interaction between an entrepreneur and the customer. In the past, marketing was done mainly through belly-to-belly. That human element has been replaced by virtual methods of obtaining and retaining customers.

How is content distributed?

Content is distributed through three media channels.

Paid Media
1. Ads
Earned Media
1. Social media posts, shares
2. Reviews
3. SEO
Owned Media
1. Websites
2. Blogs

Did you know that 84% of consumers expect content to be

entertaining and valuable?

Content Marketing: The Basics

It takes a certain skill, knowledge-base, and expertise to effectively market content in a way that has an impact. We will break down and unpack each element of content marketing, so you have an overall basic understanding.

1. Purpose Of Content Marketing

Raises awareness of your brand with a specific target audience.
Researches and analyzes the market to build compelling content.
Gets the target audience to consider buying your product.
Gets the target audience to buy your product.

2. Forms Of Content

Ads
Social Media

○ Facebook

○ Twitter

○ Google+

○ YouTube

○ LinkedIn

○ Pinterest

○ Instagram

Blogs / Articles
Email
Apps
Video / Podcasts / Webinars
Infographics
Newsletters

3. Benefits Of Content Marketing

Increases your visibility and brand awareness
Gives your business a competitive advantage
Generates traffic
Promotes authority with rankings
Provides channels for your target audience to communicate (reviews, posts, etc.)
Converts your leads into buying customers
Nurtures “like-know-trust” factor
Gives your business value
Profitability

4. Commons Mistakes In Content Marketing

Your content will either build up or tear down your business. It helps to have insight into things that you should not do when it comes to content marketing.

Not Knowing What Your Target Audience Is

How will you know what to market if you don’t have a target audience? Your content should be target-specific, or you will lose your readers. Your investment of time and money will be lost.

Content Lacking Quality And Value

Content should be fresh and recently posted or distributed. No one wants to read old information and will walk away from a blog, etc. that hasn’t been updated.
Content should:

○ Contain researched keywords.

○ Have a good readability score.

○ Be free of grammatical errors and plagiarism.

○ Be formatted with appropriate headings.

Not Repurposing Existing Content

Content can be used over and over again. Rewriting, dividing, or rebuilding your content are ways to reinvest in information you have used before. By doing this, you are extending the life of something you have already created and saving money by doing it.

5. Tips To Successfully Market Content

Now that we have covered a few of the ‘don’ts’ of content marketing, we will give you some great tips on how to be at the top of your game!

Blogs

Blogs are the highest trending form of content for promoting your brand. Did you know businesses that have blogs will see an increase of 55% more visitors? Your SEO rankings will be higher while bringing in more traffic.

Blog often and don’t let your blogs get stale. People will quit visiting a blog that hasn’t been updated.
Use a variety of formats and include useful things for the reader such as how-to guides, planners, videos, etc.
Add contextual links to enhance readership.
Don’t forget to incorporate keywords that have been researched.
Know your topic.
Use images and infographics to make things interesting.
Always have a concluding paragraph at the end.

Use Long-Form Content

The Quartz Curve was developed to rank the performance of the word count in content. It determined that long-form content (over 800 words) not only ranked higher but had more reader engagement.

Increases reader time on websites.
Provides the reader with information that is of value.

Incorporate Media

We live in an instant gratification culture and media delivers quick content. Video and podcasts offer something that written content doesn’t; an emotional connection. The downside to video and podcasts is that Google does not rank them very high.

According to Neil Patel, “video content increases purchase intent by 97% and brand association by 139%.”

The upside of adding video and podcasts to your content is you can create more content that is of value in less time.

Use Media To Attract Different Target Audiences

Don’t make your video/podcast into an infomercial. No one wants to watch something with pushy sales tactics.
Use compelling content where real people share real stories and life experiences.
Target those who are interested in the content.
Target your audience based on the device or platform they use.

Tap Into Email

Content marketing and email go hand-in-hand in building a following with a target audience. Email is an easy way to send and share content. Email is an ideal channel to market through because people give their permission to receive your emails.

Emails should…

Have quality content that is grammatically correct and relevant.
Be appealing with images and proper format.

○ Have purpose and value for the target audience.

○ Not feel spammy.

○ Include a call-to-action.

○ Reflect a personal approach.

Nurture Campaigning

MarketingSherpa reported that 79% of marketing leads fail to convert. This is because those leads are not nurtured.

Having a strategically planned way to get your leads to convert is done through a nurturing/drip campaign. A series of email messages that are prewritten with a personal touch is sent to leads. This develops “like-know-trust” and moves your leads towards buying.

Use Short-Form Content

Google definitely has a preference for long-form content, but social media communities prefer and support short-form content. This is because short-form integrates much easier with social media.

Benefits of Short-Form Content

Quickly produced and shared in a time-starved culture
Allows linking back to your website
Encourages reader engagement
Short-form video allows you to create “to-the-point” content with a visual experience

Reuse/Repurpose Existing Content

Content that you have previously used can be rewritten and reused. There will always be a demand for information on that same topic. Pulling it back out and breathing new life into it allows you to build more content and expand on the topic.

Surprisingly, a lot of content that is on the web is duplicated. Search engines group the duplicated content into clusters. Although Google has the right to slap penalties on websites for duplication, this only applies if the content is excessively copied with the intent of not rewriting or repurposing it. When you repurpose (rewrite) content, you do not violate Google because of the fact you are doing it to increase your brand awareness.

Don’t have the time or energy to create good content? We can help with that.

Interesting Statistics Regarding Content Marketing

When you look at the statistical information on content marketing, you can get an idea of what works and does not work. The mistakes and successes of other marketers provide you with valuable information.

To stay fresh and current, 60% of marketers will produce a minimum of one content piece per day.
78% of people feel that businesses and organizations that market their content have a genuine concern for their consumer base. (Key Difference Media)
Custom content influences 61% of customers. (Dragon Search Marketing)
Content marketing is used by 93% of B2B’s. (CMI)
Consumers place more content search merit in the ratings on Amazon than Google. (Forrester Research)
Those who market their content see the rate of conversion six times higher than those who do not do content marketing. (Aberdeen)
Content marketers (B2B) deploy at least thirteen tactics to market content. This is done through the use of various channels (social media, webinars, infographics, etc.) (TopRankBlog)
86% of top ranking businesses have a dedicated person to handle content marketing. (CMI)
60% of content marketers repurpose existing content on average two to five times. (LookBookHQ)

Let Your Content Work For You!

Your content reflects your brand, and because of this, you must ensure that you are marketing content that is worthy and valuable. Everything from a blog to tweets must have quality, be distributed at the right time, engage and attract consumers, and be measured.

Content marketing is an investment in growing your business. To protect your investment, having a dedicated person to handle marketing your content is vitally important.

Good quality content and marketing should work for you instead of you working it! Contact us to get started on your content marketing today!

About The Author

Brittany Filori

Brittany is an accomplished COO & current CEO of 51Blocks who has written 3 digital marketing books including White Label Digital Marketing: How to Effectively Scale Your Agency for Time & Financial Freedom. Brittany is an expert on how agency owners can remove themselves from the day-to-day operations and focus on selling to scale. She helped create The Just Sell Method™ which has helped 300+ partners grow their book of clients and become more profitable with their own digital marketing agency. Brittany is passionate about leadership, operations, and agency growth.