4 Content Marketing Tips to Give Your Results a Boost

4 Tips to Give Your Content Marketing Results a Boost

When it comes to digital marketing strategies, content marketing is an integral piece. There are many purposes that it serves, including the following:

• Helping to build brand awareness
• Assisting in the generating of leads
• Pushing prospects who are on the fence to convert
• Providing answers to FAQ, providing prospects information needed for purchasing decisions
• Expanding reach through social sharing
• Attaching inbound links for SEO purposes

Though the majority of businesses are familiar with what they need to do when it comes to content marketing, most fail to gain the traction that is needed. To help give your content marketing efforts a much-needed boost, here are a few tips:

Tip #1: In Great Detail, Map Out Your Strategy.

To find success with content marketing, you must have a detailed plan. It isn't uncommon for businesses to create and publish content with no solid plan in place. No research has been done and no goals or benchmarks have been fully established. The idea behind content marketing is to essentially generate revenue. While there are short-term goals here and there, you want to ideally produce a return with the content that you are creating and publishing.

Based on your campaign goals, you will need to sit down and brainstorm some content topics. Are you wanting to generate leads? Do you want to push your prospects toward a product offer? Do you want to accomplish a completely different conversion goal, such as a location visit or a telephone call? Once you have established your campaign goal, you can then properly optimize your content, plan a push for the promotion and set your conversion goals. Ultimately, you want to map your strategy out so that one question can easily be answered: "Is it working?".

Tip #2: Figure Out Which Content Assets Are Producing.

If you have been publishing fresh content for a little while now, then it is time to utilize Google Analytics and see which posts your visitors are engaging with the most. Which ones are receiving the most visits? Which ones are being read the longest? Which posts seem to be catching your visitor’s attention and getting them to convert? Don't forget to check out the social shares and comments for each of your posts.

All of this information provides you with a good picture of the content styles and topics that your audience is most interested in and best responds to. Use the information that you gather from Google Analytics to plan for your future blog posts and don't forget to continue to monitor the results. Also, don't be afraid to go out on a limb every now and then to test the waters with new styles and topics - just always analyze the data afterward to see how your audience responded.

Tip #3: Always Focus on Quality Over Quantity.

It isn't cheap to create content that is able to deliver fantastic results, and all businesses are unable to afford full-time in-house writers or even freelancers. However, this is no reason to sacrifice quality content. As long as you are able to afford to publish at least one high-quality post each month from the get-go, then make sure you do it.

The most popular forms of content are blog posts, eBooks, infographics, case studies, videos and webinars -- all of which cost money to produce. The important thing is that you don't opt for the lower-quality pieces. If you don't have a large budget for content, focus on promotion and increase the schedule for publishing as you bring in some revenue.

Tip #4: Utilize Paid Outlets to Expand Your Reach for Content.

It doesn't matter if you develop the best piece of content in this world, it won't be effective if your target audience doesn't take the time to engage with it. If organic traffic isn't making its way to your website, then you need to get some additional traffic to your site so that your content is getting some eyes on it. For free, you can send your blog posts out to your e-mail list and share them on social media; however, to really amp up things, you will want to use paid channels to your advantage.

• Paid Social Media Promotion - When it comes to organic social reach, it really is limited. This is particularly true on Facebook. So, if you are goal is to get more traffic, you need to boost your posts on Facebook, run some sponsored updates on your LinkedIn account, and promote your Twitter tweets. It's okay if you need to start small (like $10 per day), as you can always increase your promotion as you start seeing an increase in revenue.
• Content Distribution Networks - There are two primary players -- Taboola and Outbrain -- that you will want to work with, as they can both help get your content in front of people who may actually be interested in engaging with your content. You will not pay unless someone clicks and visits your website, as both of these companies use a cost-per-click model.

If you have any questions about the above information or would like to learn more about setting up a content marketing campaign, contact us at WebDetail.