Do you have a content marketing plan yet? If not, it is high time that you do. As your prospects are getting much more savvy with the web world, it gives you a very important customer touch-point which you cannot afford to miss. Moreover, with the right content marketing strategy, you can expect to connect to several prospects at the same time without having to spend too much on exorbitant marketing costs. It is your chance to build a relationship with your prospects even before your sales strategy kicks in. It is one thing to produce content, and it is another to market it effectively such that it reaches the right audience.
Content Marketing Strategy - Here are top 10 tips
1. Find your target customer
You need to clearly define who is your target customer/buyer. Is he/she the VP of Marketing, or a Marketing Analyst in a company? Which sector is he/she working? It is important that you list down your target market on a piece of paper in order of priority. From the most important to the least important. Also list down who is your user buyer? A user buyer is someone who is going to use the service which you are offering. So he/she must be typically facing a challenge which you can solve.
2. Find what your prospects are searching for in Google.
Use the Google Keyword Planner Tool (inside Google Adwords) to find the keywords your prospects are searching for in Google. For example, in order to write this post, I researched the following keywords:
Keyword Monthly Searches Globally
content marketing strategies 260
content marketing strategy 2400
content marketing strategy template 260
content marketing ideas 210
content marketing strategy example 90
content marketing strategy guide 30
Obviously from the list, you can see why I have chosen the blog post title.
3. Focus on customer problems
I see one of the biggest concerns of my target audience is a lack of understanding of how to embrace the capabilities of the web to define a marketing strategy. And I see lot of my prospects are looking around and trying to self learn the various bits of digital marketing. So, through my content, I try to educate my target audience on how to create an effective digital marketing strategy embracing social media, SEO and various content marketing channels. This is a strategy which every business owner or someone working in content marketing should follow. Create a list of top problems which your customers face and try to solve them through your content. If you are selling accounting services to businesses, focus on what are the various challenges business owners might be facing in accounting, taxation or audit and try to create more DIY strategies that will make their life simpler. Business owners are busy people and will rarely break their heads trying to understand nuances of accounting. But if you keep providing them simple strategies to follow, they may not read and understand fully, but they will surely believe that you are the go to person for accounting challenges.
3. Create a monthly content strategy
Create content topics based on:
3.1 Keywords in Google
3.2 Specific Problems that your customer faces and how to solve them
You have done the all the groundwork in step 2 and step 3. You have the list of keywords your target audience is searching for in Google. You also know the problems that they are facing. Now it is time to create a monthly content strategy. Develop article topics based on your research. Try to publish at least 2 blogs per week.
4. Create articles of around 600-1000 words
An article should have minimum 300 words to be recognised as of any significance to Google. However, there is no set rule to the maximum. Based on my experience, I prefer to have an article of minimum 600 words. I have seen articles around 2000 words do well on Google. But if you follow a set target of 600-1000 words, it should work for you.
5. Do proper On-page SEO for the blogs you publish
On-page SEO is very important and often neglected by most people. You have done all the hard work so far. So why not take a bit of time to optimise it for SEO, as this will give you more organic visitors to your article in the long run.
6. Know where your audience exist
You have created and optimised your article. Now you need people to know about it. So, research where your audience is hanging around more. For B2B businesses, LinkedIn is often the most important social platform to be in. Twitter is easier of the 2, as all you need to do is Tweet using a hashtag. However, both LinkedIn and Twitter cannot give you enough success unless you have a laser sharp focus towards who you are targeting. Be active in LinkedIn groups, create discussions, engage in discussions and use the LinkedIn publishing platform to create a summary of your article and link to your article. On Twitter, research the right hashtags and find out the right time when your audience is online. You will need to keep circulating your content at different times to find your own sweet spot.
7. Do not spam
Never advertise your business on LinkedIn or Twitter. Frankly, nobody cares. So might as well put your energies into worthwhile activities likes producing valuable content and engage in meaningful conversations that engages your audience. Audience like to talk of their problem, not why your company is great.
8. Use UTM builder to track your visitors
Google Analytics is a very important tool if you have a website and wish to use your website to track your business growth. It not only gives your visitor count per day, but also gives you the source and medium from which website visitors come to your website. As you will be marketing your content to various platforms, always use a UTM builder to create a source and medium for each activity. This way you will get to know which activity is giving you the maximum visitors.
9. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your blog
As you start getting visitors to your blog, one of the key things is to capture the visitor details. They may not be your immediate clients, but they can be in the future. Blog Subscription is an important method to get people to give their details. For your subsequent blog posts, these people will be your loyal readers. Also send your blog posts to your current clients. They will feel important and would always appreciate something extra you do for them.
10. Be Persistent
Needless to say, any new activity takes time. If you are producing content, your objective is to build a loyal reader base. You cannot expect that sales would shoot up immediately. So do not quit midway. Blogging is relationship building. Let your customers perceive you as valuable. Then they will definitely get in touch with you when they need your service.
I hope that this information will help you in your digital marketing efforts. If you would like to get in touch with us about creating a content marketing strategy for your professional services business, do give us a call at +91 9008 639 170 or email us at helloteam@rankhigher.in
