High quality content and effective digital marketing go together like Kermit and Miss Piggy, Thelma and Louise, Sonny and Cher…you get the point. For any business hoping to cultivate a robust marketing strategy, developing engaging, relevant content is essential for attracting new leads and helping retain the ones already in your funnel.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategic approach to marketing that is focused on the creation of engaging, valuable and consistent content to drive a profitable action.
From uploading pics to Insta to being in a complete TikTok rabbit hole, most people spend hours a day online consuming content. As a business, getting a slice of their watching, listening or reading time can help you grow your business and get more sales.
According to a 2021 study, 81% of marketers view content as a core part of their business strategy – but it’s only effective if it’s done strategically.
How to create a bulletproof content marketing strategy
The internet is cluttered with useful, useless, entertaining, confusing, hilarious and informative content. How good your content is will determine how it performs in an ever-crowded space, and whether it connects with the people that matter to you.
At 3PM, we’re content marketing experts and LOVE helping brands of all shapes and sizes attract more customers and get more sales using effective content marketing strategy. Here are the only five things you need to up your game and become a content marketing whiz.
Understand your goal
With any digital marketing strategy, you have to know what your goal is before you can start implementing. Do you want more conversions? How many more? Do you purely want to grow your email list or just increase your social media engagement?
Figure out your audience
Do you know who you’re creating content for? Who’s your ideal customer? Only by truly understanding your target audience will you be able to figure out what motivates them and what floats their boat. Market research will help you really get to know your audience and help shape your content marketing strategy.
Choose your channel[s]
Once you’ve gotten to know your perfect customer inside out, you should have a better idea of where they hang out. Are they Instagrammers, blog readers or podcast fiends? Where will the content you create for them have the biggest impact?
Get creative
Creating an effective content marketing strategy can be done as part of a team, on your own, or with the help of a digital marketing agency. Whatever method you choose, this stage is where you think up ideas and start planning out your content. If you’re stuck, have a look at what’s working for others in your industry [or even outside of your niche] to spark inspiration.
Publish your content
Before you start posting your content, you should think about HOW you’ll post. Here you can create a content marketing calendar to help you publish content consistently and in a varied, engaging way. If you’re posting a testimonial tile on Instagram on Monday morning, maybe mix it up for a few tiles before you post another testimonial – variety is the key.
When it comes to deciding on a publishing schedule, you can test out times of day and days of the week to see when your content creates the most engagement. If you send an email on a Sunday morning at 7am, it might not get as much traction as one sent at 5pm on a Tuesday – but only testing and tracking will help you figure that out.
You’re ready!
After completing these steps for a killer content marketing strategy, give it a go and see what works. Monitor how your content is received and never be afraid to change things up and adapt to customer wants and needs.
Digital marketing is a fast-moving space and staying ahead of [or even on top of] the game can be a challenge. If you need a hand with your content marketing, SEO strategy, social media management or Google Adwords, give 3PM a call today.
