“Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s left.”
Content marketing has never been more relevant! So, let’s make sure you’re crushing it in the next year! Content marketing can yield amazing results for your business, generating more traffic, and bringing in more customers than you have ever had before. Industry data shows that you could get up to three times more leads than traditional marketing, at 62% lower costs. Sound like a good deal, don’t you think?
For 2021, it’s crucial that you start to identify content marketing best practices as the online battle for new clients is more competitive than ever before. So, to make your business stand apart and increase your possibility of generating the greatest possible turnover, you should have a content marketing strategy in place for 2021!
Don’t forget, planning is absolute key here! If you’re properly mapping out your upcoming content marketing campaigns and projects, you will be rewarded with a major bump in your marketing success.
Not sure where or how to start? Read on! (Infographic at the bottom)
Start With A Content Audit
Before you step into the new year, you should know where you stand. Go for an audit to evaluate your current performance. See what content has worked for you in the past and whether you want to carry it forward. Do you want to get rid of old strategies, or can you revamp them?
Check which content was top-performing and which one was low-performing. How did your content and targeted keywords perform on Google? The more knowledge you have about the past, the better your future be.
Set Goals for Your Content Marketing
It is important to set goals and targets at the beginning of the new year. If you don’t, you won’t know where you are headed. You have a fixed return on investment in your mind? Well, you have to work towards it. Try new objectives for your content marketing such as acquiring new leads, creating awareness about your brand, acquiring new customers, and improving your sales.
Ask questions along the process to set your goals as clear as possible: what is the customer persona you’re looking at? What expertise are you known for? How many new leads will increase the profit margin? Use the SMART method when setting your goals – be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Budget Allocations
Did we say planning was important? Well, that certainly holds for your financials as well! Even though content marketing might increase your success at lower costs, you still need to have the financial backing to put your ideas into action. Work on your content marketing budget and see if it needs more money than the previous year. Could your marketing strategy become better (e.g. create more leads) if you had more money to spare? You’d be wise to invest it if you have the funds.
For content marketing it is all about quality. Excellent copywriting, well-planned SEO and a few cool infographics will go a long way. Once the essentials are taken care of, you can think about investing additional funds, e.g. to increase output or upgrade design-aspects of your blog.
Carry Out Topical Content Research
Who are you creating content for? You should clearly define who you’re intended audience is. There’s a distinct difference between the various types of contents. A difference between content marketing vs social media marketing, for instance, is that Social Media Marketing is more for the masses – you create smaller bits of content that are easily digestible and consumed by a large audience. For long-form content marketing (e.g. blog articles, podcasts, videos) your audience is probably much smaller but also much more focused (i.e. interested).
So how do you address your audience? What are the keywords they are typing into Google? What are the hashtags they are using? Will they prefer a more formal or informal style? What kind of content do they want? Which channels are they most likely to follow? etc…
You need to know the answers to those questions as they will bring you closer to your audience. You will eventually end up building a portfolio of awesome, laser-focused content for a group of serious customers, that are genuinely interested in working with or buying from you.
Type of Content
You know your audience and the topics they’re interested in? Great! Now you need to define in what form(s) you want to present your content.
Today, content is so much more than just written copy. While there are still hardly any substitutes for a well-written copy, your content needs to stand out from the crowd. Using illustrations along with the content will help you make a great impression.
Apart from that, you can (and should) use infographics, videos, share links to webinars, include an episode of a podcast, show presentations, etc. to make your content more engaging and interesting.
Experimenting with different types of content will give you a better idea about what works best in which situation. For example, the goal and effects of social media content will be vastly different from an email marketing campaign. Promotional event content targeted at the masses will be different from releasing a formal press release.
Create a Content Marketing Calendar for 2021
Have we mentioned planning before? No? Well, planning is everything! And implementing your strategies at the best times of the year is crucial for your success. Make the entire process seamless with the help of your team members. It takes time to achieve big results so time yourself well in advance.
Create a calendar with the names of the team members responsible for creating a particular niche of content, creating a winning content format, due dates for the first draft, final publishing dates, etc. There are a bunch of awesome tools that you can use to make planning, organizing, scheduling, and monitoring of your content marketing strategies a lot easier – hooray to technological advancement!
Don’t forget to research the promotional channels through which you want to release your content. Does your content marketing plan involve any third parties? If yes, follow up with them regularly to check things are on track.
Promote Your Content
“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”
You should also always boost your content by promoting it via various channels: try guest blogging, posting on forums, incorporating your content into email marketing, and investing in paid ads.
Take one avenue at a time when you promote your content and check how each step of your promotions work. Some experts believe that you should spend 20% of your time creating content and 80% of the time promoting it.
Experts will tell you a lot about why content marketing is important. But just think about it that way: your content is one of the first things that a potential client sees about your business. It will create an image and position you in the mind of that potential client. Follow these basic steps and do your homework for a great content marketing strategy to gear up for a fresh start in the new year.
But Why Is Content Marketing Important
Yes, this deserves a separate article and we’ll write one soon. But we just can’t stress this enough so we’re going to mention it again: content is super important for that sweet sustainable organic traffic to your website! If you’re creating good and helpful content for your audience and optimize that content for search engines, you open up the gates to a rushing stream of organic traffic!
To understand how content marketing will supercharge your SEO, you need to brush up your knowledge on keyword research, link building, and a few other SEO factors. Check out our SEO guide to find out how your content can be a powerhouse of information about your products and services as well as a tool for generating more leads. Climbing higher on the search engine results page (SERP), your website gets more clicks, eventually generating more leads. Make use of content marketing!
