By Daniel Graham, Director, OnBrand Marketing
Since the COVID pandemic hit in March 2019, so much more of our world has moved online. As we adapt to our new hybrid world of both physical and online shopping and communication, the importance of keeping customers engaged and coming back for more is just as important. The saying ‘content is King’ is so true, and with approximately 1.6 billion websites and more than 70 million blog posts published each month, there is a LOT for your audience to choose from and click on.
Having a clear content strategy is a crucial part of your marketing mix allowing you to deliver valuable and relevant content to users. By creating regular, interesting content you can improve your online reputation, build a community and grow advocates of your brand resulting in loyalty and trust from your customers. Once you have that, more quality content gives you strong customer relationships, better communications, increased profits, and a loyal subscriber base.
In order to create a great content campaign there are a few fundamentals that you must have in place:
- Branding
As a small business, you need to use your brand personality – big brands need to work hard to build this – but smaller businesses have the advantage of the team bringing their own personalities to the table and being part of the brand experience. There is no way of underestimating that real personality helps people connect with you as a business.
- Try new things
Don’t be afraid of trying new things. We know that the best ideas aren’t limited to one format. Think about video ideas, written papers, social media ideas, blog post ideas and infographic ideas. Use research and statistics to back up your points and showcase expertise.
- Stay focused on your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
Whatever the size and type of your business, you have to make sure that your KPI’s are aligned with your mission and goals and that you know and understand your audience. What do you know about their social media preferences? Are you clear on their sales journey and capturing them along the way? Make sure that you are putting their priorities at the heart of your content planning,
- Make your content work for you and your customers.
Write a content plan and have goals so that your content is consistent and up-to-date. Find ways to repurpose your content maybe on LinkedIn or via article placement in specialist media. Bring your own brand personality and language to your content to bring it to life, showing your customers your everyday life as well as pure business content. In this way you can build your brand through your content and use it to create a unique connection with your customers.
- Measure everything
Reviewing and monitoring your analytics is essential. Tracking your performance will allow for learning and then the ability to change and adapt to ensure you are hitting your goals.
Research undertaken by semrush.com has shown that content marketing is 13 times more likely to generate ROI compared to traditional marketing but it takes a lot of work, and a huge part of that is coming up with actual content marketing ideas. If done well, content marketing is worth the time. It is core to creating customer loyalty and a bond that keeps people coming back for more.
