Content marketing is an approach to marketing whose focus is on creating and distributing relevant, consistent, and valuable content to attract and retain customers. Content marketing uses blogs, videos, and guides to build trust in your company.
Brands create separate media planning and content marketing departments to get products and services in front of their customers. However, for your business to fully engage your target audience, most business functions ought to collaborate to build your brand and bring profits.
Whether you are just starting content marketing or have been using this approach for a while, the following tips can help you align your sales and brand marketing initiatives through effective content strategies.
Know Your Target Audience
Your target audience is who the content is meant for, and it should match the customers of your business. Do your research and survey to help you understand who to exclude. Take time to know your audience inside and out so that you create content that only resonates with their needs.
Apart from their demographic information, understanding their behaviors, thoughts, and needs helps you create a buyer persona for everyone interested in your products or services. Knowing your customers is key to giving them better service, which could lead to lasting relationships and new sales.
Just like your business takes care of more than one type of customer, your content should also cater to more users. You can use various content types and channels to deliver content tailored to different kinds of persona.
Brand and Story Positioning
Brand and story positioning helps you construct the story of your brand or products using all necessary content elements. If you are looking to position your brand in a market niche effectively, consider creating a brand story that will stick in your customers’ minds and engage them emotionally.
Create content that no one else is telling because it’s only who understands your story better. Successful brand stories dictate more facts and figures than just beautiful narrations. The idea is to ensure that you clearly communicate what you are about.
If you need help putting your right foot forward, consider working with a boutique branding agency in NYC. A reputable branding agency in one of the biggest markets in the world can help you identify your existing and potential customers you hadn’t thought of at all. It can also point out the problem your brand is trying to solve and the top competitors that are also attempting to provide it.
Choose a Content Format
Once you understand your audience, you must choose a content format that works for you. The proper content format can help your brand and products shine, and this may vary based on what you wish to achieve with the content at hand.
If you are trying to build trust with your core audience, consider content styles that allow you to explore various themes to deliver informative content. Your content format is also a key SEO search ranking factor, so get it right and have more people visiting your blog, YouTube channel, podcast, or website.
Your content format should reflect your brand tone and personality. For instance, if you run a B2B tech company, you can optimize their experience on mobile since you may find out that most of them consume content on mobile.
Publishing Platforms
Picking the right platform to publish your content is another excellent way to align your sales and brand marketing initiatives with content strategy. If your audience prefers long videos, YouTube will work best for you. Your younger audience may choose Tiktok, Instagram, or Facebook, while an audience looking to establish professional relationships would prefer LinkedIn.
Your audience is the most crucial factor when choosing the platform to use. At this point, nothing matters, not even their size. If your audience is not active on a particular platform, your content might not make much sense.
Choosing the right platform can help you make your online activities effective. While your target audience might have accounts on multiple platforms, you need to identify the ones your audience uses the most and where they are active.
Essential Considerations in Developing Content
Your content strategy should focus on delivering quality over anything else. Focus on originality to capture the intended attention of your target audience. Come up with original ideas, then execute them into enticing content.
Don’t just post content based on analysis of other pages. Consider including unique data, research, experiences, and opinions in every content piece you send. Being unique can build credibility and trust with your audience and become a foundation for your organic growth.
Diversify your content to appeal to everyone in your preferred audience. The selection of the content format should still be guided by your customer preferences and analysis on content performance.
