Most modern business owners recognize how powerful content can be during each stage of the inbound marketing process. From attracting your target audience and converting these visitors into leads to closing the sale and delighting your new customers, content plays a vital role in each step.
Below, we’ll take you through four secrets to creating content like an inbound marketing agency:
1. Identify topics that resonate with your buyer personas.
Many people are under the assumption that in order to tell a great story, you have to offer a product or service that is interesting or inspiring to the general public. The truth is that this is just not the case. The key to effective brand storytelling is choosing topics that that are important to your readers. If you offer something that can provide great value for your customers and you are passionate about the ways that you can help them, then you already have the recipe for great content.
One way that you can start to identify useful topics for your content is to look at your buyer personas. While creating these generalized sketches of your ideal customers, you gathered and put together a lot of great information about who your audience is and what they find important. Use this data to determine what your target audience cares about and what their greatest challenges are. Creating content that speaks to your buyers’ values and pain points helps you make authentic connections with your audience, which plays a significant role in lead nurturing and conversion. By showing visitors that you understand their situation and know where they are coming from, you can attract their attention and start to build meaningful relationships.
While you are reviewing your buyer personas for content ideas, you may also want to consider what content formats and channels appeal most to each audience. For instance, if one of your personas spends a majority of their time on social media, you may decide to create shorter, more visual content that is more likely to be read and shared across social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. On the other hand, if you know that your buyer persona values data, then you will want to create more data-driven content that speaks to this type of consumer.
2. Develop your content with each stage of the buyer’s journey in mind.
One of the reasons why inbound marketing is so successful in helping businesses attract and convert customers is because it keeps every stage of the buyer’s journey in mind. If you want to create content like an inbound marketing agency, you’ll have to do the same. Consumers need different types of content during each stage of the process, and if you provide them with the topics and formats they respond to most during each stage of this process, you can help guide them to conversion and encourage repeat business.
Those who are just starting their buyer’s journey are in the awareness phase. These individuals may not know exactly their problem is yet. To appeal to this audience, you’ll need to provide informative content that educates them about their problem, such as blogs and e-books. Consumers move to the consideration phase once they have done the research and finally identified their problem or opportunity. These individuals are now considering different solutions. At this point, you’ll want to provide content that communicates the value of your product or service such as case studies and whitepapers.
Consumers then move on to the decision phase, at which point they’ve created and narrowed down their list of potential companies that can solve their challenges. Here is where you will want to provide content that can influence their purchasing decision such as consultations, demos, or free trials. This type of content allows individuals to make an educated decision about whether or not your product or service is right for them.
3. Have a content promotion plan in place before you start creating.
Once you have started to create quality content that you know your audience will love, it is time to share it with them. The most interesting and well-written content in the world is only effective if it reaches its target audience. That’s why it is vital for brands to have a content promotion strategy in place before they even start creating content. Not only does this help ensure that your content will reach its intended audience, but it will also help you develop more targeted content that is appropriate for the channels it will eventually end up on.
As part of your content promotion strategy, consider incorporating paid channels such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and targeted social media ads on channels like Facebook and Twitter. Though many people may act like paid and organic promotion cannot exist in harmony, the truth is that an integrated marketing strategy that includes paid amplification can often be more effective than organic promotion alone.
4. Repurpose content already within your organization.
Another secret to content success that every inbound marketing agency practices is repurposing content. It takes a lot of time and effort to create the kind of quality content that attracts qualified leads to your brand and converts them into loyal buyers. That is why it is vital to find ways to repurpose high performing content so that you can maximize its success and get the most out of your content creation efforts.
Repurposing doesn’t mean just copying and pasting the same content across platforms. For one, this can hurt your search engine results page (SERP) ranking, and for another it is often ineffective as visitors don’t want to see the same piece of content every time they encounter your brand. Take your highest performing pieces of content and consider how you might be able to re-package or revamp them. For instance, if you have a few high performing blogs that are all centered around a core theme, you might use these posts as a starting point for a long-form e-book.
Now that you know how the pros approach their content, you can start taking the right steps toward creating compelling and unique content that adds value for your audience. Though it’s great to take part in your own content creation process, it’s also important to recognize when you need a helping hand in developing a strategy, consistently creating content, and effectively promoting this content so that you can reach the right audience.
That’s where we come in. Our inbound marketing agency helps businesses like yours achieve their goals through integrated marketing campaigns. If you’re ready to partner with us, contact us today for a free digital marketing consultation.
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