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Content Marketing Matures to Cover Entire Buying Process
2 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
When online content marketing first blew up, brands hopped onto the newly requisite bandwagon and published whatever online content they could muster up. Blogging became an absolute mainstay in online marketing. Websites were made-over with new, richer copy. And soon enough, content truly became king.
However, these early stages of the content marketing era were just that — early, rudimentary, and simple.
Today, just about one year after Google released the industry-changing Hummingbird update, businesses have begun mastering online content marketing. Rather than working feverishly to produce as many words as possible, content marketers are now working smarter and targeting online content to engage with customers throughout the entire buying decision process, guiding them down the sales funnel.
From need recognition to the initial search, all the way to post-purchase, savvy content marketers are covering all the bases. That means those who don’t will soon be left in the dust.
How to Cover All the Bases of Content Marketing
First, make sure you’re familiar with the buying decision process. There are five key steps:
- Need/problem recognition: Let’s say a window in my bedroom has broken. Suddenly, I have one of two needs. Either I need a professional installer to help me replace the window, or I know how to replace it and I simply need to purchase the new glass.
- Information search: Since I like to save money and do things myself, I want to purchase the new glass pane and install it myself. I need to search online to find out what I need to buy. I type into Google “how to replace bedroom window”.
- Evaluation of alternatives: I’ve done my research and I know what I need. Now I need to decide what product I will actually purchase, and who I will purchase it from. To decide, I’ll search for the product and compare different vendors.
- Purchase decision: I know what I want to buy and I’ve found the perfect online vendor. I’m ready to fill my shopping cart and enter my payment information. Hopefully, this will be an easy step, but I still haven’t looked at the shipping costs or tried to use the shopping cart. Hopefully, both fit my needs.
- Post-purchase behavior: My purchase from my preferred vendor went smoothly. I have the new glass and I’m ready to install it. First, however, I’m going to search online for an installation guide.
Creating Your Full-Coverage Content
Cover steps one and two in the buying decision process. In order to capture the attention of potential customers as soon as they enter the market for your product or service, you need to publish online content that answers their initial questions.
- Who manufactures the best glass?
- Who offers the best price on the glass I need?
- Which vendors offer quality customer service?
Next, your content marketing strategy should target the “evaluation” step in the buying process. Again, create content that answers the questions your customers are asking at this critical stage.
- How does one replace a bedroom window?
- Am I capable of doing this myself? If so, can you give me the basic instructions? If not, what should I do?
Finally, don’t forget to address your customers’ post-purchase needs. By providing a an installation guide, for example, you can outshine your competitors and keep customers coming back to you. Cover the entire buying process, and you’ll have a hook-line-sinker content marketing strategy to boost your business well beyond the publishing date.
What’s Next For Content Marketing
Plain and simple, content marketing aims to answer customers’ questions before they even think to ask. Businesses have to anticipate what type of information will attract their target market to their product or service.
Consequently, content marketing will continue to grow more sophisticated. It is a staple of online business. So what’s next? It’s sensible to expect that King Content will really cozy up to Big Data. How, of course, has yet to be seen!
If you want to learn more about advanced content marketing strategies, please don’t hesitate to contact Hat Trick Associates. Our content marketing experts specialize in helping businesses achieve their online marketing goals. Give us a call anytime at (314) 494-3494 or email Jim Haynes at [email protected].
Boost Content Marketing ROI by Giving Away Secrets
2 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
When developing a content marketing strategy for your business, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to shy away from publishing so-called trade or company secrets. Although you may assume your company’s proprietary information should remain private, divulging “secret” information is in fact one key way you can effectively boost your content marketing ROI.
This is because content marketing works to serve a specific purpose — building trust between your company and your target market. When you provide a reader with unique and actionable information, that reader has little choice but to believe you are an exceptional industry expert.
You can effectively reach beyond the realm of best-deal shoppers, and enter the coveted land of customer trust and loyalty.
Walking The Line
Of course, there is a fine line to walk between sharing uniquely valuable information and giving away your edge. For example, the Bush Beans company probably shouldn’t give away that secret family recipe their TV commercials are always talking about. But when people are online, they’re looking for information, and a good content marketing strategy needs to focus on supplying that information.
Giving away secrets is the secret ingredient in the recipe for positive content marketing ROI. Bush may be protecting the secret family baked bean recipe, but the company still gives consumers what they want. The Bush Beans website offers a variety of helpful information, ranging from “Kid-Approved Recipes” to nutritional information about beans. The company has developed a solid foundation for a positive content marketing ROI. Your business can do it too.
How to Boost Content Marketing ROI With Secrets
Creating truly effective content for online marketing is no easy task. It takes time, and as the old adage goes, time is money. Consequently, in order to achieve a positive content marketing ROI, your business must invest in quality content and avoid wasting time on fluff.
Churning out words and posting them online isn’t enough to convert readers into customers. The words must be exceptionally valuable.
1) The first step when developing a content marketing strategy that shares valuable secrets is to set aside fear. Don’t be afraid your competitors will steal your mojo. They have their own secrets, and they likely have many of the same secrets that you do.
Also, don’t be afraid your customers will become do-it-yourself practitioners if you give them instructions. If they want to do something themselves, they will - with or without you. If they don’t, your transparency and expertise can help you build enough trust so that they choose your institution to do it for them.
2) The next step is to determine what your target market needs to know about your industry and/or your product/service. More importantly, find out what they need to know that hasn’t already been beaten like a dead horse by other content marketers.
Basically, you need to have the guts to answer the questions that your competitors haven’t already answered. Give away advice. Show your target market that you get it, that you care, and that you’re here to make even the most complex practices seem simple.
3) The third step is to put it all out there. Choose to answer a unique question about your industry and give it all you got. Go in-depth. Take your time. Get into the nitty gritty. A detailed how-to guide or a well-researched white paper will present more value to your potential customers than a fluffy blog post could any day. (Does this qualify as fluffy?)
Content Marketing ROI Boost for Your Industry
If you are ready to provide real value to your target market and build a solid foundation for positive content marketing ROI, consider making sure to publish these three key pieces of online marketing content:
- Industry FAQ - Gather a list of basic questions that newcomers ask, and answer them in a FAQ page on your website or blog.
- Education - Give your target market educational information on their essential concerns regarding your industry and your product/service.
- Benefits of Your Service or Product - Publish a piece of content that not only explains the generic benefits a using your product or service, but also the benefits of getting them from YOUR business.
Achieving a positive content marketing ROI can be quite a challenge, but success comes more easily when you focus on creating valuable content, instead of merely lots of content. Give up secrets. Get transparent. Get real with customers, and persuade them to get real with you.
If you need help creating content for your business, Hat Trick Associates is ready for you. We specialize in content marketing, and we are prepared to show you how your own trade secrets can be utilized to boost your content marketing ROI. Contact us today by calling (314) 494-3494 or by emailing Jim Haynes at [email protected].
Building Your Web Content - Tips
2 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
Web content marketing can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing for small businesses. What may seem like the easiest discipline of all marketing strategies is actually one of the hardest, most time consuming and can be the most expensive.
Initially, focus on quantity. Content marketing can be scary to start for any business and sometimes people are so concerned about quality, they don’t make videos live. Don’t be that person. One of the first things to learn is how to hit the publish button regularly and confidently. There will always be an excuse not to publish content, but what good will that do for your brand? Push yourself to create meaningful and relevant content.
Tip #1. Create an editorial calendar. Your editorial calendar will outline all of the content pieces you’d like to publish during the month. Create titles, set dates for publishing and stick to the calendar.
Tip #2. Set a goal to publish one piece of content each day. Content can be anything from updating your evergreen pages to creating a blog post.
Do not penny pinch. Only 32 percent of marketers say they are producing enough content, according to content-marketing software Kapost. The reason being is most companies that are new to content marketing quickly realize how time consuming and difficult it is to create quality content. Far too often these same companies resort to outsourcing their content for pennies on the dollar. Do not expect to receive any results with $5 blog posts. (It is better to publish nothing than to publish low-quality content.)
Tip #3. Research and find reputable content-marketing agencies or writers who can produce content for your site. Partner with agencies who have a track record of success and who don’t outsource content to low-quality writers.
Tip #4. Create internal content guidelines. These guidelines should outline what is both acceptable and unacceptable when publishing content on your site. Determine what you consider to be quality content, and stay true to those guidelines.
Have clear, defined goals. Save time and wasted resources by writing down clear goals for your content marketing efforts. These goals should include some (if not all) of the following:
Traffic increases
Lead increases
Conversion increases
Revenue increases
Bounce-rate reduction
Tip #5. Set realistic timelines to accomplish each of your goals. As mentioned earlier, most content marketing strategies take time to develop sustainable results.
Tip #6. Identify tactics that will help you accomplish your content-marketing goals. Remember to diversify your efforts by producing different types of content such as interviews, blog articles, slideshows, infographics and videos.
Know your audience. Content marketing can quickly become a hamster wheel for companies who don’t know their audiences. Eliminate guesswork by compiling demographic and psychographic information about your audience.
Tip #7. Dig into your site’s analytic data to compile useful information about your audience. Compile lists of your most trafficked and socially engaged blog posts and essay to identify why they were so successful.
Tip #8. Check out your competitors’ blogs to get a glimpse into their audiences. Track who is commenting on their blogs and engaging on their social networks.
Related: 3 Tricks to Create Premium Video Content on a Budget
Tip #9. Place polls on your site asking your audience specific questions about their interests. Aggregate and analyze the poll information to better understand your audience.
Don’t overestimate your skills. I get it, you see 12-year-olds creating blogs and building massive followings so you think creating and managing a blog is easy. Warning: bubble about to burst. Creating and managing a successful blog is not easy. There are over 27,000,000 pieces of content shared and published each day on the internet. It takes a lot more than a fun quote or meme to get your blog seen by the right audience.
Tip #10. Recognize that successful content-marketing strategies require a significant amount of skill, time and resources.
Tip #11. Audit yourself often and ask these questions:
What kind of content do I like to read?
Why does certain content appeal to me?
How can I produce similar content?
What are others doing that I am not?
What innovations am I missing out on?
Seek out influential team members. It isn’t enough to hire just anyone to produce content for your site. Seek out the most influential people in your industry to create content for your brand.
Tip #12. Identify influential people within your industry with whom you can team up. These people should have large social followings and be published on major sites.
Tip #13. Reach out to your identified list of influencers and ask them to produce content for your site. Be prepared to pay a pretty penny for their content, but trust me, it’s worth it.
Tip #14. Finds ways to make your influencers happy. While money is a good start, try to give back by providing author bios on your site with back links.
Don’t be socially awkward. Treat your social networks as a way to engage with your audience. Content interactions are happening more and more within the social networking realm. Use your social networks to discuss your content and interact with your community.
Tip #15. Define your purpose on each social network. For example your purpose on Twitter may be to share discounts, news and tips while your purpose on Facebook may be to post article and discuss content.
Tip #16. Do not limit yourself to Twitter and Facebook. Pinterest, Google + and Instagram all have empirical evidence as to why companies should be using their networks. Diversify your social networking efforts.
Related: A Simple Trick for Finding Top-Notch Writers to Create Your Content
Tip #17. Be relevant on your social networks. Don’t use your networks to simply publish your articles are speak at your audience. Use your networks as a vehicle to engage and start conversations.
You don’t have to be a one-person band. Did you know 16 percent of companies say it’s their policy NOT to share third-party content? This doesn’t make too much sense, when 32 percent of marketers feel they don’t produce enough content. Be prepared to open the doors to contributors from across the web to help produce awesome pieces for your brand.
Tip #18. Create guest posting guidelines on your site. Allow other expert and authorities to publish content on your site in the form of guest posts.
Tip #19. Develop partnerships with complimentary brands or companies to help produce content for your site. These partnerships should be mutually beneficial so remember to also provide value.
Stick with it. There will be a time when you want to give up on your content-marketing strategy. Don’t. Content-marketing results take time and often take months of consistent hard work.
Tip #20. Audit your strategies to determine what is working and what is not working. Eliminate actions that are not producing results.
Tip #21. Consult with experts if you’ve realized you can’t manage your own content-marketing efforts. Remember to use only the best.
Tip #22. Continue publishing quality, relevant content on a regular basis.