Sounds familiar?
Whether it’s a demand for high sales figures, quick lead capture growth, ambitious revenues, seemingly impossible profit margins or tight deadlines, the truth is, outrageous marketing goals will always exist. Added to the already colossal demand, you, the progressive marketer have to find the right mix of solutions to drive the results in the face of fast-paced technology changes, budget cutbacks due to economic growing pains and an ever-evolving Caribbean consumer. That’s a lot.
And while there is no doubt that you have some great strategies in your arsenal to take you a couple of steps closer to those targets, here’s one more for your consideration: A well-developed content marketing strategy.
Why is it important?
Effective content marketing goes beyond promoting your product. It offers information so relevant and valuable that it can push people to become interested in your brand or deepen their engagement and brand loyalty.
Strategically using videos, text, imagery, and audio in the form of short films, podcasts, webinars, and articles, brands around the world have adopted this type of marketing into their integrated mix as a means of paving a way to a sale. However, though its business-focused, content marketing always starts with the consumer at heart; their pain points, their desires, and their interests. It’s about building a genuine relationship.
There’s a major ROI benefit too! According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content Marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing and generates three times as many leads.
As you set out to crush your outrageous goals this year, consider implementing a content marketing strategy to meet these three critical business goals:
Use Content Marketing to…
1. Expand Brand Awareness
Achieving optimal brand awareness requires much more than a slick logo and a catchy slogan. Effective brand awareness ensures your audience is familiar with your brand and the message you represent. More so, it positions your brand as trustworthy.
When the goal is to increase brand awareness, you can use content marketing to ingrain your
brand into the minds of your audience.
To meet your yearly brand awareness targets, distributing quality content is key. This means that your content must:
• Highlight your mission
• Reflect your values
• Promise to deliver superior customer support.
Brand storytelling is a great way to do this! It involves using a narrative to connect with your audience. This narrative is a reflection of what your brand’s unique identity and what it stands for. Brand storytelling works so well because customers love stories and they love it even more when it aligns with who they are. They’d much rather read a story than a block of text that has no storyline to it. Without a storyline, your message becomes difficult to follow.
Quick Tip:
Because your audience does so much more than surf social media, it’s important that your content calendar includes multiple distribution strategies.
For every story that you share, make sure you strategically and creatively share it on your blog, social media profiles and other digital and offline touch points. Don’t forget to tailor each content piece to its distribution medium.
2. Generate and Nurture Leads
Generating and nurturing leads is essential for driving revenue! To generate and nurture leads with content marketing, you must target your content to the right audience at the right time. Aberdeen says targeting content can yield conversion rates 72% higher than content that isn’t targeted.
You can target content by sorting your customers into groups and categorizing them according to the three stages of the buyer’s journey. Those in the awareness stage are just learning about your brand. Your quality leads are the ones in the consideration and decision stages.
Once you have your customers categorized, you can create content that appeals to each group. Generating leads occurs right between the awareness and consideration stage. This is where you appeal to your audience through FAQ sheets, case studies, and basic customer reviews and testimonials. Your content here should not have a direct sales pitch. Instead, you’re simply making the audience aware of a pain point. You’re also showing them solutions.
When aiming your content toward those in the decision stage, it’s all about providing a good deal. This is where your content should focus on tactics like “free trials,” “buy one, get one free,” and “10% off your first purchase.” Basically, you nurture the leads with a good reason to make a purchase. If you think offering discounts as part of your content marketing strategy will hurt your revenue, consider it again.
Quick Example:
Agency of Record for Imperial Wholesale, a flooring retailer, used a discount strategy that optimized the retailer’s ROI as well as ROAS (return on ad spend). Thinking a 10% discount would lead to lower revenue than a 5% discount, the company performed A/B testing to test their hypothesis. The results were phenomenal. Using strategic thinking, the company capped the total discount amount on both offers to $100. The 10% discount, of course, generated the most engagement (47% more than the 5% coupon). However, thanks to its $100 cap, the 10% discount generated higher ROI.
3. Enhance Customer Loyalty
Many Caribbean marketing professionals face a challenge in increasing the lifetime value of their customers. You don’t have to be one of them. Content marketing gives you a way to entice your customers to come back.
Using content marketing analytics, you can pinpoint valuable customer insights. You’ll have a thorough understanding of your customers’ interests, and in knowing this information, you can create content that truly resonates with your audience.
As highlighted previously, effective content marketing doesn’t centre around sales pitches. To truly enhance customer loyalty, you must provide a mix of content aimed at audiences in all three stages of the buyer’s journey.
These audiences want valuable content that provides useful information. When you distribute content that piques their interests, you gain their trust. Once you have their trust, they are more likely to make repeat purchases. Here’s a look at various types of content you can use to enhance customer loyalty:
• User guides
• Promotions
• Newsletters
• Product updates
• News and events updates
• Surveys
Let’s wrap it all up…
Most brands take advantage of content marketing campaigns. Only those with strong strategies in place enjoy high ROI. If you’re ready to crush your outrageous yearly targets with content marketing, you need a strategy.
This strategy must focus on a range of tactics, like SEO, carefully planned objectives and customer-centric content. You’re not going to whip together an effective content marketing campaign overnight. It’s going to take anywhere from several weeks to several months to create.
And you’re going to need a marketing specialist along with several expert copywriters. The most notable advantage of content marketing is it’s never too late to start. However, the earlier you start, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits.
Need an extra guide in creating a content marketing strategy that’ll help you crush your yearly targets? Feel free to connect with us.