If you’re looking to increase your sales on your e-commerce site there are a number of tools you should consider adding to your site to increase your conversion rate. We look at some of the most effective here, see what could help you!
Setting up a website is just the first step in making the most of your potential online customer base. Content strategies are one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. After all there’s little point in opening a new shop if nobody knows about it! An effective content strategy makes your company stand out from the rest and delivers returns for less money than PPC marketing or other pay to play advertising avenues.
Preparing Your Content Strategy
Define Your Goals
The first step in creating a successful content strategy is to define your objectives. This is a critical step, as it lays the foundation for the rest of your content marketing efforts. Without clear objectives, it can be difficult to create content that resonates with your target audience and drives engagement.
At our content marketing agency, we believe that defining your goals should be the starting point of your content strategy. There are several potential goals that a company might be trying to achieve through its content marketing efforts. Some of these include:
- Increasing Brand Awareness: If you’re a new business or looking to expand your reach, one of your primary goals might be to increase brand awareness. By creating content that showcases your brand’s unique value proposition and distributing it effectively, you can reach a wider audience and build brand recognition.
- Generating Leads: If your goal is to generate leads, your content should focus on providing value to your target audience and encouraging them to take action. This can include creating gated content such as whitepapers or ebooks that require users to provide their contact information in order to access the content.
- Establishing Thought Leadership: If you’re looking to establish yourself or your business as a thought leader in your industry, your content should focus on providing informative and educational content that positions you as an expert in your field. This can include creating blog posts, videos, or webinars that showcase your knowledge and expertise.
- Improving Customer Engagement: If you’re looking to improve customer engagement and loyalty, your content should focus on providing value to your existing customers. This can include creating helpful how-to guides or providing exclusive offers and discounts to your loyal customers.
When deciding which goals should be part of your content marketing campaign, it’s important to consider your overall business objectives and align your content strategy accordingly. For example, if your business is in a highly competitive industry, increasing brand awareness might be a more important goal than establishing thought leadership.
Additionally, it’s important to consider your target audience when defining your goals. What are their pain points and what type of content is most likely to resonate with them? By understanding your target audience’s needs and preferences, you can create content that is tailored to their interests and drives engagement.
Case Study: Coca-Cola Coca-Cola is an example of a company that has successfully aligned its content strategy with its business objectives. The company’s primary goal is to increase brand awareness and engagement with its target audience. To achieve this, Coca-Cola creates content that is entertaining, engaging, and reflective of its brand’s values. This includes social media campaigns such as the “Share a Coke” campaign, which encouraged customers to share photos of Coca-Cola products with their names on them. By aligning its content strategy with its business objectives, Coca-Cola has been able to establish itself as a leading brand in the beverage industry and generate significant engagement with its target audience.
Defining Your Target Market
Defining the target market is a crucial step in creating a successful content strategy. Without knowing who your audience is, it’s difficult to create content that resonates with them. That’s why we, as a content marketing agency, believe that conducting market research is essential before embarking on any content campaign.
Market research involves gathering and analysing data about your target audience to gain insights into their behaviour, preferences and interests. This information can help you create content that is relevant, valuable and engaging for your audience.
To conduct effective market research, start by defining your ideal customer. This means identifying the characteristics of the people you want to reach, such as their age, gender, location, interests, and behaviours. You can also use demographic data from sources like the Office for National Statistics (ONS) or third-party research firms to get a more in-depth understanding of your target market.
Competitor analysis is also an important part of market research. You should review your competitors’ content to identify gaps in the market that you can fill with your own content. By analysing their campaigns, you can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t in your industry.
Once you have a good understanding of your target market, it’s time to create customer personas. These are fictional characters that represent different segments of your target audience. Each persona should include demographic information, as well as details about their goals, pain points, and content preferences. By creating personas, you can tailor your content to different segments of your target market, making it more effective and engaging.
For example, a car dealership might create customer personas for first-time car buyers, families, and luxury car enthusiasts. Each persona would have different goals and preferences when it comes to buying a car, so the dealership would create different types of content to appeal to each segment.
In conclusion, defining your target market is a crucial step in creating a successful content strategy. By conducting effective market research, analysing competitor campaigns and creating customer personas, you can create content that resonates with your audience and drives business results. As a content marketing agency, we believe that this is one of the most important steps in the content creation process, and we always put the time and effort into getting it right.
Content Audit
Once you have defined your goals and target market, it’s time to move onto the next step: running a content audit. A content audit is an essential process for any business looking to improve their content marketing efforts, as it allows you to take stock of what you already have, what you need to create, and what can be repurposed.
The first step in conducting a content audit is to identify all the content your business has produced to date. This includes everything from blog posts and videos to social media updates and e-books. You can use tools like Google Analytics to get an overview of your content, such as the number of page views and shares each piece has received.
Next, it’s time to analyse your content to see what is working and what isn’t. This involves looking at metrics like engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. By doing this, you can identify which pieces of content are resonating with your audience and which ones are falling flat.
Once you have identified your best-performing content, it’s time to decide what can be repurposed. Repurposing content is an excellent way to get more mileage out of your existing content while also saving time and resources. For example, a popular blog post can be turned into a video or an infographic, while an e-book can be broken down into a series of blog posts.
Of course, not all content can be repurposed, and you may find that there are gaps in your content that need to be filled. This is where you can start thinking about creating new content. However, before you start brainstorming new ideas, it’s important to understand what your audience wants to see. This is where your customer personas come in.
By creating detailed customer personas, you can gain a better understanding of your target audience’s needs and pain points. This, in turn, can help you come up with ideas for new content that will resonate with them. For example, if you’re targeting busy professionals, you may want to create short, snappy videos that can be consumed on-the-go, while if you’re targeting stay-at-home parents, you may want to create longer-form blog posts that offer in-depth advice and guidance.
Choosing Marketing Channels
Once we have defined the goals and target audience, the next step in creating a content marketing strategy is to decide which marketing channels to use. With so many marketing channels available today, it can be overwhelming to know where to focus your resources. However, choosing the right channels is critical to the success of your campaign.
Here are some of the marketing channels that you should consider for your content campaign, along with their strengths and weaknesses:
- Social Media
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are powerful tools for reaching a large audience. These platforms allow you to share your content, engage with your audience, and build a community around your brand.
According to a recent study, social media is the top content marketing tactic used by businesses, with 91% of B2B marketers using it to distribute content. Furthermore, 84% of consumers say they have purchased a product after seeing it on social media.
Strengths:
- Large audience reach
- High engagement potential
- Cost-effective
Weaknesses:
- Can be time-consuming to manage
- Organic reach has decreased on some platforms
- Difficult to stand out in a crowded space
- Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tried and true marketing channel that has been around for decades. It involves sending promotional emails to a list of subscribers who have opted in to receive them.
Email marketing has a median ROI of 122%, which is four times higher than other marketing channels such as social media, direct mail, and paid search. Furthermore, 59% of consumers say that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
Strengths:
- Highly targeted audience
- Personalized messages
- Cost-effective
Weaknesses:
- Can be perceived as spam
- Low open and click-through rates
- Compliance with GDPR and other regulations
- SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
According to a recent study, 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, making SEO an important marketing channel for businesses. Furthermore, the first page of Google captures 71% of search traffic clicks.
Strengths:
- High traffic potential
- Long-lasting results
- Cost-effective
Weaknesses:
- Requires ongoing maintenance
- Can take time to see results
- Constantly changing algorithm
- Paid Advertising
Paid advertising involves paying to display your content or ads on various platforms such as search engines, social media, or websites.
According to a recent study, paid search ads increase brand awareness by 80%. Furthermore, social media ads have an average click-through rate of 0.9%, which is higher than the average banner ad click-through rate of 0.2%.
Strengths:
- High visibility and reach
- Ability to target specific audiences
- Immediate results
Weaknesses:
- Can be expensive
- Ad fatigue can set in quickly
- Requires ongoing optimization
- Content Syndication
Content syndication involves partnering with other websites or publishers to distribute your content on their platforms.
According to a recent study, 65% of B2B marketers use content syndication to generate leads. Furthermore, 76% of B2B buyers use content as a research tool during their purchasing process.
Strengths:
- Large audience reach
- Increased brand awareness
- Ability to generate leads
Weaknesses:
- Loss of control over brand messaging
- Potential for low-quality leads
- Can be expensive
Creating Your Campaign
Content Calendar
The success of a content marketing campaign depends on much more than simply creating great content. You also need to make sure that your content is being published at the right time, in the right place, and in the right format. This is where a content calendar comes in. A content calendar is a schedule that outlines what content will be created, when it will be created, and where it will be published.
A content calendar is essential for keeping your content marketing campaign on track. Without a content calendar, it’s easy to lose track of what content has been created, what still needs to be created, and when it should be published. This can lead to missed deadlines, inconsistency in your publishing schedule, and ultimately, a less effective content marketing campaign.
A content calendar also provides a roadmap for your content marketing campaign. By planning out your content in advance, you can ensure that it is aligned with your overall marketing strategy and that it is meeting the needs of your target audience. This helps to ensure that your content is driving the results that you want, whether that’s increased website traffic, higher engagement on social media, or more leads and sales.
Creating a content calendar may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some tips to help you get started:
- Determine the frequency of your content: Before you can create a content calendar, you need to decide how often you want to publish content. This will depend on a variety of factors, including the resources you have available, the type of content you’re creating, and the preferences of your target audience. Some businesses may publish content daily, while others may publish content weekly or monthly.
- Decide on the format of your content: You’ll also need to decide on the format of your content. Will you be publishing blog posts, social media posts, videos, or a combination of these? The format you choose will depend on the preferences of your target audience and the resources you have available.
- Create a list of topics: Once you’ve determined the frequency and format of your content, you can start creating a list of topics to cover. Your topics should be aligned with your overall marketing strategy and should be relevant to your target audience.
- Assign deadlines: Once you have a list of topics, you can start assigning deadlines for each piece of content. Be sure to give yourself and your team enough time to create each piece of content, from researching and outlining to drafting and editing.
- Choose your distribution channels: Finally, you’ll need to decide where you’ll be publishing your content. Will you be publishing on your blog, social media channels, or other platforms? Be sure to choose the channels that are most effective for reaching your target audience.
Tools for Creating a Content Calendar
There are many tools available for creating a content calendar. Some of our favourites include:
- Google Sheets or Excel: These are great tools for creating a simple content calendar. You can create a spreadsheet with columns for the date, content type, topic, and distribution channels.
- Trello: Trello is a project management tool that can also be used to create a content calendar. You can create cards for each piece of content and move them between lists as they move through the creation and publishing process.
- CoSchedule: CoSchedule is a content marketing platform that includes a content calendar as one of its features. It allows you to plan and publish your content, as well as manage your social media channels.
Creating Effective Content
Now that we have completed the research phase, determined the target audience, and developed a content calendar, it’s time to start creating the content. This is the phase where the ideas and strategy start to take shape and turn into tangible, shareable pieces of content.
Creating quality content takes a lot of time and effort, and as a business owner, you might not have the resources to produce high-quality content consistently. This is where we, the agency, come in. Working together, we can create content that resonates with your audience and helps you achieve your marketing goals.
One of the biggest benefits of working with us is that we have a team of skilled content creators who can handle all aspects of content creation, from ideation to distribution. We can help you create high-quality content that aligns with your brand’s voice and values. Our team can help you develop various types of content, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media posts.
We can also provide guidance on the best practices for creating content that will help you achieve your marketing goals. For instance, we can advise you on the best content format for your audience and the best times to publish your content to maximize engagement. Additionally, we can help you optimize your content for search engines so that it’s more discoverable by your target audience.
Collaborating with us will also help you save time and stay on schedule. Our team will manage the content creation process, from creating a content brief to revising and editing drafts. We will ensure that your content is delivered on time and meets your standards. You won’t have to worry about the logistics of content creation, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
Launching Your Campaign
Launch
Launching a content marketing campaign is an exciting endeavor. You’ve put in the work to create valuable content that will resonate with your target audience, and now it’s time to get it out into the world. To do so, you’ll need to consider how you’ll generate visibility and interest for your content without discussing specific channels.
One important aspect of launching a content marketing campaign is timing. Consider when your target audience is most active and engaged with content and schedule your launch accordingly. If you’re unsure about the best timing, conduct research to see when your audience is most active on the internet and schedule your content release to align with those peak times.
Another important consideration is how you’ll communicate your content launch to your audience. You’ll need to craft messaging that resonates with your audience and compels them to engage with your content. Make sure your messaging highlights the benefits of your content and clearly communicates what sets it apart from other content on the market.
Additionally, make sure you leverage your existing audience to get the word out about your content. If you’ve built an email list or have a social media following, leverage these channels to promote your content launch. Your audience is already engaged with your brand and interested in what you have to say, making them a natural target for your content marketing efforts.
Finally, make sure your content is easily shareable. If your audience enjoys your content, they’ll likely want to share it with others. Include social media share buttons and encourage your audience to share your content with their networks.
Measuring Results
Measuring the effectiveness of a content marketing campaign is crucial to ensure that the efforts put in place are generating a return on investment (ROI). By measuring your campaign, you can identify what works and what doesn’t and make adjustments accordingly. This section will explore how to measure a content marketing campaign, signs of success, and how to make adjustments to maximize ROI.
- Determine Your Metrics
Before measuring the success of your campaign, you need to identify what metrics are most important to you. These metrics will vary depending on your specific goals and objectives. For example, if you aim to increase brand awareness, your metrics might include the number of shares, likes, and comments on your social media posts, while if your goal is lead generation, your metrics may be the number of form submissions or email sign-ups.
- Use Analytics
Analytics can help you track the performance of your content marketing campaign. Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring website traffic, page views, bounce rates, and time spent on a page. You can use this data to track the success of your blog posts, landing pages, and other types of content. Social media platforms also have built-in analytics tools that allow you to track engagement and reach.
- Monitor Your Metrics Regularly
It’s important to monitor your metrics regularly to ensure you are on track to meet your goals. By checking in on your metrics frequently, you can identify any issues and make adjustments as needed. If you see that certain pieces of content are not performing as well as others, you can adjust your strategy and create more content similar to your top-performing pieces.
- Adjust Your Campaign
Based on your metrics, you can adjust your content marketing campaign. If you find that your email marketing campaigns are not generating the desired results, you can try changing the subject lines or the content of the emails. If your blog posts are not generating enough traffic, you can try adjusting your SEO strategy or the type of content you produce.
- Look for Signs of Success
Some signs of a successful content marketing campaign include increased website traffic, increased engagement on social media, increased email sign-ups, and an increase in sales or leads. Keep an eye on these metrics to ensure that you are achieving your desired results.
Measuring the success of a content marketing campaign is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and adjustments. By identifying your metrics, using analytics tools, monitoring your metrics, adjusting your campaign, and looking for signs of success, you can maximize your ROI and achieve your business objectives.
