Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to attract and engage a target audience. Push marketing, which involves actively promoting a product or service, has been a popular traditional approach. However, in recent years, pull marketing, which focuses on creating valuable content that draws people in, has become increasingly popular. To succeed at content marketing, it's essential to understand the differences between these two approaches and to develop a comprehensive strategy that incorporates both.
Content marketing has become an essential aspect of modern-day digital marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach their target audience, and 70% of B2C marketers consider content marketing a key strategy. It's an approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience to drive profitable customer action. However, with so much content available online, standing out in a crowded space can be challenging. In this blog, we'll explore why having a well-thought-out content marketing strategy is crucial for standing out in today's crowded digital landscape.
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To win at content marketing, here are some tips to keep in mind:
How to do content marketing right
1. Define your target audience
Knowing your target audience is crucial to any successful content marketing strategy. It's not enough to have a surface-level understanding of your customers; you need to delve deeper to truly understand who they are. This includes gathering information on their demographics, interests, needs, and pain points to create content that resonates with them.
By mapping out their customer journey and creating detailed personas, you can tailor your content to meet their specific needs and preferences. Research has consistently shown that companies that prioritise audience research and understanding are more successful in their content marketing efforts. At ADA, we take this process seriously by utilising data enrichment to better understand consumer personas. This helps create content that resonates with the audience and drives better results.
2. Set your goals
The success or failure of your content marketing endeavours will be determined based on the goals you have set beforehand. Therefore, it is important for you to determine the goals of your content marketing efforts.
The best practice is to link content marketing goals to your business goals, such as increasing website organic traffic in 6 months, increasing the number of followers and engagement on social media in 3 months, and getting a number of leads.
Whatever goals you set, just make sure that they are SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
3. Set your budget
Creating content will cost money. How much does it cost?
The answer will depend on the type of content and how much you will be creating.
For example, text-based content on a website, such as articles, will have a relatively lower cost than video or image-based content that requires specialised software and equipment to create.
Also, the longer your content marketing campaign, the more expensive it will be since you will be paying people to create and evaluate the performance of the content for much longer.
4. Keep up with the latest trends
Content marketing trends are constantly evolving, and staying up to date with the latest trends is essential to staying ahead of the competition. According to Digital Marketing Institute, short-form immersive mobile-first video, artificial intelligence (AI) and marketing collaboration, and long-form and live video content are the current content trends that will garner views and traction.
Apart from the latest trends, it's also essential to analyse the market, competitors, and brand. This includes keeping a pulse on your industry's latest updates and understanding how your competitors are approaching content marketing. Understanding your brand’s competitive landscape and unique value proposition is essential to differentiating yourself and crafting a content strategy that resonates with your target audience. You can also take advantage of new opportunities to connect with your audience. You can create a winning content marketing strategy that drives traffic and engagement by analysing the market, competitors, and brand.
For example, a top butter brand in the Philippines wanted to engage with a younger generation of audience. By understanding the audience, the social platforms frequently used by them, and their preference, the brand resorted to TikTok as one of their GTM channels and held a brand hashtag challenge. As a result, the campaign went viral and successfully scored a total of 450k engagements.
5. Run a content audit
If you have previously created content, either for a website or social media, do a content audit before you start creating content.
This process aims to collect and identify what content you have created for marketing activities.
What do you need to understand from a content audit?
First, find a gap in the topic you want to cover. For example, you've covered 'the benefits of X' but haven't covered 'how to do X properly'.
Then analyse whether the content you already have has the quality that matches the standards you set. If not, you can decide whether to update the content or create new content that is fresher and more complete.
Finally, find content that you can repurpose. For example, you find blog content that has a lot of traffic and many readers share it. This can mean that the content is very useful for readers. Turning that content into video content and uploading it on YouTube or other social media platforms can be a good strategy to start your content marketing strategy.
6. Produce insights-based creatives
To produce insights-based creatives effectively, it's important to gather insights through a variety of means, including consumer, market, and brand analysis. This process involves utilising data expertise to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and what drives their behaviour.
The insights-based approach allows us to produce creative content that speaks directly to the audience's needs and preferences. By analysing data, we can create content that is both informative and engaging. Whether it's through social media, email marketing, or other channels, our team will work with you to develop a content strategy that drives results and helps you achieve your marketing goals.
According to a survey by the Demand Gen Report, 95% of B2B buyers prefer shorter, interactive content formats such as blog posts, social media posts, and infographics. However, long-form content such as whitepapers and case studies are also effective in providing in-depth information to your audience. Focus on creating original content that provides value to your audience. Also, remember to use relevant keywords and optimise your content for search engines.
Optimising content for search engines is a very powerful content distribution strategy. If your content makes it to page 1 of search engine results pages for certain keywords, then your content will be easier to find.
Search results also generally last a long time, at least if you take good care of your website and Google's algorithm doesn't change too much, which makes the optimisation results last longer.
For example, Nike uses different types of content for different target audiences in its “Equality” campaign. In this campaign, they created a video that features various athletes and celebrities, all of whom discuss the importance of equality in sports. The video was shared on social media, and it resonated with the younger and socially conscious audience. In addition, they also created blog posts that provided more in-depth information about the campaign and highlighted their commitment to equality. This type of content appeals to an older and more mature audience who values social responsibility and corporate ethics.
7. Consistency is key
Consistency is critical in content marketing. Regularly publishing quality content helps build your brand's credibility and authority, keeps your audience engaged, and drives traffic to your website. The frequency of updating a blog post depends on the objective and what's best for your company. Create a content calendar and stick to it. This will help you plan and organise your content marketing efforts effectively.
How frequently should you blog?
Source: HubSpot
8. Media expertise
Having media expertise is critical to effectively reaching and engaging with your target audience. Today's consumers are bombarded with content from a variety of channels and platforms, which means that brands need to be creative in how they deliver their message. By utilising multiple channels and delivery methods, you can connect with your customers wherever they are and increase the chances of your content being seen.
At ADA, we believe in taking a multi-channel approach to content marketing. This means using a combination of social media, email marketing, blogs, videos, and other channels to reach your target audience. By doing so, you can ensure that your content is accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of their preferred platform.
Another important aspect of media expertise is subtle branding. While it's important to promote your brand, it's equally important to do so in a way that doesn't feel forced or overly promotional. Our team of experts understands how to craft content that seamlessly integrates your brand messaging without turning off your audience.
Whether it's through sponsored content, influencer partnerships, or other methods, we can help you reach your target audience in a way that feels natural and organic. By taking a media-savvy approach to content marketing, we can help you maximise the impact of your content and drive results for your business.
Don't rely on just one platform or channel to distribute your content. In the era of omnichannel marketing, utilise various channels such as social media, email marketing, and blogging to reach a wider audience.
Multichannel marketing utilises channels such as websites, apps, banners, social media, and customer service to connect with customers across multiple channels.
Omnichannel marketing puts the customer at the centre of the strategy. It focuses on the customer experience across all channels and seeks to create a consistent, positive experience at every touchpoint in the customer lifecycle or purchase journey.
Differences between multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing
Source: CleverTap
Also, remember to repurpose your content for different platforms to maximise your reach. This strategy will save you time in producing more content.
To win at content marketing, use multiple channels and delivery methods, keep branding subtle and consistent, and focus on creating a seamless, omnichannel experience for customers. Repurposing content can also save time and reach a wider audience.
9. Measure your content performance results
Measuring your content marketing performance is essential to improving your strategy. Use metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversion rates to track your progress. Analyse the data to identify what's working and what's not and adjust your strategy accordingly.
How powerful and effective content looks like
Winning at content marketing is not just about strategy but also about how your business creates powerful and effective content.
But how do you create such content?
Here are some characteristics of powerful and effective content to help you in creating content:
1. Relevant
Effective content is content that is relevant to your target audience. Simply put, relevant content is content that answers questions or helps solve problems that readers have.
That means, when creating content, you must understand who your target readers are. Without having knowledge of your target audience, you will find it difficult to answer questions or help solve problems they have.
2. Prioritise value over product
When creating content, try to prioritise solutions or answers to help readers. It is possible that your product or service is the solution to the reader's problem, but if you are writing a blog post and not a product page, then blend your product into the content as naturally as possible or you can mention your product in the content.
3. Relevant to the user journey
In addition to answering the needs of its readers, effective content is content that is relevant to their journey, in this case, the buying journey.
In general, there are three stages in the buying journey; awareness, consideration, and decision.
In the awareness stage, readers are still trying to understand the problems they have and they generally look for content about 'what is X', for example, 'what is CRM'. At this stage, it would be unwise for you to overtly offer your product because the readers themselves are still not too familiar with their needs.
In the consideration stage, readers are looking for solutions to the problems they have, for example, they have understood what CRM is and its benefits for business and now want to know how to choose the right CRM.
Then, in the final stage, readers will look for a CRM company or provider. At this stage, the reader has turned into potential customers and you can do 'hard selling' in the content to show your best products.
4. Consistent with brand identity
An effective content marketing strategy is incomplete without a brand guideline that guides the content creation process. Simply put, the content that you will create, whether it's text, video, images, etc., must be in accordance with the brand guideline that you have previously determined.
What is the purpose? The goal is to expose readers to your brand identity continuously while consuming your content and make it easier for readers to recognise your brand in the future.
Achieving content marketing success
Content marketing is an effective way to reach and engage with your target audience. By following the tips listed above, you can win at content marketing. Remember, content marketing is a long-term strategy that requires patience and dedication, but with the right approach, it can drive significant results for your business.
Looking to create impactful and effective content that can help grow your business? Look no further than ADA Content House. With 10 local creative studios and a team of over 100 designers across the region, we specialise in producing high-quality and localised insights-based creatives at scale. Our commitment to excellence doesn't end there – we also ensure timely delivery, measurable results, and wide reach.
Take, for example, our successful collaboration with a homegrown lifestyle eWallet brand. We delivered over 10 campaigns and created over 500 assets monthly, resulting in a significant 30% reduction in content adaptation costs. Our impressive track record boasts a consistent 95% on-time delivery rate.
Ready to take your content marketing to the next level? Leave us your inquiries, and our representative will get in touch with you promptly to discuss how we can help your business thrive!
