How do you effectively market to a diverse group of people?
By Amanda Brooks
With constant technological advancements, it’s hard to stay in control. One of the major changes in the industry is data and how it is being used. We live in a fast-paced society where humans expect immediate feedback, response, and reactions. It’s important for businesses to evolve with their client’s needs when it comes to advancements in technology.
Content marketing uses a strategic marketing approach that is centered on creating and sharing valuable content with the purpose of attracting a specific target audience. The end goal is driving profitable customer action.
Content marketing is used by leading brands including P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and John Deere.
Four Key Reasons:
- Increased Sales
- Cost Savings
- Better customers who have more loyalty
- Content as a profit center
However, all marketing depends on quality content. We live in a world where news can be accessed and shared at our finger tips. There are too many mediums from which we try to focus our attention: television, web browsing, social media, terrestrial and satellite radio, movies, magazines, blogs, podcasts……the list goes on.
Content marketing is similar to Public Relations. One of its goals is to provide information to consumers that will be of value, establish credibility, create positive associations, and foster loyalty and brand association. Content marketing can drive sales.
Whether or not you keep your content marketing in-house, there are some best practices that we always recommend for our clients.
Create a plan with goals: Having a plan helps you to define who your content is talking to and what you want it to say. Are you looking to foster engagement over social channels in order to transition commenters to a related page on your website or are you creating a high-level byline article to get the attention of C level executives with the goal of partnering in the next six months? The answers to these questions and how you measure success will make a huge difference in you strategize for each campaign.
Track the proper analytics: There are a wealth of metrics available, each with a useful purpose. It’s well worth the time to define success by detailing how it will be measured. Are you going big and developing a content marketing campaign to wrestle the Share of Voice (SOV) away from your closest competitor or are you going broad and trying to increase your mentions across targeted platforms? Simply measuring impressions is rarely good enough to define success anymore, which means that you have to be nuanced enough to track the right data to prove the campaign is providing value.
Take an interest in, but don’t get lost in writing for SEO: The importance of Search Engine Optimization is without question. Being buried among the search results has two distinct disadvantages, 1: Your business information is located so deep that it will never be found 2: Your competitors with better SEO will gladly take the customers that are searching for you. These are scary thoughts, but when it comes to content marketing, it’s important to remember that your audience are people and not robots. As mentioned earlier, the goal of content marketing is to engender positive feelings: loyalty, trust and value. A search engine algorithm doesn’t have a concept of these terms, which is why content marketing needs to be focused on your current and potential customers. While alluring, a headline that’s filled with buzz words and geared toward achieving a good hit on Google often makes little sense to the reader, which is ultimately a wasted opportunity.
Whitepapers: Whitepapers are also an effective form of content marketing. Whitepapers are an essential part of any company’s marketing strategy and are an excellent tool to highlight your company’s directly to end-users. If you missed it, check out Milldam’s blog about The Power of a Whitepaper and how to utilize it. Whitepapers can be blasted across social platforms many times and used to start a discussion and generate activity with end-users, like posting its conclusions to industry-specific LinkedIn groups. It can also lead to online and print marketing campaigns, generate interest and secure briefings with reporters and analysts, present material for industry conferences and speaking opportunities, and provide the basis for byline articles – one of its greatest value!
Ultimately, an experienced PR firm like Milldam has the ability to use a whitepaper to provide additional value for your business. At Milldam Public Relations, we use whitepapers to showcase knowledge, branding, and leadership. Whitepapers serve important sales and marketing functions, such as creating new leads, increasing your company’s profile as a leader, and setting your brand apart from your competitors.
To read more about whitepapers visit our Whitepaper Library.
Interested in our Whitepaper service? Contact us.
While time consuming versus other methods, content marketing remains a powerful tool for small and large businesses alike and these are just a few best practices that Milldam PR uses to help increase the success of our clients. There are a variety of benefits when content marketing is successfully employed, among them: establishing credibility, creating positive associations, and fostering loyalty and brand association.
