By now, you probably know just how important it is to invest in digital marketing in order to grow your business on all fronts. Whether you’re trying to build customer loyalty, generate quality leads, improve your brand’s reputation, ranking, and trust, or all of the above and in-between, there is no denying that digital marketing can help you get there. That said, if you want to truly improve your existing marketing strategy, you have to focus on more than just paid ads and sponsorships with influencers – you need to double down on content creation.
While there are some marketing processes you can automate with ease, content creation requires a human touch simply because there are many complex variables at play. That said, the initial investment will be well worth the effort in the long term, as content marketing can help you achieve all of the above and position yourself at the tops of the SERPs to become the dominant brand in your niche with ease. Let’s take a look at how you can leverage content marketing to take your entire digital marketing strategy forward.
Start with audience research
Knowing your audience is half the job in the world of digital marketing, and when it comes to creating high-quality, relevant content, researching your audience becomes invaluable. The content you publish needs to be geared towards your target demographic and you need to optimize to the exact liking of your online audience in order to make it as relevant and engaging as possible. This means that your content should be full of valuable information, that it should boast a friendly yet professional tone, and that it should portray your brand in the best possible light.
That said, you shouldn’t just focus on audience research, as you should also take a look at your competitors’ content to find out what they’re doing right, and more importantly, what they’re doing wrong. Competitor research will allow you to build upon their success and create even better content that will rank higher and improve your website traffic, online visibility and recognition, and much more.
Define your content KPIs
Content, like any other digital marketing tactic, can only thrive when you use relevant, actionable data. You can write the most compelling stories in the world and publish them all over the web, but if that’s not something that resonates with your target audience or if it’s not optimized for Google (more on that in a bit), it will all be for naught. To make your content as impactful as possible, you need to track your most relevant KPIs regularly so that you can adapt your approach on a moment’s notice.
These KPIs include site traffic, engagement rate, inbound links, CTR, keyword ranking, comments and interactions, shares and likes, scroll depth and bounce rate, average time on page, and more. The more KPIs you track, the more information about your audience you’ll collect, which will help you produce meaningful content that truly resonates with your audience.
Develop content in various forms
When business leaders think of content, they tend to limit their thinking to articles and blog posts, but when marketers think of content, they think about various content forms at the same time. Yes, articles are still your most powerful SEO tool, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t upgrade your content strategy to include many other types of content to reach a wider audience and boost engagement across the board.
So, start with and keep making long-form, data-driven articles with relevant keywords, but try to diversify your strategy with an infographic here and there, some interesting videos, maybe a podcast, and the like. You don’t need to try every type of content out there, but publishing two or three types a month can be a great way to keep your marketing strategy fresh.
Know what Google loves
Content marketing is about dazzling your online audience, yes, but it’s also about dazzling the search engines. After all, you want your articles, infographics, and videos to rank as high as possible in the SERPs in order to boost your brand’s visibility, awareness, and authority in the competitive industry.
To do that, you have to know what Google likes and use it to your advantage. For example, Google loves smart keyword use in content that helps with page indexing and crawling. It also loves a rich backlink portfolio and websites that have a lot of quality links that lead back to their content and landing pages from reputable sources. Google also loves a meticulously-organized off-page SEO strategy, so make sure to tidy up your backend SEO as well if you want to rank higher in all relevant search results.
Weave content into other digital marketing tactics
Last but not least, content marketing is not meant to live on its own in the digital world – you need to use it to drive your other marketing and sales tactics forward. Be sure to weave quality content into your email campaign, have your paid ads lead to content-rich landing pages, integrate content into your social media strategy, have your influencers share your content, keep earning those backlinks, and be sure to use informative content to guide customers down the sales pipeline.
Wrapping up
Content marketing is a foundational pillar of every digital marketing strategy, and it has the power to take your digital presence forward as a whole. You can use these tips to make your content more impactful than ever before, and build an authoritative brand in the saturated online world.
Jolene Rutherford is a marketing specialist – turned blogger, currently writing for technivorz.com. Interested in digital marketing and new technology trends. Love sharing content that can help and inform people.