A Definitive Guide to Content Marketing


Old ways of marketing are no longer the best ways of marketing. Digital marketing overtook the market of marketing few years ago and ‘content marketing’ is considered as its most crucial subdivision. Here is why –
·         It generates more inbound traffic to your site.
·         It increases engagement with the targeted audience.
·         It generates more leads.
·         It increases sales.
·         It builds up natural link of popularity.
·         It builds brand awareness.
·         It establishes you as a thought leader.
·         It is cheaper than other conventional ways of marketing.
In order to get all the above mentioned benefits of content marketing, you need to do it right. In this article, you will read how to do content marketing.

Identify and map your buyer personas and journeys
A gunshot is considered successful hit only when the bullet reaches the right target at the right time. It is same with the content. A content can be successful only when it has been personalized for a specific reader (potential client), with specific requirement, at a specific point of his/ her journey towards buying your service or product.
To create such content you need to understand your readers, their personas, state of mind and the specific requirement that can only be fulfilled by your content or eventually by your product. To do so, you need to create profiles based on their demographics and behavioral information. It may cover parameters like location, occupation, budget, industry, expectations, pain points, their understanding of your product / service, etc. Doing so will help you in creating content that will resonate with your audience.

Develop your brand voice and style guide
Tone of voice and content plays important role in how your customers perceive your brand. Creating your content with its own distinct and recognizable voice will help audience in differentiating your brand from your competitors. Finding the right tone is also important because it must be in sync with your product, service and industry. The tone can be contemporary, traditional, practical, inspirational, humorous, or serious.
After finding the right tone, you need to translate it into your writing style. There are few elements, you need to consider for doing so like word and sentence length, tempo, colloquialisms, using buzzwords, jargons, etc. Decide on what tone represents your brand, create it and apply it consistently throughout.

Create an editorial calendar
It is important to stay structured in your approach of developing best content strategy and maintaining an editorial content calendar helps in the process. It provides a place to generate and store ideas and key topics. It helps you in assigning writing and other editorial tasks to your teammates. It will help you in creating a publishing schedule so that you can maintain a consistent presence. It provides a foresight and allows you to make in-process adjustments with drag-and-drop ease. It will help you to visualize your marketing strategy in a way that everyone can understand. It also acts as a communication point for the team members.

Measure and optimize your content
Running a business without measuring profit is not good business. Similarly investing in content marketing without benefits is not good content marketing.  Therefore, you must measure the results of your content marketing.  Following is the list of parameters you may measure to check the ROIs on your content marketing -
·         Benchmark lift of company awareness
·         Benchmark lift of product/service awareness
·         Cost savings
·         Higher conversion rates
·         Inbound links
·         Customer renewal rates
·         Qualitative feedback from customers
·         Sales
·         Sales lead quality (e.g., sales accepted leads)
·         Sales lead quantity
·         SEO ranking
·         Subscriber growth
·         Time spent on website
·         Website traffic

Measure above parameters, see what is providing the best results and where you need to work and then strategize and implement accordingly. Use your content marketing to Attract, Engage and Convert.


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