Content Marketing: The Complete Guide For Beginners

Transcription

1 Content Marketing: The Complete Guide For Beginners Content Marketing Definition: There are many definitions of content marketing across many content and digital marketing professionals. From my understanding and background experience, content marketing is one of the digital marketing techniques and implies the production, publication and promotion of content in all forms and formats for the purpose of attracting a relevant audience. Here is the list of the multiple goals or purpose of your content marketing: Grow or build a brand Create associations or connections with a brand Attract relevant visitors that take specific actions To spread a message To increase traffic for the purpose of serving advertising Generating qualified leads and sales Authority building Expanding influence Good marketing content speaks to the needs and aspirations of potential customers by assuring them that your business can be trusted and is competent. Great content always leads the reader towards specific actions and offers best opportunity to establish a personal and an emotional connection between prospects and brand. What Is Content? Content is any media you create to share your story and can be in form of: Written word Photos Videos Audios

2 Defining Your Content Marketing Goals Before creating, publishing and promoting your content, you need to have a content marketing plan in place which involves a series of steps as illustrated below: 1. Define Your Goal: 2. Planning/ Strategy: 3. Action/ Implementation: 4. Measure Success: 5. Evaluate/ Analyze: Content Marketing Plan How To Do Content Marketing The Right Way?

3 If you want to do well with content marketing, you need a content marketing plan in place to guide all your content marketing strategy. Your content marketing plan must answer all the following questions: What is the goal or purpose of your content? How do you make a schedule of your content? What kind and type of content are you going to create? Who is this content targeting and for what purpose? Who is creating the content? What strategy are you going to use for this content to achieve its goal? When it will be posted? You have to continue evaluating Your Success: What worked? What didn't work, so that next time you can adjust or change your strategy, for example if the video didn't work, you can try on photography, audio and so on? [Tweet "If you don t measure your content marketing plan you will never know if it is working or not."] Best Practices For Executing Your Successful Content Marketing Plan Know Your Goals When it comes to content marketing, you have to start big and work your way down. You have to capture what your business wants to achieve (GOALS) in the next 6-12 months. You must think about what you have to change to make your goals happen-aim high. Prioritize the most important things your content can do for you and for each goal you define, choose, and identify the metric you can use to track your progress. Here are the most common content marketing goals and the respective metrics and tools to help you track your progress: Building awareness

4 Metrics To Track: (Social engagement (%)), which is the percentage of your fans and followers who engage with your brand on Social media. Tools To Measure Your Metrics: There are a number of tracking solutions available including Facebook insights and Twitter analytics. You can use social management platforms such as Raven and SproutSocial to get a rounded view. You can also use the fantastic TrackMaven which delivers competitive intelligence for digital marketers. It is the most robust tracking tool in my opinion. Educating buyers Metrics To Track: Percentage of customers influenced by marketing Tools To Measure Your Metrics: Salesforce Pardot, BuzzSumo, AgoraPulse Establishing your expertise Metrics To Track: Social influence (influencer marketing) Tools To Measure Your Metrics: Backtweets, Mention, Twitter analytics Cross-selling or up-selling Metrics To Track: Customer lifetime value ($), the average monetary value from start to end of their relationship with your business. Tools To Measure Your Metrics: Use a basic formula, Customer lifetime value= (Average spend per transaction Average transactions per year) Average number of years. Moving leads along the purchasing path (Lead nurturing) Metrics To Track: Sales cycle time, how long it takes for a prospect to move all the way through the sales funnel.

5 Tools To Measure Your Metrics: CRM software is a great way to measure sales cycle time. Check out for solutions like SalesForce, InfusionSoft, and Hatchbuck. Generating new sales leads Metrics To Follow: Lead conversion rate (%), the percentage of your leads which subsequently turn into customers. Tools To Measure Your Metrics: You can measure your lead conversion rate using a range of technological solutions, including lead management software, CRM, and marketing/ sales automation software. Popular examples include SalesForce, Act, Hubspot, and Maximizer Customer Relations Managemnt software (CRM). Engaging with influencers Metrics To Track: Social mentions Tools To Measure Your Metrics: Backtweets, Mention, Twitter analytics Serving existing customers Metrics To Measure: Social mentions, brand ambassadorship, promoters, advocates, customer retention time Tools To Measure Your Metrics: SalesForce, Act, Hubspot, and Maximizer Customer Relations Management software (CRM). Understand Your Content Marketing Funnel A marketing funnel is the predictive analytics model used by businesses as a marketing or sales pipeline predictor and tracking mechanism. Understanding your marketing funnel is the first step to instilling a growth mindset within your organization.

6 The content marketing funnel has three stages: 1. Top Of Funnel (TOFU) 2. Middle Of Funnel (MOFU) 3. Bottom Of Funnel (BOFU) Top Of Funnel (TOFU): This is where you have to attract strangers into website visitors through two types of offers. 1. No risk offers where no registration is required to receive free content types such as: Blog articles Youtube videos

7 Podcasts Interviews Audios And blogging 2. Low risk offers where registration is required to get exclusive content like: Ebooks Templates Reports White papers Guides And resources 75% of website visitors are people in the awareness stage who have come to know your brand and are looking for information about their problems or opportunity. Middle Of Funnel (MOFU): Conversion of visitors into leads takes place at this stage of the content marketing sales funnel through the use of: About us page Social media Testimonials FAQs Guarantees Free trials Demos Newsletters Webinars And endorsements 23% of these prospects are in the consideration stage and have come to like your brand and are looking for different options to fix their problems or opportunity. Bottom Of Funnel (BOFU): This last step consists of 2% of prospects who are converted into customers. These have come to trust your brand and have taken action by contacting your brand through enquiries to buy a product or service.

8 As can be seen from the content marketing sales funnel, it is important to identify and quantify metrics, measure, evaluate and optimize the performance of your sales funnel. Once you re able to quantify your metrics, the next step in developing a growth mindset is to start looking for weaknesses in your funnel. (SWOT Analysis). Know Your Content Marketing Pillar There are four (04) pillars of content marketing, 1. Content Ideation This is the use of proven data (quantitative or qualitative) for better content ideation and creation. This pillar of content marketing involves doing a simple research to find out what content is performing better or what is trending in the content marketing world and get ideas from that and take your own spin to develop and create your own unique content. This approach is called the skyscraper technique, according to Brian Dean of Backlinko. If you want to be successful in the world of content marketing, your content ideation must be data driven.

9 2. Content Distribution This pillar of content marketing involves analyzing different effective content distribution channels for greater impact and targeting. 3. Content Experience This pillar involves optimizing your content experience for your audience. It entails going back to the content that is proven to perform better for your audience and make it even much better. 4. Content Performance This involves measuring what matters so that you know what is working and what is not working. By applying data-driven approach to the content pillar framework, you can make informed decisions and identify what is working and what is not working at each level. Identify Your Buyer Personas Buyer personas represent the ideal customers your organization is trying to attract, convert, close, and delight Use demographics and psychographics to create a persona for up to three distinct audiences. 1. List bullets of specific attributes 2. Browse for a picture of someone who could represent this audience 3. Create a detailed description in paragraph form At a high level, what three things should you keep in mind when creating buyer personas? 1. Research 2. Identify trends 3. Create persona stories

10 Here is how to uncover your buyer personas reading habits: Include a question on a form Interview some of your best customers Target Demographics and Psychographics of your defined audience. Demographics are the specific, measurable attributes of an audience (quantitative data) such as: Gender Age Income Location Job title Psychographics are attributes that can be described but not measured (qualitative data) such as: Attitude Beliefs Values Interests When it comes to a long-term content strategy, the important buyer persona traits to consider are: Demographics Challenges Identifiers Understand The Buyer s Journey If you want to execute your content marketing plan successfully, you need to understand the buyers journey. The buyer s journey is the active research process a buyer goes through leading up to a purchase.

11 The buyer s journey is the framework used to understand how your customers buy your product or service. The buyer s journey has three frameworks or stages for getting insights into the purchasing behavior, information needs, and problems of your buyer. 1. Awareness Stage 2. Consideration Stage 3. Decision Stage At the awareness stage, the buyer identifies a problem or opportunity and is looking for solution to solve the problem or get the opportunity. At consideration stage, the buyer is looking for available options to help solve the problem or get the opportunity.

12 At decision stage, the buyer picks one option among various others and decides to buy a product or service to solve the problem or get the opportunity. Your goal here as a content marketer is to map different content types to each stage of the buyer s journey to help the buyer consider different options available and eventually make a decision to buy a product or service. When identifying buyer s journey content, for a long-term content strategy, it s important to focus on content for the three stages of the buyer s journey, that is: Awareness Consideration Decision The buyer s journey is ever-evolving and you should make updates as you learn more about your buyer persona. Map Content To Your Buyer s Journey In a nutshell, mapping content to the buyer s journey simply means giving the right content to the prospective buyer at the right time of the buyer s stage. Here are specific content offers that must be delivered to the buyer at different stages of the buyer s journey.

13 Awareness Stage Blog posts Social media updates Research Stage EBooks, Webinars Industry reports Comparison Stage Case studies Demos Customer testimonials Purchase Stage Analyst reports

14 Detailed product info How do you know which one of your content offers to choose? Use the content mapping methodology- A 3 key content mapping fundamental. A 3 key content mapping fundamental involves a right mix between your content relevant terms and keywords, and user behavior or research needs and then choosing the right content format for ideation, creation and publication. Why Mapping Content to the Buyer s Journey? Specific content offers are more relevant to buyers at specific times during The Buyer s Journey. Mapping content to the buyer s journey improves the lead nurturing process resulting in increased conversion rates and saves time and therefore money for both the content marketer and the prospective buyer. Mapping content removes friction or barrier by giving relevant content to the prospective buyer and thereby avoid confusion. Imagine if you were bombarded with irrelevant content types in your inbox, you would not open future messages right?

15 Understand Inbound Marketing Methodology The inbound methodology consists of 4 knowledge areas: Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. Strangers are nurtured along the process and then converted into customers (even better, the promoters). As compared to traditional marketing and sales which involves cold calling, interruptive ads, cold s (spam), and marketer-centric approach, inbound marketing is permission marketing aimed at attracting strangers into visitors, visitors into leads, and leads into customers and eventually into brand ambassadors through SEO, blogging, attraction, and is customer- centric approach. Understand Your Content Marketing Matrix Select the type of content for your business at each stage of the buyer s journey using the content marketing matrix

16 1. Goal 2. Channel 3. Document type(s) 4. Topics/messages Develop Your Content Calendar Content calendar helps you to schedule work in advance, which simplifies planning and budgeting. Content calendar ensures you have content relevant to the time of the year, for example considerations and factoring in seasonal promotions, public events and holidays.

17 It also gives you flexibility by leaving certain slots blank and filled in at a time close to the publication date. That way, you can proactively respond to your current events without throwing your other plans into disarray. Know Your Content Marketing Distribution Channels Create once, publish everywhere (COPE)

18 Audience Segmentation Segmentation helps you group an audience together based on specific criteria from a large list of people. Segmentation is based on personal preferences of your list. Dig deeper into the demographics and psychographics of your list and segment your audiences according to your study. segmentation improves open rate, reduces bounce rate, increase click-through rate, conversion rate and sales because you are giving the people your promotional information exactly according to their preferences. Leverage Relevant Terms in Each Stage of the Buyer s Journey Speak the language of the buyers at each stage of the buyer s journey

19 This is very important if you want make people take actions and improve conversion and sales. Understand Lead Nurturing Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with the prospects even when they are not yet ready to buy in order to win their business when they are ready to buy. Lead Nurturing Facts 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. 85% of buyers said they need to encounter at least three pieces of content before engaging with a solution provider. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead. Source: Gleanster research, Knowledge Storm/ Marketing Sherpa, Forrester Research

20 Designing a Lead Nurturing Program Choosing a set of nurturing touch points: How many times do you want to contact a prospect? Choose your content offers: Perhaps you start with a white paper, move on to a set of case studies, and then invite the prospect to a webinar. Choose your cadence: Do you contact a prospect every week? Every two weeks? Choose your contact methods: Does your entire campaign revolve around , or do you contact some prospects by phone, direct mail, or other methods? Conduct Your Content Marketing Audit Why is it important to conduct your content marketing audit? To identify content marketing gaps and improve them. Content marketing audit is used for continuous improvement of your content marketing strategy. Organize your content audit according to the following: Content title Buyer s journey Marketing funnel Next Steps: Connect With Me

21 Samuel Kabemba Blogger, Solopreneur, and Founder of Creative Blogger Tips. I m also here to Connect and Learn from Others, Let s Get Connected below; You can find out more about me on my blog here: Check down for your FREE Gift FREE Gift for YOU (Click on the image)

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