In an era of high competition amongst brands, and some of the shortest time spans in history with which to grab people’s attention, it is vital for content marketing to make its mark on customers immediately. For the best strategies to work, there must be immediate impact so that target audiences remain engaged for long enough so that a piece of content’s messages can be conveyed. For advertisers trying to tackle bounce rates and boost interactions, there are numerous data-backed tactics to utilise.
One of the most important priorities for any content marketer is to ensure they have an accurate buyer persona. It’s useless targeting content towards uninterested parties, and keeping people engaged relies on customers actually wanting to hear what’s being broadcast. To do this, brands must focus on unique buyer personas that allow them to identify what people are looking for and, therefore, help shape content and increase engagement. On average, marketers have four defined ideal customers, though niche companies may have fewer. It’s vital, however, to stop treating any audience as a single entity if any improved interaction is to be noted.
Another tactic, though one that may have to be run past superiors, is to increase the content marketing budget. It’s a fact that real results often come from a boost in spend. Marketing strategies can be kicked off with little capital, but to keep the ball rolling and improve results requires more money. As such, marketing budgets should not solely be for the purpose of written content curation. Money should also be spent on increasing multimedia content, investing in eBooks and whitepapers, and paying for increased promotion and analytics opportunities.
There is also some importance in not overlooking potential platforms, even if a host of networks are already being used. For example, LinkedIn can be incredibly useful for conducting B2B content marketing. In recent studies, the platform was found to be the only truly effective place for B2B marketing. Creating an account and blog is relatively simple, and this allows for original content to be shared across the network. Even better results can be found by utilising LinkedIn’s niche groups.
Email marketing should also play a role in any content marketing strategy. Whilst disseminating material across social media networks can provide good results, any curated email list provides a direct link to consumers. A report from CMI found that 73 per cent of B2C firms still believe email marketing is extremely effective – even more so than producing video content. There are many automation tools on the market too, allowing strategists to easily add email advertising to their content plans. Even sending out a single monthly email can be a very good way of maintaining brand visibility and keeping customers involved.
The best content marketing efforts are not solely focussed on new prospects, but aim to boost relationships with current customers too. And, by using a variety of data-backed tactics to keep people engaged, brands can boost the effectiveness of advertising plans – not only to better the bottom line, but to nurture consumer relationships for the future as well.
