Effective content marketing campaigns have the power to increase SEO ranking as well as web traffic and convert visitors into customers. But what makes a content marketing campaign “effective”?
The fact of the matter is that no two businesses are completely the same, which means you aren’t going to find a one-size-fits all solution. Your content marketing strategy will need to be as unique as your brand, and speak to your unique audience.
To help you to define your audience and leverage their interests, here are 5 content marketing tactics that work:
Do you know your audience? In order for your content marketing strategy to increase website traffic and successfully convert site visitors into customers, you first need to identify the audience you aim to target. Not every consumer is going to become your customer, but by understanding who your ideal customer is, you can avoid wasting time and effort marketing to the wrong groups.
Create a buyer persona for your brand, or many buyer personas, based on your current loyal customer demographics combined with distinct criteria about your ideal customer. You can define your brand’s buyer persona by conducting market research using Google Trends and Uber Suggest. Then, compare the data you find there with your CRM data to flush out the specifics of your ideal customer.
Google Trends will provide you with critical data regarding the existing consumer demand for businesses like yours. Simply plug a relevant topic or term into the search bar. Google Trends will show you the historic interest in that topic as well as a list of relevant searches. From there, you can gain a sense of what your ideal audience is interested in, compile targeted keywords, and leverage those keywords in your content marketing.
Ideally, each of your optimized marketing campaigns should connect to its own landing page. When marketing guru Neil Patel did this, his internet search traffic nearly tripled. By plugging relevant keywords and longtail keyword phrases into both his marketing campaigns and their associated landing pages, Patel was able to funnel web traffic and seamlessly convert interested consumers into paying customers, and you can do the same.
Also referred to as a lead capture page, squeeze page, or single property page, a landing page is a destination web page that appears once a user clicks on an SEO research result or the CTA of any type of digital marketing promotion. For example, if your email marketing campaign includes a subscription CTA, whichever recipients click on that subscription CTA will be directed to the subscription landing page where they can sign up for a subscription.
By creating one landing page per content marketing campaign, you will be able to track which campaign is delivering the highest conversion rate and ROI. If your social media campaign is out-performing your Google AdWords campaign, for instance, you might decide to pull the ad and pour the reserved funds into your social media campaign. Ultimately, using multiple, targeted landing pages will help you make better business decisions, in addition to driving web traffic, generating quality leads, and turning leads into customers.
No matter which type of content marketing campaign you’re planning to launch, the more you define and target the audience, the more successful the campaign will be in terms of enticing consumers to click, learn, and buy. Segmenting your audience into multiple customer groups can be challenging, depending on the type of content marketing campaign. For example, a Facebook and Instagram ad campaign will not allow you to target your audience as tightly as the average email marketing campaign, which is why we’re going to focus on email marketing to explain this particular content marketing tactic.
When it comes to email marketing, specifying and targeting multiple recipient groups is not only possible but faster and easier than other forms of content marketing, as we mentioned. Try segmenting your email recipients by first grouping them based on product or service needs, and then grouping them based on age.
● Recipients younger than 18 years = buying behavior determined by guardians
● Recipients aged between 19 – 30 years = good long term buying potential, but lower expenditure per order
● Recipients aged between 31 – 45 years = buying behavior based on additional needs such as children, dependents, current financial burdens, and other factors
● Recipients aged between 46 – 60 = buying behavior based on increasing financial constraints associated with retirement, multiple homes, lingering dependents, and other factors
Interestingly, while consumers younger than 30 years might spend less money per order, they will actually take much larger financial risks when purchasing than consumers in their mid-40s. This isn’t a fixed rule of thumb, but rather a loose guide you can use when segmenting and targeting your email recipients.
This content marketing tactic is really a two-punch strategy, and the first punch has to do with targeting millennials and Gen Z aged consumers. The second punch is the marketing tactic itself, which is to provide adaptive content to those millennials and Gen Zers. Let’s take a look.
Millennials make up nearly 80 million citizens in the US, and Gen Zers make up a whopping 90 million. Combined, these consumer age groups exceed any other in the United States alone. What makes millennials and Gen Zers so unique is that unlike Gen X and prior generations, millennials and Gen Zers grew up using advanced computer and smartphone technology. Because they were raised with evolving technology, millennials and Gen Zers have the highest expectations in terms of how brands use technology in their marketing.
One way you can successfully attract and retain the attention of a millennial and Gen Z audience is by using adaptive content in your marketing campaigns. Adaptive content is any content that utilizes personalization so that the user experiences ongoing, seamless interactions with your brand. Yes, we realize that probably sounds abstract. Adaptive content is a somewhat abstract concept, so here’s what you can do to provide one of the most valuable forms of adaptive content: invest in a responsive web design. A responsive website design will allow users to pick up where they left off when they visit your website from multiple devices.
Our final content marketing tactic is ideal for anyone who might not be able to generate a lot of original content themselves. Remaining consistent, especially when publishing blog articles, is the key to retaining and engaging your audience. That being said, a lot of business owners might not have enough creative juice to regularly write and publish blog articles. Instead of dropping the ball and becoming inconsistent, try curating and publishing content from other platforms and blogs.
The trick here is to reach out to other blogs that do not compete with your own business. For example, if you’re a pet retailer, reach out to the local veterinarians who have successful blogs on their websites to see if you can re-publish their most popular articles on your own platform. As long as you get their permission and give them credit, the partnership will benefit both of your businesses.
Social media content curation can even benefit you when you don’t necessarily forge a formal partnership with a complementary brand. You don’t need permission, per se, to repost, retweet, or otherwise share content from another social media account. Use your best judgement and give credit where credit is due, and by incorporating content curation into your social posting calendar, you will be able to greatly enhance your overall content marketing strategy.
Would you like help implementing the content marketing tactics we covered in this blog post? FTx 360 offers affordable digital marketing services, including responsive website design services, email marketing services, marketing automations services, and social media marketing services. Contact us to learn more.
"Marketing is enthusiasm transferred to the customer."
