Consumers in the United States spend about as much time sleeping––about 7.8 hours––every day as they do engaging with online content. (Source: Adobe) The time you spend on content marketing strategy is well worth it.
2019 is officially here, bringing opportunities for new beginnings and a fresh start for your content marketing strategy. With email, search, and social continuing to dominate the content landscape, it’s easy to get scattered and try to do a little bit of everything to connect with your clients online. Before you dip a toe in too many digital channels, start with a solid plan.
The bulk of your marketing budget should not be spent on ad campaigns and promotional marketing. Instead, spend that time creating meaningful, customized content that helps your clients solve a challenge. They will thank you for your efforts with their trust.
The most effective content is tailored for the industry your business is in, as well as with a specific person––and a specific challenge–– in mind. The content should offer your audience a solution to their problem. For instance, a cost analysis tool might help customers understand how you help them save money. A white paper or infographic could explain how your services will help streamline a potential client’s business operations.
Here are a few of the most important steps that should be taken when developing a content marketing strategy for your business.
Personalize your content marketing strategy
Content personalization will continue to be a major content marketing trend in 2019. This not only means that your content needs to be customized for each target audience, but you also need to develop the right strategy for each platform you use to distribute your content.
In a survey of 190 marketing influencers worldwide conducted by Ascend2, 63 percent of respondents said that developing personalized content is a difficult tactic to execute. Instead of thinking of it as if you need to create custom content for each person who interacts with your brand, approach personalization as an opportunity to create relevant and useful information and understanding your clients’ core challenges.
Valuable content is a powerful element to your content marketing strategy. Your clients can tell the difference between meaningful content and content that was developed just to fill space or provide click-bait.
If you spend the time developing meaningful content, you’re likely to generate more qualified leads. As you build out your content schedule for 2019, identify what your audience wants to learn about, not what you want to sell. That will help to eliminate content ideas that are just space-fillers, or overly self-serving without providing real value.
Distribute content effectively
The way your content reaches your audience is crucial for a small business’s content marketing strategy.
Social media is one way to distribute your personalized, segmented content, but your efforts shouldn’t stop there. A segmented email marketing strategy will also be helpful. When you really know who your audience is and what they’re most interested in, you will be able to create even more valuable content––videos, infographics, webinars, gifs, blog posts, etc.––and know exactly where to share it to get the right message in front of the right audience at the right time.
Once you have a handle on which content should be distributed through email marketing and social media, you can extend this knowledge to your website and personalize content for the traffic you drive from other channels.
Power in numbers
Prospective clients rarely make a purchase decision based on one piece of content. It takes time and repetition to build trust. Rather than putting all of your time and effort into creating one piece of content, plan to develop a series of content that will provide ongoing value over time. This will help your audience understand your expertise and how you can help them solve their challenges.
There’s no time like the present to begin developing an effective content marketing strategy for your small business. Schedule a free strategy review with our team so we can help you make 2019 the year that your content marketing strategy produces results!
