Everyday, consumers are exposed to an average of 5,000 ads, yet only half of them retain in someones memory. It’s overwhelming how many brands fight to try and win over the same audience.
The truth is, consumer attention has become so competitive that you can understand why people have learnt to ignore content. Especially when so many companies talk about the same thing. Sadly, this poses a big problem for many businesses – even some of the bigger names out there. How will they succeed if their hard work isn’t being retained?
Attention lies in the hands of a person’s mental resources. This could be visual or cognitive. So, it’s important that brands find ways to stay top of mind. To do this, they need to get serious about their content marketing.
Why is content marketing important?
This essential type of marketing can drive targeted traffic and win over new customers. It helps to drum up brand visibility, trigger connections, and influence buying behaviours at each stage of an audience’s journey.
Unfortunately, many businesses only scratch the surface with content marketing. Some struggle to give it time, some can’t stay consistent, and some simply don’t know what to say.
However, don’t underestimate the power good content has on emotions. Especially when a buying decision is 85% emotional and 15% logical.
What will content help to do?
When done correctly, content marketing can be used to:
• Raise brand awareness
• Hit company objectives
• Answer questions
• Nurture audience groups
• Build trust and authority
• Rank higher in search
• Improve conversions
• Generate leads
How to build a successful content marketing strategy
A good strategy takes time and effort to create and implement. Hence why many companies struggle. Everyday workloads and challenges get in the way, and this lengthy task is often put on the back burner.
However, trust us. Creating a solid strategy is worth the effort. You’ll agree when you start to see return customers and tangible results.
Put the groundwork in at the beginning to save yourself time in the future. If it works, you can simply rinse and repeat. Approach your plan with the following mindset:
Think, plan, do
1. Decide your goal – don’t go into your strategy blind. You need to know what you want to achieve.
2. Pre-work – deep dive into things like KPIs, do a content audit, know your buyer persona. Lay the foundations to make your strategy successful.
3. Plan – once your foundations are set, start building your plan. Decide what you want to say through pillars, topics, formats, channels – you name it, the lot.
4. Think quality, not quantity – you’re more likely to convert someone with one piece of powerful content per month than 10 average bits. Don’t make content for the sake of it. Build something that resonates with your customers and reflects your goals.
5. Performance and metrics – a successful strategy needs continuous data assessment to know what’s working. If somethings not, learn why and pivot.
6. Stay consistent – a strategy won’t work if you publish one blog every 6 months, or dip in and out of social media. Content needs consistency. For example, YouTube’s Creator Playbook for Brands works with a Hero, Hub and Hygiene framework. This helps to meet an ‘always on’ flow of content. Other approaches may follow a ‘meta, macro, micro’ model.
