Over the past year, we saw trends in content creation continue to rise with 72% of B2B marketers focused on creating engaging content as a top priority. Creating meaningful and rich content is a key foundation to great marketing. In today’s viral age, there are many media channels to choose from when targeting customers with content. So how can you create the best content for your business?
Creating a strategy for content distribution is vital for differentiation. Deliberately placing content in different channels will bring value to various audiences. Whether email, social media, or SEO, a strategy allows you to target customers at key points in their lifecycle with your organization to deliver your best content to them when they are most receptive.
In order to develop a content marketing strategy, you should start by laying out three core building blocks:
1.) Discover Who You Are
- Are you a brand, a product, a culture? You must determine how to portray yourself to capture maximum audience attention. Starting with this foundation enables you to then give your company a voice and a persona when interacting with your clients and prospects.
2.) Determine Your Reach
- Whom are you targeting through your efforts? Determine your target audience and the customer journey they will take with your brand/product/service. A good place to start is by leveraging data to build customer personas.
3.) Deliver Results
- What are you trying to accomplish? Setting guidelines or metrics for success will allow you to reach content marketing goals.
Content marketing can be amplified through the use of relevant visuals as well. Visuals can attract an audience to the content, boosting promotion through word of mouth, likes, comments, and shares – depending on the channel of distribution. Strategically using videos, images, and infographics are a great way to combine visuals and deliver a message in a more engaging way to your audience. Depending on your customer and buyer persona demographics, utilizing visual marketing and the 5 visual marketing trends that will dominate 2016 can have a huge impact on your marketing efforts.
Lastly, as you develop yourself into a content marketing guru, it will help to document your journey. You can gauge your effectiveness in reaching your customers, as well as expand upon past successes.
To continue furthering business goals, you need to reach for new heights with content marketing. The sky is the limit in building a strategy for your endeavors.
For more content marketing tips, check out 4 Truths About B2B Content Marketing!
