Online marketing is a constantly changing and evolving field. As such, businesses and their marketers should be constantly attuned to these changes, in order to fine-tune and maximize their campaigns. Sticking to old tactics and tools which may have worked in the past may only lead to marginal results—or worse, penalties and lost opportunities.
Today, expert marketing professionals rely on a wide variety of content marketing techniques in order to attain various goals. The beauty of using these techniques is that they can be used along the different stages of the customer’s journey–from driving traffic, to building brand awareness, to conversion.
Listed here are a few helpful tips that can help you get more out of your content marketing strategy.
Invest in On-site Content
On-site content, or blogging, can help you achieve multiple goals. For one, it can help build awareness for your brand. Study after study indicates that consumers are turning to search engines to know more about their available choices. Investing in content for your website can help your website perform better in search engine rankings.
Well-written, relevant and useful content can also be used to build trust between your business and potential customers. When prospective buyers see that you are not simply pushing a product or a service, that you truly understand customers’ problems, it is easier to distinguish your business from the competition.
Finally, content platforms like whitepapers, infographics, webinars and Slideshare can help build your expertise and generate new customers for your business.
Give Equal Attention to Off-site Content
Content marketing should not end with publishing content on your website. Businesses should give equal attention to off-site content which can increase search engine visibility and drive traffic to a website by reaching out to a different audience set.
In drafting a strategy that effectively utilizes off-site content, it is imperative to focus on promotion. First, you need to find high authority sites that have already amassed a big number of the prospective customers you are targeting. Once you have identified these websites, the next step you need to undertake is to reach out to the owners of these websites and work out a mutually beneficial deal.
Giving ample attention to off-site content can increase the number of quality inbound links, increase website traffic, and improve conversions.
Be Proactive
By deftly combining on-site and off-site content marketing techniques, you will eventually see a marked increase in different key performance indicators. However, it should be noted that these results do not come overnight. On average, the results of these campaigns will start trickling in between half a year and a full year.
While you are waiting for these results, it is worthwhile to monitor a few crucial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) including organic traffic, inbound links, unique visits, social shares, domain authority and overall search rankings.
Be Diversified
As you can see a proper content marketing plan goes beyond each individual marketing avenue. The center of your marketing should always be your BRAND, and everything should revolve around it. You will always want your customers to remember your brand so that when you promote new products in the future, half of your marketing is already done.
Like diversifying a financial portfolio, diversifying your content marketing portfolio through a Multi-channel approach will minimize the effects of any individual channel changing its policy or suddenly no performing as originally expected. Whether it is Facebook changing its advertising policies or Google applying a new algorithm that cancels out your previously achieved rankings or YouTube not displaying your videos for some unknown reason, or your Email Marketing provider flagging your account for review, with a Multi-channel Content Marketing approach centered around your brand, you will be able to enjoy more consistent and long lasting ROI than any company that simply relies on a single source for all of its marketing.
How do you approach your own marketing? What plan do you have in place? Please, share your thoughts with me below. And if you have any questions, my team at MGR Consulting Group can help you design the proper Multi-channel Marketing Plan for your company.
Thank you for Reading. Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR)
