Even back in 1996, Bill Gates realised that content was going to be incredibly important. The quote Content is King was already coined before Google was founded (1998). Bill Gates’ opinion back then was that content on websites would be like content in the broadcasting world.
Many of the ways that marketers used to do business, both offline and online, are going to be ineffective.
All of these issues are problems that are caused by not reaching your leads or prospects. You, and your current clients, know that you know what you are talking about. You are in business because you have enough experience. How do you make others realise this?
Buying behaviour has changed online
In the last ten years, even in the B2B world, the buyer behaviour has changed dramatically. Before, a user would Google your business, have a quick look around your website and then call your office. The prospect would talk to you and your sales team to understand your offering. Then decide if they like it or not.
Nowadays, this has changed dramatically. A user will search for information about a problem they have, read your articles on this issue and hopefully subscribe to your email list. The client will also check your social media feeds and is finding out who is best positioned to help them out.
To achieve this success, it is important to provide your prospects with genuinely helpful information and providing real value. This content doesn’t need to be high quality and artfully produced. Having content that helps a user out and gives them as much of a solution to their problem as you can give them, is the real important takeaway.
One of the pitfalls of many marketers is that they don’t necessarily think about their clients when writing the content. Many content marketers come up with a great idea, write about it, but don’t think if their ideal customer needs this content.
By not looking at buyer persona’s and your ideal customer you can possibly miss the mark on your content. Content can be written perfectly, have a great call to action and look visually beautiful. The problem occurs when the content doesn’t match with what your prospects are looking for.
Delivering the right message
Delivering the right message is incredibly important. Your brand voice should match the voice that your prospects want to hear. There is a clear distinction to be made between a Brand Voice and Brand Tone.
Brand voice is the way of speaking. Such as your choice words, phrasing and style. There are various ways a brand can put its brand voice. For example: Confident, Polite, cheeky, flirtatious. Depending on what type of business you are there will be a different brand voice.
Brand voice is important because, without a brand voice, you are going to be very inconsistent. If you have multiple people responding to complaints, writing blog posts or writing website content and they all write differently it means people are going to be confused.
If your brand voice is inconsistent it makes it harder to get “true fans” or people who really like your brand. The Brand Voice is the overarching personality of your writing.
Brand tone, on the other hand is the way that your brand interacts with individual messages. The tone is more specifically the way that you respond to users depending on their tone in the message.
A few examples to clarify this:
A great analogy is given here. They compare brand voice and brand tone to music albums. The brand voice is the overarching writing style of a band, the distinctive sound that you hear throughout their music.
The brand tone is the shifting moods and attitudes of the individual pieces. Most bands release an album that has different songs that touch on different “moods”. Happy songs, sad songs and anything in between.
Even though these bands have one overarching “voice” their individual pieces still have different “tones”.
Having a clear brand voice makes sure that your visitors know what to expect. This doesn’t just count for the online interactions. Even when talking to customers on the phone, or writing emails or having meetings, your brand voice should be consistent with every interaction you have with your prospects and clients.
This all ties back into having a clear message to your customers. If you want to work on your brand voice and tone. This HubSpot guide is very helpful. It has a SlideShare with tips and tricks on how to find your brand voice. If you follow the steps in that guide, you will be well on your way to have a distinctive brand voice in no time.
For social media marketing, your content marketing should be the focus. There are a few important steps for social media marketing to be successful.
The last point doesn’t mean that social media marketing should be ignored, definitely not, it is a great tool for getting more brand awareness. As can be read in our blog on Email marketing, social media is a great tool to get more subscribers for your email marketing list.
Google Ads should also be a part of your content marketing strategy. The way that you write your ads, is also as important as writing your blog posts or social media posts. If you are writing google ads, make sure you follow your brand voice and brand tone.
Google Ads can be a big part of your content marketing strategy as well. When creating landing pages or other pieces of content, you can use Google Ads to drive traffic to these pages.
If you are going to be using Google Ads to promote your content keep the following factors in mind.
Content marketing for paid ads is also called content advertising. This area of content marketing focuses more on using paid advertisement to serve the content to the right people, rather than waiting on organic search to start showing your blogs and articles to your audience.
It is important that both the articles you write as well as the advertisements you are writing are keyword rich and follow the brand voice rule.
We have written in detail about Email marketing in our blog. However, with regards to content marketing the same rules still stand. Make sure that your emails are following your brand voice and your brand tone.
Make sure that the content you write is easily digestible and that the content is tailored to the right audience. If you write for a specific audience make sure that the audience feels like they can relate to you.
The following parts of an email are important to keep in mind.
Blog posts are one of the cornerstones of a good inbound marketing strategy. It is also one of the corner stones of an effective content marketing plan. Blog posts are the part of your content plan that will make your website visitors want to return for more.
One of the biggest pitfalls of a blog post is not spellchecking and QA’ing the blog post. Many eyes will fix as many mistakes as possible. Having an error-ridden blog post will make users leave quickly.
Here are a few tips and tricks on creating successful blogs.
One of the more complicated parts of blog posts is that long-form content is becoming increasingly popular. This means that blog posts with less than 1,000 words will not perform as well as longer content. According to research, the articles and blogs with at least 2,000 words are the ones ranking the highest on Google. Users are expecting detailed reports and deep diving content.
Below is a list of the most successful Content marketing campaigns.
Content marketing is an expansive field and is one of the pillars of a great Inbound marketing strategy. If you want to start a successful content marketing strategy keep the following in mind: