7 proven content marketing tips that will change your game  

Content marketing is a game-changer. In a world where the average person is bombarded with content right from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed, it takes strong content marketing strategies to stand out from the crowd.

But how can you leverage your content marketing efforts to engage your audience and maximize your brand visibility? What content marketing strategies can bring you guaranteed success?

Read on to learn more about the importance of content marketing and seven proven content marketing tips that will change your game and help you reach your goals effortlessly.  

The role of content marketing and the changing consumer behavior  

In order for your business to succeed, content marketing is no longer optional. The manner in which consumers make their purchase decision has changed, and any business that is not investing in creating high-quality content is making a big mistake.

This is mainly because customers today want to find all the information online, from a reputable source before making their purchase. They do not want to go into a store or call a number or chat with a salesperson to get the information they need.

Only once they are convinced that they want to purchase from you, will they be willing to get in touch with someone from your business to make the purchase.

Hence it is important to note that your content is actually acting like your salesperson, and without an informed salesperson, you will not be able to hit your sales targets.   

This is why every high-quality content piece you produce for your business is an asset as it brings people to your website, engages them and offers value, generates leads and sales, and even provides post-sale care.

In fact, data revealed by the Content Marketing Institute has shown that 92% of marketers reported that their company viewed content as a business asset.

Now that you know why content marketing plays such a major role in 2022, let us look at the strategies for success in your content marketing effort.  

7 proven content marketing tips:  

Every content marketer has different tricks and tips up their sleeve. We at Soar have tried and tested various content marketing strategies to see what brings our clients the best results and now we’re spilling the beans.

Here are seven tips for content marketing that will help you get your business the required results:  

Hire a dedicated resource for the job or outsource it to an agency  

The number one tip for success is to hire a dedicated resource for your content marketing needs. Expecting your marketing team to be able to focus on content marketing along with their other duties will not bring you the success that you desire.

What you need to understand as a business owner is that the scope of content marketing is wide and you will need a specialized person to lead your content marketing efforts, develop a strategy, create that content that hits the right spots, and track the data to tweak future content.   

Besides, like every other field of digital marketing, the scope of content marketing is ever-changing. Trends come and go, and you will want someone who identifies the trends in your niche and acts in time to capitalize on them.

For the best results, we recommend outsourcing your content marketing as agencies are the first ones on the trend. That is the benefit that comes from working with multiple clients, and an in-house resource will not be able to bring that kind of exposure to your content marketing efforts.   

Learn more about Soar’s content marketing packages and plans.   

Understand your target audience   

Like every other field of marketing, knowing your target audience is crucial for success. The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be for you to understand their needs. So, the first step is to identify who your target audience is.

Get as specific as possible and create a few target audience personas to help you go deep into the key details. Ask yourself the following questions to help you build your target audience personas:  

• Who are they? Define their age, gender, profession, goals, hobbies, habits, etc.   
• Where are they? Note down where they live, what digital platforms they frequent, how do they spend their free time, etc.  
• What are their goals? Try and understand what really motivates this person. This will help you create content and offers that will motivate them to follow through on your call to action.  
• What do they struggle with? Once you have a clear idea of your target persona, you will be able to get into their mind and understand what their struggles and their pain points are. This will give you invaluable insights on how you can position your communication so that you can convince them that your product/service can be the right solution to their problem.   

This is one of the most important tips that will help you achieve success not just in your content marketing efforts but in any of your digital marketing efforts. Learn more about creating your target audience personas so you can get greater clarity.  

Do your research  

Once you are clear on your target audience, the next step is to do your research to learn more about what they are talking about across various social platforms, what they search for on the internet, what kind of content engages them, and what questions arise in their mind while buying a new product/service.  

All this behavior will give you greater insights into the kind of content you will need to create to effectively communicate with your audience and convince them to buy from you without being too pushy. The more value your content can add, the higher chance you have of gaining loyal customers.  

Make sure to keep up with the trends relevant to your niche so you can create content around it and increase your brand visibility. Approaching trending topics with unique insights can help your content go viral and give your brand a great amount of organic exposure. A great tool to help you learn more about research and discover the trending topics is Buzzsumo. 

Create an editorial calendar around various important topics in your niche  

In order for your content marketing efforts to be successful, you need to come up with a concrete plan of action. This will ensure that you publish new content regularly so that you can engage and entertain your existing readers while also attracting new readers to your company blog.

Planning in advance will also help you create content around holidays and other special events that can help you position your product/service right. For example, if you are an online Jewelry brand, you could create gifting guides for various important holidays like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Women’s Day, etc. to help reach new clients.   

Besides that, creating an editorial calendar will also help you come up with new and creative topics to cover and remove any roadblocks that get in your way of producing content regularly. It will also give you a chance to do your keyword research, identify the search intent for the keyword and plan the right content so that you are set up for success.   

We recommend creating a document with various broad keywords you would like to target related to your niche and listing various other topics/related keywords that you can create content around. Ideally, look at planning ahead for the next three to six months at least.

You could also fill out potential deadlines and allocate a budget for each of these content pieces so that you can manage your resources better.   

Make sure to experiment with various content formats  

Of course, creating detailed blog posts is a great idea, but there are other forms of content that you can create in order to engage your audience and make your content more shareable. Here are some other forms of content you could create to maximize your engagement and increase your return on investment:  

Engaging quizzes  

A great way to engage your audience and get them to share your content is by creating an engaging classification quiz. For example, if you are a publishing house and are looking to create a quiz for your audience, you could create a fun quiz like ‘which book should you be reading next, based on your personality?’

The quiz could have fun questions like ‘what genre of books do you usually read?’, ‘which of the following describes your personality best’, ‘which of the following do you find most interesting?’ etc. and link them to four or five different outcomes, each recommending a book that you are trying to promote. You can also ask the participants of the quiz for their email, so you can add them to your mailing list.   

To maximize your return on investment, you could also ask them to share the results on their social media handles for a chance to win a free copy of the book.   

Email challenges or series  

Email series or challenges can be great tools to educate and engage your audience. These can be used to get them to sign up for your email list by adding value through valuable and educating content.

For example, if you are a digital marketing agency, you can create a 5-day social media challenge, where the participants who sign up get a short email every day that educates them about a particular aspect of digital marketing and challenges them to put the learnings into practice.   

Such a series will also demonstrate to your target audience your knowledge on the subject and show them that you really are an expert!  

Video guides  

While blog posts serve their purpose in bringing in the right audience, video guides can be used to enhance the user experience.

According to data released by Wyzowl, 87% of marketers said video has helped them increase traffic and 82% of them said that video has helped them increase dwell time.

So, make sure you include video content in your content plan.   

Downloadable assets  

Downloadable assets are a great way to measure the click-through rates and the effectiveness of your call to action. You can create various whitepapers, reports, templates, and various other downloadable assets to add value to your target audience.

Besides that, by giving your target audience a free downloadable asset, you also get a chance to get them to sign up for your email list.   

Podcasts  

Another great way to disperse highly targeted content is through a niche podcast. This will definitely require higher budgets, but it could be worth looking into if your target audience would be interested in this format of content.

Podcasts are a great way to entertain, educate and engage your target audience and keep up with industry trends. Try and understand what kind of podcasts your target audience listens to and how you can create something within your niche to grab their attention.   

Brainstorm with your team  

Whether you have an in-house content marketing team or an outsourced agency helping you with your content marketing efforts, it is always a good idea for you as a business owner to sit with them and brainstorm on new and innovative ways to reach your target audience.

Such practices can be beneficial in inspiring new and creative marketing ideas and the data and feedback from your marketing team can also inspire you to create or tweak your products to your customer needs.

After all, your marketing team is the one interacting with the customers, studying the data and following the conversations and industry trends. Any conversation with them will surely empower you to serve your target audience better.   

We recommend having such sessions at least twice a year, or once every three months if you have the time for it.   

Clearly define your key performance indicators (KPIs) for your content marketing efforts  

Ultimately, the only way you will know which of these content marketing tips and strategies are working for you is by setting your goals and defining the key performance indicators for success for each of these goals.

For example, if your goal is brand building, you will want to measure how many unique users visit your website each month and plan different campaigns to increase your brand visibility.   

Defining clear KPIs for each business goal will help you track the success of your digital marketing and it will also give you a clear idea of what works better than the others. There are a number of metrics you can track to measure the success of your content marketing strategies including social shares, lead generation, app downloads, sales, etc.

Take your time to carefully examine each and make sure your team and stakeholders are in agreement with these metrics.   

You also need to set up a reporting system to regularly measure your progress. A weekly or a monthly report could give you great insights into what is working and what isn’t. Based on the findings of these reports, you will be able to tweak your strategy accordingly.   

 Conclusion

Important content marketing tips are very helpful for content marketers to dominate the search engines. Creating content or publishing content can easily get very challenging and that’s why you should search for content marketing tips to stand out from the crowd.

Need help creating a strong and successful content marketing strategy to hack your growth? Schedule a call with our content marketing experts at Soar and get the ball rolling. In the meanwhile, read this case study of how we hacked 118,335 site visits in one day with strategic Content and Reddit marketing.