Without high-quality content marketing, it is impossible to talk about the usability of your online resource, in other words, about customer experience, which encourages a potential buyer to stay on your website. Content is always a reason to communicate with the client, to interest him, and allow him to contact you directly if necessary.
Web traffic is among the top two most common measurements of success for content marketing strategies. Pursuing the aim to attract more traffic, you should try different content marketing tactics due to the specifics of your business and target audience. Agency Vista has put together 17 actionable content marketing tips to help your brand stand out. Before that, let’s see how to choose which content marketing strategies are suitable for your brand.
How To Choose The Right Content Marketing Tactics For Your Business
Effective content marketing requires a good strategy, excellent planning, optimized distribution and promotion, and constant analysis of the effectiveness of the content. All businesses are different, and what works for one brand might not necessarily work for another.
To achieve actual results, go beyond engagement and set goals that are directly relevant to your business. These goals should be translated into clear key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can use to monitor your progress and apply the necessary adjustments when necessary. This will help you make sure that you stay on track for success.
Before you create your content, you need to define the brand’s values and mission that your content should fulfill. In other words, what is the ultimate goal of your content? While content marketing is the most effective tool for attracting customers, many companies still mismanage this asset. Understand what your brand stands for and what you want to achieve. These details are essential for choosing successful strategies in times of hugely competitive content marketing.
17 Actionable Tips To Boost Your Traffic
1. Define your target audience
A successful content marketing strategy always has two components in mind: the voice of your brand and your audience. If you are trying to reach younger purchasers, you might want to get them through social media and be assertive in your expressions. But if you target elderly shoppers, your content may instead be based on building credibility in the industry.
Tools like Google Analytics, Answer The Public, or Google Trends can help you determine which content is most popular with your audience and find out who is reading what, where, and when. Defining whom your content should target can help you decide what topics and formats it should contain.
The more you know and understand your audience, the more precisely you can base your content creation on them, and the more effective your content marketing strategy will be.
2. Segment your target audience
Customers are making their purchase decisions faster than before. Marketers need to get in touch with them while the choice is still not completed and convey the advertising to the right audience. To do this, you need to understand what interests users, how they behave and evaluate their consumer habits.
The more parameters are taken into account when segmenting the target audience, the more likely you will make an offer that cannot be rejected. Thanks to this, you do not spend your budget on a non-target audience that brings you expensive clicks, is not interested in your offer, does not leave a request.
3. Use the PBC formula for your posts
Longreads work, but it is not about the amount of text. Lengthy introductions only discourage reading further, and the value of the post is in revealing the topic and in the correct structure of the material.
Use the PBC formula – preview, benefits, and a call-to-action:
- Preview. It is a brief overview of the entire post, which will be discussed further.
- Benefits. It is worth mentioning the profit from reading your material: what we will learn, what mistakes we will stop making, and so on. The block can be replaced with numbered article content with anchor links to each subtitle for voluminous texts.
- CTA. Please note that the call to action is not only a “buy” button, “subscribe,” and so on, but also a simple motivation to continue reading. For example, “let’s look at it,” “find out more,” and other useful phrases.
4. Write on trendy topics
Most of the queries that we want to get traffic from are clogged by big competitors, but still, we have long-tailed low-frequency phrases and trends that we can track and be one jump ahead of the giants.
Instead of optimizing the page for a rather popular query, try analyzing the trends in your topic (Google Trends, ExplodingTopics) and creating content for “fresh” requests, even if less popular. Analyze the content in your competitors’ communities over the past month or two and pick out trending topics.
5. Use versus posting
Users like to compare products/ services/offers – it is helpful, clear, and better reveals the topic. Publish more “X vs. Y” content, for example, “Email Marketing vs. Social Media,” “Instagram vs. Facebook,” and so on.
As a rule, such queries are less competitive in SEO, and the CPC, on the contrary, is relatively high — users are already aware of the services and are ready to choose.
6. Write longer headlines
The length of the headlines correlates with the number of shares in social networks. 14-17 words (about 80 characters) in H1? Absolutely! Backlinko’s study showed that longer headlines would bring you more social shares than short ones.
The headlines containing numbers usually work better than other types of headlines. The post-list promises quick and easy reading, which is very important in the conditions of current stirring life. No doubt, you need to emphasize, highlight the significance of your post. Why should people read your post? What is its value to them? The benefit should be transparent, simple, and indicated in the headline.
7. Use emotional titles
Emotions affect people. They engage them and force them to act. Words that have emotional marketing value are those words that evoke emotions in potential buyers. Analyzing 5 million Google search results, the conclusion is that the titles that deliver an emotional punch get more clicks. Boring headlines work worse than emotional ones and those that express the author’s attitude.
Remember, you have a few seconds to get the customer interested; otherwise, they will go to your competitor’s page.
8. Update your old content
Instead of creating new landing pages, sometimes you need to update the ones you have already made. Find the pages that worked well but eventually began to lose traffic (Google Analytics, or any other tool for finding pages that lose search traffic), check the relevance of the content, and you can get a profit.
When updating old content, you can easily include valuable information and resources that were not available when this content was first published. This will make the post more valuable to users and search engines.
Updating the content makes it possible to publish it again on social networks. This means that you can attract new visitors and subscribers, get additional traffic, and earn a certain number of natural links.
9. Use dynamic video content
It is difficult to imagine a situation where video content can damage the company. The videos are used by everyone, from transcontinental corporations to private experts.
If you use video, do not be afraid to add more cuts, eliminate pauses and any speech defects. Continuously recorded video is tiring, and users quickly lose concentration. Pay attention to the top video bloggers; within even one offer, there can be up to several cuts, changes of plans, and angles. Such a video moves along at a super rapid pace, and this keeps your audience up.
10. Create more landing pages optimized for the right keywords
Modern Internet marketing includes many techniques and methods to increase sales efficiency. A high-quality, working landing page is one of them. It is an exciting design, catchy selling text, company contacts placed in strategically important places, and a mandatory call to perform a targeted action. However, since the landing page is a single-page site, you can only move through a small list of queries. Therefore, if you want to cover more questions, you need to make more landing pages, each aimed at a keyword that the target audience is passionate about. This will increase the conversion rate and take high positions in the search results for a more extensive list of search phrases.
11. Create content based on your brand values
Company values are the fundamental beliefs and principles used when interacting with other companies, customers, and employees. If an organization does not adhere to its own beliefs, this leads to a loss of trust and decreased sales. Content marketing helps you build brand values and create content that resonates with your audience.
For example, Facebook’s values are:
- Focus on impact
- Move fast
- Be bold
- Be open
- Build social value
Google sticks to the following:
- Focus on the user, and all else will follow.
- It is best to do one thing well.
- Fast is better than slow.
- Democracy on the web works.
- You can make money without doing evil.
- There is always more information out there.
- The need for information crosses all borders.
- You can be serious without a suit.
12. Stick to native advertising
Native advertising is still trending. People are even more tired of the information and advertising noise. Simple banners are already (almost) not working. Complex banners can work in the other direction, that is, annoying. The task is to attract attention with fabulous material and sell it unnoticed.
Sharethrough/IPG Media labs surveyed 4,770 consumers to find out that native ads receive 18% more purchase intent of users than banner ads.
Note, there is no product offer, no appeal to profit, and no “buy two and get another one for free.” Make sure to deliver only high-quality and valuable content to your audience.
13. Analyze your competitors
Modern marketing is a constant struggle for the attention of the target audience. And in this struggle, as you know, the one who best and fastest adapts to changes survives. Therefore, it is essential to understand and analyze your competitors to succeed. Make your strong point what your competitors fail to do, or focus your attention on the opportunities they do not use.
You can search Google or use such tools as Ubersuggest to the companies that compete for similar keywords.
14. Share a behind-the-scenes experience with your audience
Customers and subscribers of brand accounts in social networks are used to seeing beautiful pictures. The product is already on the shelves or displayed in the online store, the online course is already available for sale, and the content from the blogger can be read or viewed. What about boosting your brand with behind-the-scenes content?
How do you spend your working days?
Who are the people making an impact at your business?
How is a certain product created?
If you are doing something unusual, have a cool office, or have a fun production process, be sure to share it with your audience through Stories, live video streams, and posts.
15. Respond to the social media mentions and comments
If your brand is represented in social networks, do not engage in content just to check the box. After all, social networks are where your customers go for dialogue, waiting for attention from your side. Working with comments is extremely important for business. It is in the comments and mentions that you can find new customers and strengthen relationships with existing ones; with their help, you can increase the reach and engagement of your subscribers.
Humanize your brand by responding to real people’s questions, comments, and feedback. Show your audience that you care.
16. Encourage people to create content for your brand
People trust people. Users are tired of advertising; they want more honesty and usefulness. A person needs to see and feel the product not through the lens of a professional photographer but in reality – as it will be in his hands. Therefore, the “live” impressions of those who have already interacted with the product are critical in this case.
Encourage your customers to create and share user-generated content to get a double win for everyone.
17. Add links to social media profiles in outreach emails
The signature in the email not only logically completes the message, but it also performs several other tasks – notifies additional contacts, increases the company’s awareness and promotes the brand, attracts new subscribers to corporate accounts via social media buttons. Subscribers will be able to go directly to your social networks and learn more about the brand and its news. This will help to add another communication channel and establish closer communication with customers.
If you practice outreach and crowd marketing, always use links to social media profiles in your email signature. It is also helpful to use links to the author’s social networks — this strengthens the loyalty and trust of users.
If you are Agency Vista’s verified agency, you also get the Agency Vista verified badge to email signatures. The Agency Vista badge is awarded to companies that meet the highest standards of performance and service. If you have a badge, it tells your customers and potential clients you are among the best at what you do.
Conclusion
Today, online users have become more conservative; they are fed up with advertising texts imploring them to buy right here and now with unthinkable promises of happiness upon purchasing the product. The user wants to make purchases gradually, with a sense of trust in the seller and pride in choosing the best. This means that the content is relevant and in-demand: expert opinions, market reviews and model ranges, trend forecasting, life hacks, articles with tips, and reviews of reputable bloggers.
Remember, effective content marketing is based on high-quality, helpful, and valuable content. Distribution channels and content tactics are changing. Not every tip we mentioned above will suit your business, so you need to experiment and see which ones work best to engage your audience.