Content marketing is simple enough if you have a clear plan of exactly how you’re going to meet your company goals. While everyone starts to make New Year’s resolutions to diet, exercise more or work harder, it is probably time for you to start setting your own goals for your business.
Creating a brand new marketing strategy for the New Year will put you ahead of the game and make that post-festive business period a little smoother.
Many businesses tend to focus on the nitpicky marketing techniques that customers won’t really notice and ignore the big winners.
So what are the core marketing strategies you should be trying in 2019 to give your company a big push?
Here are NINE innovative content marketing techniques that your business can start utilizing today.
1- Connecting With Your Audience
Your customers are, without hesitation, the most important part of your business.
So as the new year chimes in, you need to check whether you’re staying current with them and their needs.
Ask yourself some questions:
- What devices are being used the most to access your products & services?
- What time of day are you reaching the most people?
- What are some of the user experiences that may impact the retention and engagement rates on your digital platform?
This might seem really nitpicky, but it’s the core foundation to a successful content marketing plan. Because content, without a strong digital foundation, is useless.Once you’ve figured out the extent to which your overall digital experience is optimal, you need to move on to the next step, personalizing content for each of your specific target audiences.
By making your content specific to an audience, you are optimizing your targeting, and creating more powerful marketing. This will attract more buyers and create a bigger customer base. Keep your content relatable to the customers who speak your language most often.
2- Invest in Content
In the midst of the daily grind, it’s easy to forget that content marketing as we know it is still a relatively new phenomenon. As recently as a few years ago, marketers handled content mostly as a side project. It was more of a bonus than an essential role — something you did when you had time because it took a backseat to more traditional marketing projects and responsibilities.
That’s changed. Where marketing of the past used to push one-sided conversations toward consumers, successful brands know that content marketing opens the door for two-way conversations and relationships with audiences unlike anything before.
Content marketing has taken over because it’s so useful to every function of marketing teams today. Content is one of the best tools you have for earning trust, building your brand, generating site traffic and qualified leads, and everything in between. Content marketing is crucial, and the brands that understand content is core to effective marketing — and, ultimately, to their entire business — will set themselves up for success.
But when you publish content, it’s not just about flooding the internet with new articles. It’s important to consider SEO, style, message, medium, and more. Your job as a content marketer is to anticipate your customers’ needs and what they will be searching for. Then to configure your articles accordingly so that Google can easily index your content. Understanding this entire process if very important for improving growth.
3- USE VIDEO MARKETING
For many online users searching for information or simply doing a scroll through social media, video is a huge attraction. Not to mention it converts better than any other medium (image, text, etc.) From a consumer perspective, it’s an accessible, easy way to absorb useful information in a more immersive and engaging way than your typical product/service descriptions. It reveals the voice and persona behind the brand, and today’s savvy audiences are demanding more than just specs and pricing… they want a brand experience.
If you need any further proof about the power of video… YouTube is now the second most powerful search engine in the world, which is why it’s so important that you incorporate video into your marketing strategy.
BONUS TIP!
A major point to consider when doing videos is to make sure you use subtitles. Many people looking at a video on their mobile won’t want to turn the sound on and will scroll past if they can’t understand what’s going on without text. Additionally, as of 2018, using captions is a ADA compliance website rule that is mandatory to all websites in the US.
Additionally if you product or service is available internationally added subtext is transferable, so your message can be distributed to a whole new audience that might not have been reachable before.
4- Get Active On Social Media
Don’t overlook the importance of your company’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. If you have a loyal social media following, Google will take this into account when ranking your content online. Publish a variety of content types on your social media channels to give your brand a lift, as well as boosting your search rankings.
Use social media scheduling software to post for you at times you know you’ll be away from the office or too busy to remember, such as weekends or busy days at work.
Use video, polls and infographics to keep your posts simple, easy to digest and friendly to the eye to make sure your audience doesn’t skip past it.
Consider having popular faces do a ‘takeover day’, too. For example, with a fitness product, it is definitely a good idea to pay an influencer to get involved and look after your social media for the day.
Their audience will bring you a large new following to boost your business and increase sales. People are more likely to buy from you once they’ve seen your product used. By getting an influencer to test a product out and give a positive review, you’re automatically making yourself more reliable in the eyes of your ideal customers.
5- ENABLE VOICE SEARCHING
With the popularity of voice search increasing it’s now more important than ever to make sure your content is accessible via voice.
Searching with voice is the easiest and most convenient option for many online users but the main problem companies face with this is that only the top results are given as answers. You need to aim to be one of those top results.
Optimize your digital strategy locally to ensure locations are picked up by voice search devices. Geotagging your business on social media and your website will also work in your favor to boost local page views.
Create location specific material to attract nearby customers and consider investing in social media advertisements. These will boil down an audience to the people who will be most interested in your content and show it to them, rather than wasting a lot of money of ads aimed at people who do not care.
6- USE ANALYTICS
The best way to keep up with your audience and make your content relatable is to use analytics. By watching out for the key trends in the online behavior, you’ll be able to see what customers want from you much easier.
Start to think about the audience you want to target in 2019.
For example, many people will be making resolutions in January. If there is something about your business that will help people achieve those resolutions, target those people with your content.
If you’re a business running a money management app, begin creating content now on how people can recover financially after spending hundreds of dollars on holiday gifts.
If you’re a supplement company, great, start telling people how your products will help them to achieve their fitness goals in the New Year.
It really is as simple as that.
7- Remain Ahead of the Trend Curve
Keeping your business in line with what your client wants will definitely optimize your sales in 2019.
Run campaigns aimed at telling your customers exactly how your brand will improve their life in the New Year and go from there.
Live broadcasting is set to be big in 2019 as more people reach out to get their information first hand in real-time. As social media makes it challenging for content to be seen by a larger audience, the time has come to give information out live, because your audience is immediately notified that you are streaming.
Consider using competitions as a good way to get people involved in your lifestreams and encourage interaction from your audience in the comments. Post links to your website throughout the stream and keep people interested and clicking.
8- Use Artificial Intelligence
Chatbots are set to be the biggest form of artificial intelligence in 2019. The immediate response from these bots will give a human feeling to your business, with a personal touch to help your customers get their questions answered faster.
You should also look into predictive analytics solutions to create personalized and dynamic relationship with your customers.
9- CREATE INNOVATIVE CONTENT
Getting your audience personally involved with your content is not only a great way to keep them on your site, but it is also a great way to get their feedback on some of your marketing techniques.
Use polls to keep your audience clicking. Make the topics relevant as to not come across as advertisements and consider things you would like to know about your audience.
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- Do you want to know what your customers like the most about your brand?
- What they’d like to see more of?
- How happy they are with your content?
If they can tell you quickly and anonymously through a poll, they will.
Infographics also perform really well at giving the reader a lot of key information on a topic in a very short amount of time. These can be made quickly and easily to round up articles and briefly explain subjects. Make this content colorful and well illustrated to grab digital users’ attention.
IN SUMMARY
The bottomline is you need to know your audience and what they are looking for.
Reach out to them in every way possible, whether it’s as straightforward as creating a great website or aiming for the top Google search.
Make sure content is reaching your website thick and fast, even if it means investing in a copywriter to help you create compelling content.
Use live streaming to get information out to your audience quickly, and consider using competitions & quizzes as a way to keep people coming back for more.
Also, explore investing in chatbot technologies as artificial intelligence continues to expand to give your customers a speedy, personalised customer service experience.
And most importantly, try to see your audience as people, not just as numbers. By looking at the way people search and what they want to know, you’ll be able to adjust to their needs and create a brand that they will love.
Even implementing just two of these points in 2019 will have a huge impact on your business and keep your brand growing visibility and getting new customers online.
GET STARTED
If the following suggestions sound appealing, and you are interested in adding them to your own initiative, then we encourage you to setup a call with a member of our team to discuss how our team at Vanquish Media Group can help. We’ll help you construct a unique plan to bring these and other concepts to life, so that you can focus on the things most important to you.
