The inbound marketing strategy known as content marketing has the power to bring paying customers into your business. The results you see might happen quickly or over a somewhat longer period of time but if you put a content marketing strategy in motion, it’s close to a guarantee that customers will arrive, checkbooks in hand.

What will it do for you?

As you must do for all business initiatives, you need goals, tangible or intangible—your wish list!—and a recipe to make them happen. If you’re like many Freelancers and small business owners, however, you may be a little flummoxed by how to get content marketing going, of deciding what it makes sense to do. so FYI, the focus of a content marketing strategy is simple and straight forward:

• Encouraging brand awareness, trust and loyalty
• Generating leads within your target market
• Converting leads into customers (sales)
• Inspiring good word of mouth, repeat business (customer retention) and referrals

A content marketing plan is a journey. You’ll want to keep your destination in mind (goals) as you map the easiest and most effective path (strategies and actions) to get you there. Think of a 12-18 month campaign time frame. Develop the content narrative , perhaps quickly summarized by bullet points, to persuade the target audience. Moreover, choose relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will document your progress—or give a red flag to let you know that a course correction is needed. B2B marketers primarily use website traffic to measure success (60%).

Demand Metric, a content marketing firm headquartered in Ontario, Canada, recently reported that 91% of B2B companies engage in content marketing, spending 25+ % of marketing budget on the format. Demand Metric research also found that 68% of people read about brands that interest them and 60% will follow-up on a product or service after reading content marketing info. 70% of potential buyers prefer to read an article about your product or service than see an advertisement. 82% feel more positive about a company after reading content and 90% feel that such content is useful. High quality, interesting content inspires potential buyers to follow your content on social media and makes them more likely to do business–become a customer.

So what do potential buyers consider appealing content? Demand Metric research points to blogs, finding that 59% of B2B marketers produce more leads with blog posts. FYI, I don’t want to ruin your day, but Demand Metric research also found that 91% of email marketing recipients opt-out (hint—develop a good list and keep in mind that a small yet robust list still has value).

Remember your audience

Your content is for your target buyers. Therefore, you have to know who your target buyers are so you can decide the best way to sell your content to them. tailor your content marketing strategy to accommodate your ideal buyer’s content preferences and behavior. Your content is meant to push your brand as a trustworthy expert in your industry. This means you have to set yourself apart from competitors in the industry. To do this, you have to let your audience know what makes you unique through your content while showing them you are trustworthy by solving their problems. Most users look at the content to find solutions. Therefore, your content should indicate that you understand their pain point and you are able to solve it because you have the solution. Content that portrays such confidence is instrumental to generating conversions for your products.

Depending on your target audience, your content format can come as infographics, videos, podcasts or more. This also goes for the platforms you choose to deliver your content. For example, TikTok is predominantly used by young people, which means it could be the ideal delivery channel for your content if your audience falls within that demographic of users. In addition, it means your content has to be predominantly videos.

Monitor and fine-tune

Finally, you’ll want to make decisions about what success or missing the mark looks like. You can choose to follow whatever metrics are available to you but I suggest you keep in mind the most common goals of content marketing campaigns and choose metrics that reveal their performance. Depending on what you learn each month about your campaign’s ability to deliver, or not, gives you the flexibility to make adjustments along the way.

You can track the progress of your content marketing campaign by using your website and social media platform traffic data, as well as making note of the leads you’ve received and deals closed by way of leads generated.

If budget allows, do yourself a favor and invest in marketing services company such as HubSpot or Buzz Sumo. Among the metrics you’ll follow will be:

• Social media shares
• Website traffic
• Click-through rate
• Content engagement—- comments , shares, likes of your content
• Backlinks— which high- traffic sites link to yours and increase the activity and credibility of your website and social platforms? Google E.A.T. (expertise, authority, trust) remains an influential
• Time spent on time, another demonstration of engagement with your content. Pay attention to the topics that readers prefer, based on the time spent reading certain posts.
• Bounce rate (tidy up your email list)

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Jane Wyman (L) 1917 – 2007 won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Actress in the title role of Johnny Belinda. Wyman was married to Ronald Reagan 1940-1949, they are the parents of Maureen and Michael. Superstar Hollywood costume designer Edith Head and Wyman review designs for Lucy Gallant (1955). Head (1897-1981) was the recipient of eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, including All About Eve (1950) and The Sting (1973).