Content Optimization

Optimize Content

Learn about executing and optimizing a content marketing campaign that will help any individual or business with their marketing knowledge, strategy, skills, and results.

Contents

• What is Content Marketing?
• Company Purpose
• Buyer Persona
• Buyer’s Journey
• Inbound Content
• Search Engine Optimization
• Marketing Automation

Content Marketing

In today’s competitive marketing landscape, the winners are using content that is tailored and personalized to each individual they are targeting. To do so, they utilize marketing automation software that streamline, segment, automate, and track marketing success. Based on the data which the software provides, they can further personalize and tailor their content and strategy, creating a process where continuous growth and customer satisfaction are the driving forces behind success.

In order to do this, they must understand and utilize marketing software technology to create an effective content marketing strategy based on the inbound marketing principles and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Company Purpose

To create an effective content marketing strategy for your business you must first have a clear understanding of what your company purpose is. Your company purpose is why you exist, the benefit you are providing for customers, and the why behind everything you do as a brand. This is the calling card of your company, the sole reason you decided to be in business at all. Make sure that this is clear to the entire team before anything else. 

When the entire team is on the same page about the company purpose, this allows every team member to have a strong understanding of what the singular goal of the team is, how we want to go about achieving it, eliminates wasted energy and time, and defines what specific strategies we will execute. It is very important that your team sees the company purpose from the perspective of customers, so that there is not a disconnect in how we view ourselves and how the customers view you. A brand which markets itself as something different than consumers view it will surely have little to no success, and creates confusion.

If everyone understands what the company purpose is and what customer expectations are, we can then use our individual skill sets to contribute in unique ways towards the goal. A clear company purpose will help you figure out what your starting point is, and will shape your content and strategy moving forward.

Click here to learn more about company purpose.

Buyer Persona

This is the purpose of defining a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a symbolization of an ideal customer that will use or buy your product. The best buyer persona’s are specific, allowing you to target the buyer persona more accurately and relevantly. We can use data to figure out demographic traits, personal preferences and interests, and then use that information to decide what content would be helpful and interesting to them. By tailoring our content to our buyer persona, the content will be more helpful, relevant, and more successful. 

Your team may have more than one buyer persona it is marketing for, and it is absolutely key that all team members are in alignment with who these personas are. Much like being aligned with the company purpose, if we all know exactly who we are trying to help, we can use that to form our decisions to best serve our buyer personas.

When creating the buyer persona, make sure that the data you are using comes from all departments within your team. Sales can tell us which customers purchase the most and are likely to repeat buys, finance can share which customers are likely to fulfill financial obligations, and customer service can tell us which of our customers are the most loyal and why they are. The more you know about your buyer personas the better, because it allows us to provide them with more helpful content, and in return, they are more likely to return the favor by purchasing or sharing. We will apply this idea of tailored content and the information from buyer personas to every step of the buyer’s journey.

Click here to learn more about buyer persona.

Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is the entire experience an individual has from the moment they have their first interaction with your business, to the purchasing point, and beyond. In order for us to be successful, we have to be willing and wanting to provide the most relevant and helpful content to the buyer in each step of the journey. This means we must use software to track where in the journey they are, what information is relevant or irrelevant, and understand what type of communication is helpful and will lead to a sale. By providing consistent, relevant, and helpful material for the customer, they are always happy, and more likely to repeat buys or refer their friends. (Attract -> Engage -> Delight). 

There are three stages in the buyer’s journey, awareness, consideration, and decision. In the awareness stage, an individual has discovered a problem or symptoms and are realizing they need a solution. During the consideration stage they are now weighing all the different possible solutions for their problem. Finally, at the decision stage, they have narrowed down their list of options and are ready to pick one product to solve their problem.

The point of creating a buyer’s journey is to create content that is as relevant and helpful as possible for each stage. The content will vary depending on what stage an individual is, and by making it relevant and personalized to each individual, we reduce the friction leading up to the purchasing point.

Click here to learn more about the buyer’s journey.

Inbound Content

Once we have figured out our company purpose, buyer persona, and the entire buyer’s journey, we can focus on creating content based on our company purpose which will be helpful and educational for our buyer persona, relevant to where the buyer is in the buyer’s journey. By providing the right content at the right time to the right people, we successfully market our business as a relevant, helpful, and consistent service provider which they will happily use and share. To create this content we will lean on the inbound marketing principles and SEO tools to make sure our content is both relevant and highly searched.

Inbound marketing is more of a mindset than a set of rules. The idea is that instead of doing traditional outbound marketing, where the focus is on creating our own content and then shipping it outwards to the masses, we focus on creating content based on customer needs and interests and targeting our ads to specific demographics. The goal is to be as aligned with your customers as possible, so you know what content they will find helpful, entertaining, interesting, or all three. This creates a better experience for all parties involved, and ultimately leads to stronger customer relationships and profits.

The inbound methodology and principles used correctly will ensure that all the content you are sharing will be relevant, helpful, accessible, and on time. Once a company puts inbound ideas into practice, everyone in the company from your CEO to product development, marketing and sales and services, every single person in the company will be aligned around this inbound philosophy, your company culture, and strategies required to deliver value to customers. All of those interactions need to match to the buyer’s journey and what your buyer personas are looking for.

Click here to learn more about inbound content.

Search Engine Optimization

A lot of people use Google (and other search engines)  to solve their problems, discover solutions, and access content. Chances are, whoever your target audience is, they will use Google too, and you want to make sure that your brand is in a position to provide relevant information, guidance, and most importantly a solution. The moment that an individual realizes they can benefit from your services should be the moment that you introduce yourself to the individual.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a very helpful tool to boost your traffic and return on investment. Using inbound to create your content is an excellent step, and using SEO to make your content more accessible will make your marketing efforts much more successful. SEO is a strategy which brands use to make themselves as visible as possible to users who are online searching for content. A successful SEO campaign would result in your web page ranking as high as possible on the results page, leading to more traffic and activity. Optimizing your website for search engines requires an analysis of your site in three different areas: format, content, and links. 

The format of your website relates to the way search engines view your content when crawling the web. Links will help determine the authority of your content. The more links you have (both internally and externally) the more authority your page will be given, assuming all links are legitimate and relevant. Backlinks are links that appear on other websites that lead to a page on your website. Content is the most important aspect of your brand and SEO. Pick keywords which you will use that also have high search volume and engagement, to make sure that you aren’t creating content that nobody is looking for.

Click here to learn more about search engine optimization.

Marketing Automation

After creating the content you want to measure the success of your content using marketing software to see what materials or strategies are working, where clients may be getting stuck, or what strategy has been most successful. Marketing software can help us segment our clients, collect data, automate marketing activities, track progress, create reports, and so much more. It is absolutely necessary to have a marketing software in order to optimize your content marketing efforts. Here is a blog post from Hubspot about the 11 best marketing automation software tools in 2019.

The key to creating and maintaining an effective content marketing strategy is to understand that we must keep evolving and adapting our content strategy to the evolving lifestyles and needs of our customers.