6 Steps To An Effective Content Marketing Campaign

Why is Content Marketing important?

Don’t manipulate search engines with spammy tricks and tactics. Google wants the best content which answers your customer’s  questions.

Over the years, there’s one thing that stands out with sites that do well versus sites that don’t do well:

Sites with good quality content and plenty of it get more traffic than sites with little content. Having a content schedule for your business is essential to good SEO success.

They want the best answer to people’s search queries and if you provide this on your website, you’ll rank well in Google for many keywords and get more traffic.

Here’s six important steps to creating a website that’s a lead generating content machine.

1. Create a Strategy and Plan

What should you write about? Having a solid strategy and plan will make the whole process a lot easier and provide a clear roadmap for your content marketing campaign. 

Where should you do your research?

You should have a good understanding of what your customers are interested in and what questions you commonly get asked. Sit down and write out all the questions you can think of that are commonly asked.

This will form the foundation of your content. It’s important to really put yourself in your customer’s shoes and not write about the things that interest you. The things that you’re interested in are probably well above the understanding of new customers/clients.

Look at your google analytics

If you have access to your Google analytics (ask your web developer or marketing team for access), you’ll be able to see how people are finding your website. What words are they typing into Google? What pages are the landing on?

What ads are getting clicked on the most? This can give you a good understanding of what people are looking for and give you ideas of content.

Look at your competitors

There’s a good chance that some of your competitors have already gone through this process and maybe made a few mistakes that you can avoid. Have a look at their website and see what they’re writing about. 

2. What Content Platform Should you use?

How should you present your content? Here are the following options:

1. Written article
2. Audio
3. Video
4. Infographic
5. Downloadable PDF

A video is a great way to start as it can be turned into all the above mediums easily. Ultimately how you present your content depends on your resources, abilities and how you think your audience likes to consume content. The more options you give your audience, the more likely your content will be read.

3. How Should You Structure Your Content?

Here are the most important elements of your content:

Headline ­

Around six times more people read the headline than read the article. So your headline is the most important element of the page. It should also target high volume search keywords. Here are examples of what makes a good headline:

1. Headlines with numbers E.g. “50 Ways To Grow Your Facebook Business Page”
2. ‘How To‘ headlines. E.g. “How to Start a Brand that Customers will love”
3. Headlines with questions, E.g. “Do You Close The Bathroom Door, Even When You’re The Only One Home?”
4. The Curiosity Headline (piques attention in your reader by making a claim in the headline that seems unusual or remarkable) E.g. “Why You Don’t want to Drink The Pool Water”.

People like to be entertained or learn something new. Keep this in mind when creating your headline.

Introduction ­

Explain exactly what the article is about in your intro. Outline what you’ll be talking about but make sure to sell what’s coming. Explain the purpose of the article . What do you want the readers to achieve?

Subheadings and Space ­

Write with headings and space. Studies show that this improves retention, comprehension and engagement.

Flow ­

Make sure the article flows and the subheadings have a purpose to their order.

Conclusion ­

Tie the article together and provide an action item for your readers. Provide a call to action or a way for your readers to get more information or more from you.

4. Distribution

How you are going to get this content spread across the internet. If your content is in multiple media formats (i.e. video, audio, PDF, image etc), this forms a great basis for distribution. Here a ways to distribute your content:

1. Post the video to YouTube and optimise.
2. Post the audio to iTunes as a podcast.
3. Send the PDF out as a Press release.
4. Announce the blog post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn, Google My Business.
5. Announce it inside any forums you’re a part of.
6. Pin the image to Pinterest with a link back.
7. Use the post as an Ad on Facebook.
8. Email your list.

5. Measure

How can you measure the success of this? SEO has an advantage over traditional marketing in that measuring success is a lot easier. Here are some metrics to track:

1. Visits to the specific blog post.
2. Facebook likes and comments.
3. Twitter Retweets, favourites and interaction.
4. Increased sales.
5. YouTube views.
6. iTunes subscribes and downloads.
7. New customers and feedback.
8. Google alerts.
9. New subscribers.

Where is all the activity coming from?

Which channel brought you the most leads? it may be a good idea (if there is a clear winner) to drill down and focus on that channel (e.g. FB ads, Google organic etc)

6. Schedule

And last but not the least, you have to schedule and repeat this process as much as you can. This is the hardest thing to do and we all get caught up in the day to day but if you really set a schedule in your calendar or on your phone and stick to it, you’ll see enormous benefits.

If you need some direction with your content marketing, contact me here.

Will Mullins