Summer is almost over, and with just four months of the year and decade left and a busy festive season on the horizon, brands need to shift their content marketing campaigns into top gear to increase awareness and drive sales. Here are four methods for supercharging your output.
Know your audience
Four in five marketers say that building an audience is their number one focus, according to new research by CMI. In a two-way value exchange, which is how content marketing generally functions, your audience is everything. If you fail to engage and give both B2B and B2C readers something to act on, your content is likely to fall on deaf ears.
Before embarking on a content marketing campaign, make sure that you fully understand the wants and needs of your audience. After completing the check, which should be backed up by data and research, start creating a few personas or updating them so that they remain relevant.
Apply personas
Now that you have personas in place, it is time to apply them to your content marketing. A simple framework can help you with this process. First, think about the problem that your content will offer a solution to, and then decide on the language you need to speak to connect and engage with audiences, before asking the right questions at the right time.
Lead with your audience
Prioritising the audience’s needs over brand messages has been a popular trend in 2019. Nine in ten marketers running successful content marketing campaigns say that an end user’s informational needs are now their top priority. Content expert Ann Gynn believes that brands need to support a buyer’s journey with content but also acknowledge that the path to a sale is unlikely to be straight and narrow.
She adds: “Instead, consider what type of information your potential buyers and customers need at every stage and create stage-specific content in a mix of formats. Then make it accessible when and where your buyer is ready to consume it.”
Gain their trust
When a brand gets good at delivering content in the right moments, audiences begin to trust them, recommend them to others, and rely on them in the future. Marketers should target a consistent, personal and cumulative strategy to build and retain trust over time. By building on what has gone before, brands can increase their power and authority.
