Content creation is a mystery to some. Unlike an artist staring at a blank canvas, digital content creation requires a mixture of creativity, data analysis and business sense. That is content marketing is all about delivering results.
Specifically, content marketing should increase the profitability of a website.
In recent years, there’s been a massive growth in the popularity of content marketing, because it delivers such incredible return on investment:
This works in two way:
- Reducing the cost of user acquisition,
- Increasing your ability to convert users into customers.
At least, that’s the goal. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the four steps you can take to create content your customers will love.
1. Attract The Right Audience for your Content Marketing
Attracting the right audience to a website is incredibly important. Who are the right people and how can they be reached? After all, happy leads become happy, loyal customers. Ideal customers or buyer personas is a description of what an ideal customer is.
This involves creating what are known as ideal customer personas. Essentially, this is a caricature of the kind of person who’ll benefit from your products or services.
One element of this is their demographics, likes, dislikes, goals, dreams, and so on. It is the person or the persona you created your products and services for. More importantly, you should understand their core problems, and how your content or products can solve these.
Here are some common content creation tools to attract the right audience.
Blogging
A blog is the single best way to attract new visitors to your website. A blog is a website consisting of entries, or posts similar to a daily journal. Blogs usually include links intended to increase user interactivity.
You must create educational, valuable content that speaks to your target audience so they can find you. Blog posts must be entertaining, consistent and current. Blogs can feature one writer or multiple writers, who may be named or anonymous.
Website Pages
A website is the face of your company, many times a new customer’s first interaction with you.
So like any first impression, spend time getting it right. Create an attractive, easy to navigate website that will appeal to your audience and make them want to stay, look around and turn into a customer.
Attractive graphics, page speed, well designed links, current photos, easy to read fonts and of course engaging content are all components of a well done website.
There are a few variables to keep in mind when designing a website for content marketing. These are:
- Technical performance,
- UX/UI
- Conversion rate optimisation,
- Load speeds
- Design.
SEO
Search engine optimisation sounds scary but what’s scary about it is if digital content creation doesn’t have it. The first thing a potential customer does when looking for something is go to their favorite search engine like Google or Chrome.
The descriptions you use for your company and products are keywords that the search engine uses to help the user with their search. It is wise to spend time gathering your industry’s keywords and using them in all marketing content.
Sites like SEMRush will help research and fine tune keywords.
Social Media Presence
Get social and stay social. Social media offers businesses a huge opportunity to reach current and potential customers with their digital content creation.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are valuable platforms to share tips and trends about your industry, use links to your blogs and website, invite your followers to share your information with their friends and to keep your presence in newsfeeds.
Getting to know each platform and who is using them is important to the content you share. Consistency is also important.
2. Set SMART Goals for Your Content Marketing
Once you’ve established who you are marketing to, it’s important to understand how you can measure the return on investment of your content marketing efforts. This involves setting clear and actionable goals.
The SMART framework is the best way to do this. Let’s take a look at what this means.
Specific
First of all, it’s crucial to have a clear idea of what it is that you actually want to achieve. Create specific inbound marketing goals so the entire team is working toward a common goal.
But what exactly is a specific goal?
Let’s take a step back and think about the overarching goal of content marketing. That is, to make more money. As we said before, there are essentially two levers you can pull to achieve, reducing the cost of acquisition, or boosting your conversion rate.
Your goal is specific if you can attach a specific target figure to either or both of these.
Measurable
Luckily, measurability is pretty simple when it comes to content creation. That is, you should already be measuring your web traffic, as well as the amount of revenue that your site generates.
Keep a record of what content is successful and what content wasn’t. Track the money and time spent on campaigns and then review it to see what worked and what didn’t. Specifically, you’re looking for users who enter your site through content pages, and carry on to make a purchase.
Achievable
Set goals and expectations that are achievable based on your staff, budget and timeframes and celebrate when they are met. That is, if you have two members of staff and no budget, you probably can’t publish a new piece of content every day.
Instead, setting goals is an important chance to develop a realistic content calendar based on your current resources.
Relevant
Set goals that are in line with the entire company’s vision and are relevant with what is trending in the industry. Again, the ultimate objective is to make more money. As such, the key is to tie your SMART goals to this.
Timely
Finally, it’s important to have a clear picture of when you’d like to achieve your goals. Create goals around a specific time frame, keeping customers in mind, the amount of time to reach the goals and complete the campaigns.
You can also set an ongoing review process to allow for constant and ongoing optimisation.
3. Get Responsive & Mobile Friendly
If your website isn’t mobile friendly, or readable and usable on all sizes of mobile devices then make arrangements to get it done as soon as possible.
More people are using their mobile devices, smartphones and tablets to do business than ever before. Three reasons you must have a website with responsive design are:
You’re Losing Business
In a recent survey, 61 percent of visitors to a website were likely to leave if a site wasn’t mobile friendly. If you still use only a standard website that doesn’t feature responsive design, your customers are finding and buying from companies websites who are.
Customers, especially the younger millennial generation are on their mobile devices for almost everything and that may include searching for you.
Your Customers Expect It
Updating to a mobile friendly website proves to your customers you are on trend and current. It doesn’t matter if you sell online or not.
Customers have certain expectations with company’s they do business with and since a website presence many times is their first impression of you, what your website looks like, what content it features and how easy it is to use, can make or break converting a visitor to a customer.
Google Will Penalize You
As the world continues to go mobile and be everything on the go, and more and more of our daily activities rely on a handheld device, it is imperative that websites are responsive to all different sizes of screens.
Google’s goal is to increase search traffic, and those with responsive websites will be rewarded by getting listed higher in searches. Those websites that aren’t will be ranked lower or not at all.
4. Use Creative Calls To Action
Call to action (CTA) buttons are one of the most important components of your website. A great CTA button can direct users, get them to take a desired action, improve conversion rates, and assist your website achieve its objectives.
Visual cues are common in today’s marketing world and the button needs to stand out.
It’s almost intuitive for them to recognize clearly marked action words (verbs) so they can easily navigate a website and get where they want to be.
Buttons with call to action verbs like, “Call Now,” Click Here For a Free Recipe,” Sign Up for Our Emails and Save,” and Read Now to Learn More.” Here are a few questions when designing a call to action button.
- Text: Is the call to action clear, create a sense of urgency, short and to the point and communicate value?
- Size: Is the call to action button easy to find and recognizable as a call to action button and is it mobile friendly?
- Placement: Is the call to action button is a place that makes sense for the visitor to take action?
- Color: Does the call to action button stand out, have ample white space and feature a tried and true color? Research indicates that green and orange get more clicks than other colors.