How To Ensure Your Content Marketing Is A Success

What comes into your mind when you hear the word content marketing? I bet you think about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and viral YouTube videos.

The truth of the matter is that content marketing has been around far longer than the Internet.

Content marketing is all about storytelling and humans have told stories for as long as they could speak. Our attention will always go to those who tell great stories.

It means that in content marketing, one must think of a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with the target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them consistently.

These days, we can both agree that Content marketing is a lot harder. According to Marketing Architect Amanda Natividad, 65% of Google searches ended without a click in 2020.

The harsh truth one must come to terms with is that Marketers need to get a lot savvier about their content.

How then do you ensure that you have the right content that will sell your business line or make your marketing successful?

1. Tie The Content To The Business Goals

For many businesses, their goals are normally tied to top-line revenue. Goals might also be tied to the addition of new team members, growing into a new market, or launching a new product or service, but mostly their growth is tied to revenue.

You should clearly define your goals to ensure everything your marketing team does aligns with the business’s goals.

This is how you will be able to gauge your success as a growth marketer and set out strategies to help your business reach its fullest potential through digital marketing.

For example, you may want to:

Grow blog traffic which Is good, but may take a long to convert

Get Likes and retweets,  which might sound better, but doesn’t specify who is amplifying

Earn social media engagement from people in your ICP – this will get you the Best Resonance plus amplification from likely buyers.

2. Match Your Content To Where The Consumer Is On Their Influence Map

Influence maps are visual frameworks that try to answer core questions about what people’s behaviors are and how they can be influenced. In simple terms: a high-level way to illustrate how and where marketers should do their jobs. It’s where behavioral design and marketing (should) intersect.

With an influence map, you are at a much more strategic level. Instead of asking “which keywords should I bid on?” you’re asking “where and how should we do marketing? And to whom?”

Again, with influence maps, you form hypotheses about audience behavior. You design experiments to validate them. You learn. And you improve

This you can do through Problem discovery, Brand awareness, and Further education.

3. Create Content For The Type Of Amplification You Need

Ask yourself:

Why would an influencer retweet this? (It’s something they wish they said)

Why would a reporter cover this? (News about business growth)

Why would my ideal customer share this? (A question with brag-worthy results.)

4. For Your Outlines: Use The Hook-Line-Sinker Template.

Hook: Attention-grabbing statement. It raises questions that will be answered.

Line: The meat that delivers on the hook.

Sinker: Message that stays with the reader after they leave.

5. Write Amazing Headlines

How can you make great headlines?

More than anything, you need an interesting story. Even the greatest headline writer in the world will fail with a boring or confusing story. That’s because the best headlines aren’t necessarily the ones that make people click — they’re the ones that promise great stories and then fulfill that promise.

The best headlines serve as irresistible invitations to read the rest of your content. They might evoke emotion or inspire curiosity, depending on the subject, but they should always elicit a reaction.

Here are a few things to follow to help you come up with the best headline.

• Specific

When people come across your headline, they’re going to make a snap decision: Do I care about this? Be specific — include enough detail so they can connect to the story and make a decision.

The purpose of a good headline isn’t only to get people to click. We want to create a positive experience for people — from spotting the headline to clicking to reading/watching/listening to sharing to returning.

• Easy to understand

People will likely see your headline while scanning social media on their phones. So keep it simple. If it’s long and confusing they’ll likely move on to something after a couple of seconds.

• Inspire a reaction

Imagine someone seeing your headline for the first time.  how will that person react? Curious? Surprised? Happy? Sad? Hopefully not disinterested or confused. Try to imagine this scenario. Test it out. Show a friend your headline and ask for a gut reaction.

• Not overly clever.

Be cautious of the overly clever headlines. Creativity is a good thing and you want your headline to stand out but ensure you are not distracting people with a pun or an outdated cultural reference.

• Capture the spirit of the story

Is it a happy story? Is it an essay? An investigative piece? Is it written? With a unique voice? Is it hard news? The style and tone of the story should be reflected in the headline

• Repurpose Content To Distribute It

Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else.

By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort

For example,

Speaking on a podcast? Turn a talking point into a blog post and link to your episode.

Got a blog post? Summarize as a LinkedIn post.

Promoting an event? Write a thread that gives away a few insights.

Promote your content on social media — effectively.

Use a viral-likely format to get people’s attention and make them care.