Marketing has certainly changed over the last 3-5 years. Content marketing is the buzzword now and ‘Content’ is truly the king. I interact with lots of companies who tell me about the processes they have put in place to develop some great content. This could be in the form of press releases, articles, blogs, white papers, podcasts, or webinars, just to name a few types. My question to them usually is ‘How are you making sure that this content is helping you drive your business acquisition process’
Well, I get varied answers to this question. Some have organized processes to promote this content and get in front of the target audience. They may or may not be tracking metrics across the marketing channels to figure out what is working for them. Most others end up under utilizing the content that they have produced and thus are not able to achieve their marketing objectives, which is to win new business and help your company to grow.
Here are some ways, I feel, a company can utilize the content effectively to achieve its business objectives.
1) Slice the content
Do not consider the content you have as just one piece. Think about slicing the content and creating multiple content assets, that you can utilize across your marketing channels. Make sure that each slice is attractive enough and can stand in isolation to help you get the eyeballs. If you have created a white paper, create multiple short article/blog posts about it and promote it separately, linking it back to the ‘big rock’ content. If you have written an article/blog post, slice it to create short promotional posts, either text or image posts or both to make sure that you promote it in front of your target audience.
2) Sustained email marketing campaigns
Plan a mix of HTML and text based campaign taking your content to your target audience. You obviously created content with them in mind, so why not take it to them in all ways possible. Generate curiosity about your content and make sure that people come and fetch the content on your digital assets (website, landing page). Here is how we meet some of the requirements for our clients.
3) Ongoing list building exercise
When we speak about campaigns, your campaign can only be as good as your lists. Make sure that you have built quality lists, which are segmented well. This way, you can ensure that the right message is going out to the right set of folks. If you do not have the right amount of focus on list building, make sure you invest the time to either validate archive lists, source/buy lists or generate target market lists from scratch using custom research. Here’s how we do it.
4) Sustained social media promotions
You have created your social presence and are building relevant connections in your target audience. Why not take this content that you have developed to them? You can promote every piece of content in 10-12 different ways at different times, so that you have maximum chance of being noticed Use a mix of text and image based posts. Use rhetoric’s to engage effectively with your audience. You can also use automation tools to schedule these posts at different times over the next few days/weeks.
5) Targeted social media ads
Use targeted ads to get in front of your target audience
This can be across Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Each offers several options to reach a specific audience. The ads could be pure text, or banners or can even be content promotional. The relevant landing pages could be build within these social platforms or you can direct them to a landing page on your website.
Each of these suggestions can be done in multiple ways and can be tracked down to perfection so that you know how effective each of this channel is, for your marketing efforts. For details on how you can effectively leverage each of this space, kindly reach out to me or wait for my next articles in this series.
The author, Atul Dhakappa is a Founder & CEO at Xenia Consulting, a professional digital marketing firm. An avid marketer with 22+ years’ experience across corporates, MNCs and SMEs, Atul has helped several companies achieve their growth objectives by leveraging the right digital marketing channels. Across all engagements he has always believed in strong accountability and transparency delivering measurable value and business impact to customers.
Whether you are in the initial phase of your marketing strategy or an operational phase, Xenia Consulting can help ensure that you are consistently achieving business growth objectives.
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