One habit that isn’t changing anytime soon is that most consumers research a business, product, or service on the internet before making a purchase.
Digital marketing is a necessity for businesses. Often, your website is your first opportunity to impress potential customers. For today’s consumer, around 80 per cent of the ‘buyer’s journey’ is digital.
A well-rounded content marketing strategy will help you connect with your ideal customers and delight your audience to improve retention.
A well-written blog article will convey your message to your readers and search engines. It’s important to understand the context of your content.
By utilising SEO best practices, you will increase your content’s opportunities to appear in search queries for keywords relevant to your industry or niche.
It takes time and money to develop high-quality content. However, it’s the cornerstone of every digital marketing strategy because of all the different ways you can repurpose a long-form piece of content.
Research suggests that businesses with a blog receive 55 per cent more visitors than rivals that don’t. More than 75 per cent of people regularly read blog posts.
Furthermore, 61 per cent of consumers in the US have completed a purchase after reading a blog post. It’s time to start writing!
Video content
Adding a video is one of the quickest ways to enhance your written content and significantly improve your opportunities to rank in search.
There are two ways to include written and video content together in a blog post. If you start with the video, you can add a transcript of the video’s spoken words. Need a simple video editor? Type Studio enables you to edit videos simply by editing the transcribed text.
If you start with the written content, you can add a video to provide deeper content on a topic. This may draw in visual learners who don’t have the time or patience for longer blog posts.
Another great way to use video marketing is on social media. Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and Google web stories offer visual opportunities to connect with potential leads uniquely.
In 2022, streaming online videos and downloads accounted for 82 per cent of all internet traffic and more than three-quarters of those videos were viewed on mobile devices.
Email marketing
Email marketing is vital to a complete content marketing strategy because it allows you to personalise and target your communication with each contact.
Email is used for every aspect of a customer’s buyer’s journey, starting with lead generation. You can continue to engage your customers and delight them by offering insider discounts on new products or services.
Remember that consumers prefer to open emails on mobile devices. More than 40 per cent of consumers will delete an email if it's not optimised for mobile phones!
Social media marketing
As you strive to extend your digital returns, leveraging social media is helpful.
Social media channels like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn are excellent places to connect with your target audience, share content, and answer questions.
It’s worthwhile to spend time developing a ‘consumer persona’. This way, you will know which social media platforms will best connect your brand with your target buyer.
You will want to plan out your social media posts and look ahead and consider ways you can incorporate interactive content such as polls.
More than three-quarters of the world’s population (older than 13) uses some form of social media. While planning your social media strategy, remember that visual content is vital.
Include visual content in your content marketing, such as infographics, photos, graphs, charts, slide decks, and web stories. One easy way to incorporate visual content is to have a custom image with every blog post.
Research suggests that readers retain 65 per cent more information when written content is paired with a relevant infographic. Regarding e-commerce, online consumers are 30 times more likely to initiate a payment when prompted to do so by visuals.
As you develop your content marketing strategy, consider how to incorporate each of these aspects into your overall digital marketing efforts.
It’s never too late to get started, and there’s an effective strategy for every business owner's preference.
More reading:
Three golden rules for investing in relationships with customers
Quality customer service always beats out pricing
Looking for – and finding – a business’ ‘lost customers’
Great customer experience: steps to woo your audience
How do you treat your customers after they leave?
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