We live in a technological era where companies are starting to show more and more interest in digital marketing and advertising.
Digital marketing, with its easy to track progress, affordability and scalability seems to have built a keen interest in both small businesses and large corporations, allowing them to compete more aggressively on a level playing field.
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One part of digital marketing is content marketing (which entails generating content that serves to educate customers while selling to them, this is usually through branded content) plays a significant part in the overall digital marketing strategy of a business as it serves multiple purposes. These can include selling, educating customers and also customer retention through relationship building.
In this article, we will be discussing five effective content marketing strategies for online.
Infographics
We all love and happily share them on social media.
People online are more easily drawn more to images and infographics than they are long articles (excuse the irony). Infographics are also more clear, concise and generate some engagement.
Businesses often use them to release the latest stats on their industry or product performance as part of their content marketing and platforms like Canva make it easier for you to generate infographics.
Engaging on social media
We all know that social media is king (with recent Facebook stats estimating their client base at over 1.6-billion users worldwide).
We know countless companies with Facebook pages and twitter accounts that aren’t really effective. Sorry to say this but just posting content on your social media platforms is not enough to get you the traffic you are hoping for, the content needs to be engaging, interactive and with ‘more images and less words’.
So for instance, a Facebook page for a company that sells spices should also share amazing recipes for food and of course the recipes will conveniently include their products or sometimes create platforms for engagement by asking their customers to share recipes instead. This keeps the engagement flowing and builds more and more brand loyalty with customers.
Twitter Q&A
I’m sure we all still remember the #AskMmusi Twitter Q&A that had the country entertained for the day. As more of a follow-on to the previous point on engaging on social media, hosting questions and answers sessions on twitter puts a company in a vulnerable position that customers will see and appreciate as sincerity.
These platforms allow customers to ask the companies any questions about their products or services, industry relations questions or customer service suggestions, complaints and compliments. This is a great way to engage with your customers and also build a relationship with your customers.
Customer relatable content
One would ask what customer relatable content is, this is simply generating customer-centric content for your marketing (placing your customer in the middle of the action), this is done through the use of case studies and sharing of actual customer success stories, this is because people easily relate to what is real and people are easily drawn to a company’s brand personality if it in line with theirs.
Ever wondered why Volvo stresses safety — even including videos of safety tests in all their ads and promotional content? This is because its target market is the family-orientated individual who prioritizes safety for their children and often relates to the safety case studies shared. Similarly the company Tracker, that shows case studies of them retrieving a stolen car which had an infant in a car sit in the back seat of a car.
Downloadable Documents
When sharing content in the blogs section of your website, it’s always advisable to ensure that the content can be easily downloaded, this is because sometimes customers or potential customers may find interesting information while browsing your website in a hurry and would like to download the information in order to go through it in depth at a later time.
For instance, if your company sells baby products and in your blog section, you share tips and tricks that will make life easier for new /first-time mothers or discuss latest dangers and illnesses that are popular among new born babies then allowing them to be able to download the content will also ensure a good relationship, improve brand loyalty and can be a very good customer acquisition strategy.
Remember you can always collect their names and email addresses before they download the content. This way the company can build a strong database of leads to then be used for email marketing.
Do remember in implementing any of the above mentioned, that the success of the strategies will also have quite a bit to do with the business model and platform and that it is important to understand the different functions for different social media platforms, this will help you in appealing to your target audience in the appropriate manner.
It is important for marketing managers of businesses to work closely with agencies in order to understand what marketing is appropriate for the business.
Feature image: Slipp D. Thompson via Flickr
