Content Marketing: A Strategy For Success
Let’s talk about content marketing.
We all know that content is king right? Have the right content and eventually you will be successful is something that I think a lot of people have taken to heart.
If you are a small to mid sized business owner, the idea that you can just create amazing content that will drive more customers to your business is a pipe dream. Creating without strategy is a very easy trap to fall into and one that can become a killer of time and profit. I tend to reference Gary Vaynerchuk a lot in my recent posts as he is kind of a wiz with content marketing. He knows what and how to drive engagement. He also has a media firm backing up everything he produces, making it easier to release the various pieces of his related content. If you are not in the media business, this is next to impossible to complete on your own. Sure, he started out selling wine, but his real goal was content marketing. Wine was just the medium he used to get into the business he really produces. Marketing and PR.
So? How do you go about producing content for your marketing initiatives?
For one, produce what you know. Start with something small and scale up. If I was to take myself as an example, I understand digital marketing and marketing spend as well as graphic design so that is what I can produce. This in turn also has an effect on my platform of choice.
You may think, well design, that’s a visual medium so therefore a really visual platform like Instagram would be appropriate for my business. I don’t think that is correct and it isn’t the bet I am making. I chose Linkedin because my target demographic is business owners and marketing firms. It is far easier to produce content, presentations, portfolio pieces and live video for Linkedin than it is for Instagram. I am not making content for other designers, that won’t lead to many sales. I did fall into that trap at the beginning of my business.
When I wasn’t thinking strategically about who I should be targeting. I didn’t get a single sale in 2019 from Instagram. So I’ve chosen to amend my strategy and platform for Linkedin.
This will also inform the type of content I produce. LinkedIn is not instagram. Certain pieces of content will work across both but far more I need to produce content that is optimized to the platform instead. So my content marketing efforts are designed around the platform I chose to operate on.
They say the best way to sell a service is to be seen as a market leader, or in the case of modern marketing speak, a thought leader. This may be a little Orwellian, when everyone is saying the same thing, especially true in the social media marketing we exist in on these platforms. But it is true nonetheless. Expertise sells and if I want to prove to another business, that I can help their business grow through graphic design services geared towards marketing their business, I better produce content that speaks to those pieces of information.
So taking that into consideration, we now know 3 things:
- Platform to design for,
- People I want to target,
- Type of content works for those people on this platform.
Okay, now comes the research part, because most marketing is research. You need to go to the marketplace, find the type of people you want to target and make a note of the type of content they actively engage with. Then, you need to start creating and actively pushing this content to them, by interacting with them on the platform.
So while this may seem like a daunting task, at least you have a battle plan for success.
Before you started your targeting content research, you would have just been creating something and releasing it to the world, and kind of hoping that someone would stumble upon your genius. While people can go viral this way, it’s far more likely to get a one off hit rather than sustained interest. Sustained interest is what you want because it will lead to sustained business.
It can also help your creativity because, paradoxically, it tends to be far easier to create good content with some constraints than free form briefless content. To put this in design terms. Treat the content you create like it is being written with a creative brief outline because essentially it is. For your business.
Finally, measure and test. So you now have a content strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a winning strategy. Content marketing, like any marketing, is a waste of money, without measurable success. You have have success from a marketing campaign from the get go, but without testing you will never be able to replicate the behaviour.
You won’t know what part of the marketing
Worked. So measure, test, and repeat.
Okay, this is a huge topic and one I could talk about for hours but that’s what I have for now.
I love marketing and talking about it so if you have any opinions or thoughts I’d love to know them.
Cheers,
