If your content marketing is not yielding ROI, this is an article you don’t want to miss.
We have been creating content for our clients for marketing using social media for over 9 years. In the process, we have learned some critical lessons that we are sharing with you in this article.
Before you begin, the first step is to identify your target audience(s). They form the crux of your content marketing exercise. They need to be kept in mind for every piece of content you create. You can have multiple target audiences. Not every content will be for all of them. When you begin creating your content, ask yourself who is the target audience for this piece, and what would they like to see today? Make your post for one set of target audience. When the content is for everybody, it is for nobody.
The next step is to define your goals as best as you can, for every step of your sales funnel, or whichever goals you are trying to achieve. For the purpose of this article,we will focus on sales as a goal.
Whether it is to capture attention, capture interest, create desire or get them to take an action, each piece of content needs to help accomplish at least one of your goals.
Now the challenge is to get the audience to want to see more of your content. This can happen if your content is
a. Informative: The internet is overloaded with information. If your content is giving that same data which the target audience can access anywhere else on the web, why would your content entice them? Try giving content that holds actual value to your target audience. Data based content talks about the various advantages of owning a particular product or service, informative content will go beyond and provide the audience with guidelines on the specific product or service which would be most suitable for them and why. Once the audience knows you provide them with informative content, they gain a sense of brand trust. They start looking upon you as a domain expert and also valuing your communications.
b. Relatable & Funny: Humor is the seasoning on your content. But just like any seasoning wouldn’t do on your pizza, any kind of humor wouldn’t work in your content marketing. Be clear about the kind of humor your target audience will appreciate. Make it relatable. A meme on politics isn’t likely to tickle your teenage target audience’s funny bone. Be cognizant of not making jokes on your target audience.They are not likely to appreciate your jokes and if that is the case, the joke will only be on you.
So go ahead and add value to your content with that essential ingredient of humor. The tiny nuggets of laughter you give them will make them find your brand more and more endearing. Over time, this will create brand loyalty.
c. Emotion triggering content: Emotions are an integral part of humans. People often find themselves making decisions or doing things that trigger certain emotions in them. B2B sales are surely practical, result oriented decisions but that shouldn’t deter you as a content marketeer to create emotional triggering content for this target audience as well. Certain content triggers emotions (positive of course) and draws the audience. It also encourages the audience to engage more freely with your content, which helps build a connection with your brand. Once the audience feels a sense of camaraderie with a particular brand they tend to strongly consider it while making a purchase decision.
d. Unique: Thinking out-of-the-box when it comes to creating content is both exciting and rewarding. Both the visual and written content needs to capture the attention of your target audience. The novelty and uniqueness of your content will attract the audiences regularly towards it. A great example of unique content is Amul. They have been selling the same butter, but they always seem to have fresh unique content up their sleeves.
e. Solution based – When you create content for your target audience, you first need to understand their pain points and what kind of solutions you can offer them. Based on the kind of problems your audience faces, you can offer solutions via our products/ services. The sales pitch then could be direct or indirect based on where you feel your audience is in their buying journey. Whether they are in their awareness stage or geared to take action, you can target them right with your solution based content. This builds brand equity and customer interest.
We’ve been creating sales content using these lessons learnt over the years through our content marketing work for our clients, and achieving tremendous breakthroughs for them. We’ve observed enhanced social media performance to have a cascading effect on sales. The effects of excellent content are first reflected through better matrices like reach and engagement followed by a build-up in visibility and thereby leads and sales.
So try our secret sauce for nailing your content marketing. Do share how it enhances your sales. And if we could lend you a hand, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on contact@vanillaskills.com
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