Content Marketing: 5 Steps To Creating The Most Powerful Strategy

IPER One Studio | Content Marketing Strategy | IPER1

The most powerful content marketing strategy you’re not using.

In 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay called Content is King, and he said, content marketing is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet. Nearly three decades later and he could not have been more spot on. According to HubSpot, 40% of marketers say content marketing is a central part of their marketing strategy.

81% say their company views content marketing as a business strategy.

Simply put, if you’re not writing, posting, promoting, or sharing valuable content, you’re actively putting your business at a disadvantage compared to your competition.

But here’s the thing. While businesses and a ton of businesses acknowledge that content marketing strategy is important, it is also one of the areas they struggle with the most.

A massive 45% of marketing professionals say that they struggle to create content that actually resonates with their audience. What should you do to take your content marketing strategy to the next level and resonate with your audience?

What you need to do is you need to embrace the hedgehog. Let me explain. The hedgehog marketing concept is based on old parable about a hedgehog and a fox. The fox knows a ton and is always trying to find new ways to help with the hedgehog.

But the hedgehog stays focused on one thing.

Putting it in marketing terms, focus on what you know. Does your website get a million visitors every month? Probably not. So don’t focus on trying to make that happen. You are much better off focusing on trying to meaningfully reach a hundred people than you are trying to barely get through to a thousand.

So what does this look like? Here’s how you can implant the hedgehog strategy.

Step one, create a detailed buyer persona.

You’re probably wondering why. Well, using marketing personas makes websites two to five times more effective and easier to target the right users that they’re looking for.

And when you think about marketing personas, if you just Google marketing personas templates you’ll find a lot of templates out there that you can use to just create this and they’re free and you’ll see ’em all within Google Images. Here’s a Complete, Actionable Guide to Marketing Personas + Free Templates.

Step two, segment your audience.

A survey from Milton found that segmented campaigns had open rates 14% higher than non-segmented ones. So for example, I send out different emails to people who are already buyers. If someone purchased from you once, there’s a good chance you can get them as a repeat customer.

So the emails you would send to them are different than the people that come to your website the first time, opt into the email list, have never heard from you before and have never bought anything.

The same goes with people who have partly completed their checkout but they haven’t fully completed it. You would actually send them different email campaigns than people who have completed a checkout or not even started.

For example if someone partly completed a checkout, I may send them coupon codes or testimonials or thought leaderships or even case studies on how people using that product or service has really helped ’em in their life.

Step three, focus on becoming a thought leader.

When done correctly thought leadership is a powerful tool in your arsenal. According to a LinkedIn study, 71% of professionals say that less than half of thought leadership content provided valuable insights.

65% of respondents said that a piece of thought leadership content changed their perception of a company for the better. While 64% said that they thought that thought leadership is more of a trustworthy source than marketing materials. Focus on what you know and make it great.

In essence, follow EAT. Google talks about EAT, it stands for expertise, authority, and trust. They want to rank websites higher that are from people who are authorities within that subject. They don’t want you to create a website that discusses all of everything, kind of like Wikipedia or New York Times because they already have enough websites like that.

Step four, make your content more valuable and shareable.

Delivering exceptional content to a hungry audience only helps them with their needs, encourages them to share it with others. 95.9% of bloggers promote their blogs on social and 69% of bloggers say that they use social share buttons. I use social share buttons, promote my blog posts on social media, literally majority of the channels, and I send out email blasts every time I do a blog post and push notifications.

Step five, find your engine.

What part of your product offering is most attractive to your audience? Stop focusing on supplementary products. This doesn’t mean to put all your eggs in one basket, but it does mean that you need to pay more attention to what’s actually driving the revenue for your brand, otherwise known as your revenue engine. Look, you can sort of be okay at a lot of things, or you can put your energy into one thing that truly makes a difference.

Find your most profitable, well-developed, and researched product or service or idea and build on that.

Sure, you can have upsells and down sells with other products and service that are ancillary, but you need a focus on what you’re the best at. That’s how you stand out. There’s already too many people out there that are me too and do everything now.

If you need help with your content marketing, check out our ad agency. If you have questions, leave a comment below.

4 Effective Strategies to Improving Your Business Visibility Online.

Improving your business visibility online is all about putting your business on the map in local searches when customers are searching for a business like yours. 

Running a business is hard work. 

You might have a steady flow of loyal existing customers, but you always need to make sure we have a stream of new people.

Keeping your website up to date can be hard work, too. And your SEO might need a serious update — or maybe you’ve never done much with it at all, thinking it was too difficult or too expensive.

Because of this, we’ve put together several optimization strategies that we are currently helping our clients with.

All these methods are geared towards helping you rank as high as possible with Local Listings so that you can generate more sales for your business.

1. Optimize Your Website

The two most valuable things you need to do for your local business is to create a reasonable amount of high quality content for your website and do the basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO optimization is the process of making your website’s page more attractive to search engines and users.

Search engine robots will rank highly optimized content higher on a search engine page than non-optimized content.

You should aim for quality over quantity, providing comprehensive information to your site visitors.

Search engines prefer sites that are regularly updated, this means that you can’t just create a bunch of pages and then let them sit for months at a time, hoping that your site traffic will improve. 

On the other hand, if you are happy with the content on those pages, there’s no need to change them just for SEO purposes.

Improving your business visibility online | IPER One

Instead, consider starting a blog. Even if you only post once a week, this will show search engines that your site is being maintained and updated regularly.

2. Claim or Create your GMB Profile

Today’s consumers want precision and they are used to immediate results, so the time you shell out to list your company on Google Maps is modest in comparison with the results you’ll get.

It’s very important  to be found on Google and Google Maps

If you are not there, your business will struggle to compete with other businesses in your industry, especially with those that are easily discoverable and do have a significant presence in Google Maps.

And to be found on Google maps, you need to either claim or create a new GMB Profile for your business.

Not appearing on Google Maps will mean that you don’t exist to a lot of buyers, therefore, you need to pay special attention to Google tools if you want to increase your sales and revenue.

3. Staying on top of your Reviews

If you are contemplating purchasing a certain product, would you rather trust the claims made by the manufacturer/seller or the experiences of people who have bought the product? 

It’s likely that you’d be more influenced by the opinions of your fellow consumers. 

It’s important to consider that your customers would also have this same mindset when they’re planning to buy something from you.

When they see that a large percentage of people who have bought the product are raving about it, it could compel them to make the purchase too. 

Many small businesses shun bad reviews or delete for fear of getting a bad image, but consumers can see right through that.

Small businesses should embrace reviews, even if they are good or bad.

Good reviews can help boost your rankings with search engines as well as bring in more potential clients. 

But at the same time bad reviews are also useful because businesses can take points from these to further improve their services and product effectiveness. 

The more people talk about your company, the more popular you get.

4. Being Relevant on Social Media

The best way to use social networking sites to improve your SEO rankings is to use them to interact with your customers. 

Tweet, post, and like other content on social sites that make sense for your business. 

Creating clear, good content that relates to your business and getting people excited about your product or helping solve their problems is the best way to turn browsing internet users into loyal customers.

Your job is to educate people about your business by delivering its advantages and give reasons why these social media users should become your customers.

Improving your business visibility online | IPER One

You can definitely do this by sharing captivating stories, videos, images, downloadable guides, about your business.

Here’s why you should include social media optimization in your marketing plan:

  • It will help customers to find your brand
  • It’s an easy way to build and grow your customer base
  • It improves your ranking in search engines
  • It will build up connections with your target audience
  • It promotes your brand authority in a niche market