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.
