Maximizing the Returns and Impact of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a necessity for most businesses in most industries. A recent study states that over a third of businesses reported that 10% to 29% of their budget is given to content marketing.[1]
However, sometimes even the biggest enterprise companies lack the resources to build an in-house digital marketing team to create, build, and manage an effective content marketing strategy. That’s where a content marketing consultant makes the most sense for many businesses.
Content marketing is a marketing strategy in which you create and distribute useful and relevant content designed to attract and retain your target audience. The result is an increase in profitable customer action and adoption of your products and services.
Instead of directly promoting your brand, services, and products to your target audience, a good content marketing strategy will provide useful information, entertainment, or educational materials to the audience that will draw them in and lead them through the customer journey. This will build trust and loyalty over time.
The variety and types of content created can include blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, social media posts, and much more. The most effective content marketing strategies deliver great content that resonates with your target audience’s interests, wants, needs, and pain points. This solidifies your brand as a thought leader and significant online presence in your industry.
There are numerous types of content marketing strategies, and which strategies you pursue will depend on several factors. Your industry, business owners, marketing goals, and business goals will all play a role. It often helps to work with a professional content agency to create and execute a content strategy tailored to your business. Here are some common aspects of content marketing you should know:
A content strategy is the plan you assemble that outlines the content marketing materials you’ll create and the execution plan you’ll deploy to achieve your goals. It will cover the creation, publication, and management of content across various platforms and channels to engage and attract your target audience. Content strategy encompasses elements such as content creation, distribution, promotion, audience targeting, messaging, and performance measurement.
A digital content strategy is similar to a regular content strategy, but this content plan focuses on exclusively digital channels. Digital content strategies have multiple components, including content creation, curation, search engine optimization (SEO), distribution tactics, audience engagement strategies, and performance measurement and metric analysis.
Email copywriting forms the basis of email marketing. It involves creating engaging written content for email marketing campaigns. This includes writing compelling subject lines, engaging opening sentences, and informative or persuasive body content aimed at achieving your specific objectives.
Brand content marketing is an approach to content marketing that focuses on creating and distributing content to promote your brand and engage your target audience. It is different from traditional advertising in the sense that traditional advertising directly promotes products or services, while brand content marketing aims to build brand awareness and credibility by providing content that informs, entertains, and educates your target audience.
SaaS content marketing is the creation of content marketing strategies specifically for SaaS companies. It focuses on creating and distributing content built to attract and engage potential customers, drive brand awareness, and convert leads into users of the SaaS product.
SaaS content marketing content may include blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, videos, webinars, and social media posts that address the pain points, challenges, and needs of the target audience while also highlighting how the SaaS product can provide solutions and add value.
The hub and spoke content model is a unique approach to content creation that revolves around a main channel of content supplemented by related spokes of content. In this model, the hub consists of a comprehensive piece of content, often referred to as the pillar. This core content piece addresses a broad topic or theme relevant to the target audience and serves as the focal point of the content strategy.
The spokes are smaller, more focused pieces of content created to support the hub. These spokes include blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, social media posts, podcasts, and more.
Inbound and content marketing are marketing strategies built to attract and engage your target audience. They are similar in many ways, but they differ in scope and focus.
Inbound marketing is a comprehensive approach that uses different tactics and channels to attract prospects organically by providing valuable content and personalized experiences tailored to their needs. It involves techniques such as content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, and more, all working together to drive inbound traffic and generate leads to your brand’s digital sites.
Inbound marketing also focuses on building long-term relationships with prospects and customers by delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. Content marketing, on the other hand, can be considered a subset of inbound marketing that involves creating and distributing content to attract a clearly defined target audience.
While content marketing is an important part of inbound marketing, it primarily focuses on the content aspect of your strategy. As such, it involves producing various types of content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, and more, to provide value to the audience, build trust, and ultimately increase customer adoption of your products and services.
Content marketing serves as the foundation of inbound marketing, providing the fuel that powers engagement and conversion across all stages of the customer journey.
AI content optimization is a very popular tool in content marketing. It refers to using AI technology to improve content creation, distribution, and performance. This model leverages AI algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyze data, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions to optimize content for better results.
A content marketing consultant assists businesses and companies like yours in building and deploying unique content marketing strategies. They collaborate closely with you in order to develop tailored content strategies aligned with your business goals and the needs of your target audience.
Content Marketing Consultants oversee the creation, management, and optimization of various types of content, including blog posts, articles, videos, and social media posts, ensuring high quality and relevance. They also employ SEO techniques to improve content visibility and engagement and devise distribution and promotion strategies to effectively reach target audiences.
Finally, by tracking and analyzing agreed-upon metrics, a content marketing consultant will refine and optimize your content marketing strategy to achieve the best results. Sales is a common metric, as Hubspot reports over 41% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales.[2]
Working with an expert content marketing consultant has a cost. Content writing pricing can vary depending on factors like the type of content, project complexity, the writer’s experience, and the industry standards in your area.
Pricing is an important factor when you consider working with a consultant. It’s worth noting that according to a recent study, content marketing campaigns cost 62% less to launch and maintain compared to other types of campaigns.[3]
Creating a content marketing strategy can be a herculean effort that requires years of experience to execute properly. It’s not uncommon for a business like yours to work with a content marketing consultant for its content strategy needs. DIGITECH’s proven content-first marketing solutions are a great solution for any company that wants to get started with content marketing but doesn’t have the time or resources to thoroughly optimize its current strategy.
DIGITECH’s content marketing consultants and digital marketing experts stand ready to help you build a unique strategy that exceeds your goals.
A content marketing consultant will improve your online presence by working with you to develop a tailored strategy based on your needs and business goals. Once established, they can create and deploy content across various platforms, optimizing search engines to improve visibility, maximizing distribution channels to reach a wider audience, and establishing your brand as a thought leader.
Measuring the success of your content marketing efforts will involve tracking various well-defined metrics to assess the performance and impact of the content strategy. KPIs may include website traffic, engagement metrics, social media interactions, conversion rates, and impact on your business goals.
Some early markers of success, such as website traffic or engagement metrics, may be visible within a few weeks or months of launching a campaign. Significant results, like lead generation and sales, may need several months to a year of work.