58% of Marketers Want to Learn What Content Works: Here’s a Strategy for Success
From sponsored blog posts to infographics and influencer marketing, the reach of an effective content marketing campaign is wide. Garner more attention from your target audience by using a strategic framework to build your campaign.
1. Define the Objective of the Campaign
Many marketers use their goals and objectives to frame their content marketing strategy. Examples include improving social media presence or increasing website traffic.
2. Decide on How to Record Metrics
Measuring performance metrics depends largely on the content marketer’s goals. If the goal is to encourage readers to take action by signing up for a newsletter, for example, content marketers track the number of people who sign up.
3. Assemble a Team and Research the Audience
Unless the campaign is limited and small, it’s tough to carry out alone. Having a professional team of editors, writers and designers makes it possible to create high-quality content to drive the most traffic and build the best content marketing campaign.
To understand their audience, marketers use analytics and other tools to learn as much as possible about their audience’s interests, purchasing patterns and online behaviors so that they can target them most effectively.
4. Choose a Content Type
Because marketers get to know their audience before they start generating content, they can craft high-quality campaigns targeted to the people they want to reach.
For example, National Geographic posts contributors’ travel photos on their Instagram site to build a 60 million+ following.
Chanel dabbled in sponsored blog creation when they gifted Rumi Neely, a fashion blogger with one of their backpacks, which has since appeared in numerous blog posts and Instagram photos that effectively reach consumers with a subtle approach.
5. Create and Distribute the Content
Choose professionals (copywriters and designers) that specialize in the type of content being created. Make sure the content marketing team does everything necessary to ensure that the content’s aligned with the campaign goals and marketing strategy. Once the content is ready, many content marketers struggle with distributing them in ways that maximize the results. Many marketers examine their existing routes to find the strongest ones for distributing the content.
For example, Procter & Gamble distributed their #LikeAGirl campaign strategically on social media, with the use of community and celebrity influencers. The campaign took off with viral appeal.
6. Evaluate Content Effectiveness
Whether the content consists of sponsored blog posts or infographics, evaluation is an essential tool in every marketer’s arsenal. This allows campaign marketers to adjust and tweak their strategy as needed to make sure it ends in the most successful way possible. Some of the metrics content marketers should watch are:
- Referral, social and direct traffic
- New and returning visitors
- How many shares the content receives
- How many sales the content generates
The Numbers
- 38% of business-to-consumer (B2C) and 41% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers list better understanding their audience as a top priority.
- 72% of B2B and 73% of B2C marketers view creating engaging content as one of their top priorities.
- 20% of B2B and 29% of B2C marketers want to find ways to integrate personalization into their campaigns
- 65% of B2B and 58% of B2C marketers want to gain a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t work for their content marketing campaigns.
