26 April, 2022
Alyssa Zacharias, Lead Editor at Clash Creative
Four-minute read
As digital marketing becomes ubiquitous, it gets increasingly hairy to figure out how to reach a target audience effectively. Not only does it get harder to have your message cut through the mass of consumable content, but choosing the right marketing tactics to prioritize can feel nearly impossible.
While every marketing tactic has its perks, we’ve found that content marketing is queen – if you play the long game right, this tactic will generate the most, and best, inbound leads.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy that uses optimized and branded content distributed across all digital platforms to reach a target audience. This includes email, social media, blog, website, and advertising content. Content marketing can also be used internally to promote company values and cultivate praiseworthy company culture.
Notably, content marketing is not overly promotional. Instead, it’s more informational and conversational and stimulates interest from an ideal client in a down-to-earth, relatable manner.
Why Content Marketing Is Queen
Often, the power of content marketing is overlooked for quick-gain marketing tactics like purchased leads and data scraping tools. The problem is that these methods lose steam real quick – and what you’re left with is an empty brand voice and ghosted consult calls.
When you prioritize your content by ensuring that every piece tells your story and is optimized to resonate with your target audience, your brand becomes increasingly valuable to those who actually want your product or service. The more content you create, the stronger your overall message. The stronger your overall message, the quicker intended buyers are to choose you.
In a nutshell, content is queen because:
1. It convincingly expresses your brand’s story.
- Every piece of content you release reinforces your brand presence and has the opportunity to convince onlookers that you’re the product or service they need.
2. It’s malleable.
- You can easily adjust for several audiences and different platforms. This is also useful if you’re a new business still working out your target audience!
3. Content’s success is easily trackable.
- Whether it’s email campaigns, blogs, or social posts, you can easily track a piece of content’s success and make any necessary adjustments to future work.
4. Mastering outbound content marketing helps you gain the skills to master inbound content marketing.
- You can use inbound content marketing to ensure your team enjoys working for a company with admirable values and an awesome company culture. As recruitment becomes increasingly difficult, this benefit is priceless!
5. Content marketing generates more inbound leads than alternative methods.
- Often, purchased leads and empty advertising just lead to ghosted consult calls and clients that don’t stick around. When your content projects who you are and what you can do for your target audience, the clients that come calling know what they’re in for and can’t wait to start working with you.
So, while initiating a content marketing strategy can feel overwhelming at times, the effort and forethought are worth it.
How to Implement a Successful Content Marketing Campaign
The next step is to implement a content marketing campaign – and because content creation can take a lot of time and resources, it’s best to start on the right foot. Here are the steps we recommend taking to implement a successful content marketing campaign:
1. Get close and comfortable with yourselves and your brand.
- Gather up the team and start asking the hard questions. What are your core values? Who is your ideal client? What is your business’s mission statement? You must understand your brand inside and out before allowing your content to reflect this accurately and convincingly.
- Consistency is key, so ensure you have an outlined style guide that is referenced for every single piece of content. This should include broad guidelines such as your overall tone of voice as well as fine details like how you like to use the m-dash.
2. Work with a marketing strategist to build a long-term content strategy.
- If you don’t have a marketing strategist on board, consider outsourcing this work to an agency. While you don’t have to work with an agency for all content creation if you have capable team members on board, it’s crucial to work with a strategist who will account for your organization’s history, expected trajectory, and outlined target audiences.
- Remember – you’re playing the long game here. Make sure you understand your company’s short, mid, and long-term growth goals so that your strategy can be adjusted to ensure you meet them.
3. Start with a bang, and anticipate mistakes!
- After ensuring your copywriter(s) have a thorough understanding of your brand’s story, voice, and intended audience, hit the ground running by expressing yourself across all platforms. The sooner you can get your message out there, the better!
- Like all long-term goals, be prepared to make adjustments. Make sure you’re tracking your efforts and set a time each month to evaluate the metrics and adjust the next month’s strategy. Document all analytics and changes to ensure you always have a good idea of where you’ve been to better understand where you need to go.
As the Greeks professed, know thyself. A successful content marketing strategy effectively expresses who you are, what you offer, and why your ideal client should choose you. This content will be more effective because it lacks the sales-y tone we’ve all learned to shut out.
If you have any questions about content marketing strategies or want some help getting started, please reach out! We can have a no-pressure chat to ensure you feel ready to get started.
Clare Tries is the Founder and CEO of Clash Creative. She is a creative copywriter and passionate marketing professional with over a decade of experience in the IT industry. Her company provides collaborative and rewarding marketing solutions for IT industry and small business professionals.