Content marketing is more challenging for marketers that are not prepared to adapt. In an increasingly competitive business landscape, holding consumers’ interest for the long term is vital. These content marketing strategies will help you keep ahead of the competition:
Brand Storytelling
Gone are the days when all brands would do is invest massively on advertising and push-marketing. According to a poll commissioned by the software company, Marketo, up to 63% of consumers say there are highly annoyed with inauthentic, generic advertising messages.
Brand storytelling and authentic marketing continues to be important content marketing strategies. Consumers are paying less attention to push marketing tactics and more on stories that connect them to brands in a valuable, stress-free way. Consumers want to know who you are, what you do, why you do it and what this means to them. To tell a good brand story is to help your audience associate your company with certain values, goals and a specific mission.
Mobile Campaigns
Mobile continues to change how consumers browse, purchase, play and interact with others. ComScore reports that 65% of all digital media time originates from mobile and especially on apps. Only 35% of time spent online can be attributed to desktop usage.
Is your content optimised for mobile? Are you engaging your mobile users in a way that is seamless and convenient for them? Do you have an app? If you have not yet considered these things, you are probably leaving money on the table.
Greg Verdino of Verdino & Co consultancy says that even though smartphones have been around for a long time now, “for many brands, mobile remains an afterthought.”
Mobile bounce rates are highest because researching, reading or simply interacting on mobile is different from the desktop experience. Responsive design is essential, as is the need to create a consistent digital experience across all devices to improve user engagement.
Email Marketing Comeback
Brands are investing less in organic publishing and more on social media advertising. As such, brands now promote their organic content on their own platforms such as websites. They also invest in paid promotions to generate and grow an audience.
This means that brands will inevitably lose control over engaging their audience through publishing organic content on social platforms. This conundrum has left content marketers with email. It’s still the single best platform to build and grow an audience using organic content. In fact, a study by the Content Marketing Institute found that marketers rate email as the best metric for measuring content marketing success
More brands are using content marketing strategies that focus on creating engaging newsletters to grow their audience. It has become more of an opportunity to provide customers with a truly special experience when interacting with their favorite brand.
Visual Content Marketing Strategies
If you have been thinking about content marketing strategies in terms of blog posts, ebooks and white papers, you might want to add images into the mix. Social platforms from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others have catapulted the dominance of visual content. 4 times as many internet users report that they prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.
The demand for images, videos, GIFs and infographics comes down to users looking for precise and interesting information. In short, they want to save time. Brands that win provide users with bite size, high quality information they can consume on the go.
Of special importance is video. Not only does this impact on SEO but also delivers the highest ROI of all the content formats.
Less Focus on Acquisition, and More on Retention
For a long time, the main focus of content marketing strategies have been on acquiring and growing an audience. While this is a great goal, winning brands are those that can retain their existing audience.
The truth is, with so much virtual noise and shorter attention spans among consumers, retaining an audience is hard. The challenge for businesses is creating content that engages and retains their existing audience to the point of conversion and beyond.
Content Marketing Strategies
The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing but one thing remains constant: content is important. The content marketing strategies that win are those who understand consumers’ need for authenticity, real connection, time saving and instant gratification.
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