The promotion of a brand is very different from the promotion of a product. Promoting a brand requires you to tell a story. You need to woo the audience in order to build a name for yourself in the market.
Brand marketing is more about connecting with the customers, letting them get to know you, rather than promoting merely for an increase in sales.
In order to raise awareness about your brand, having a strong content marketing strategy is extremely important. Yet, 63% of businesses do not have a documented content marketing strategy. No wonder why 64% of marketers want to learn how to build a better content strategy.
The reason why we are here today – to guide you through the steps of creating an effective content marketing strategy for your brand:
Keep your target audience in mind
Every brand has a specific group of people they target to maximize their popularity. The first step in creating a strong content marketing strategy is to identify your target audience. While creating content, you must keep the preferences of your target audience in mind. Try to create content that they will find relatable. This will attract people to your brand which will ultimately lead to increased brand’s popularity.
Make the headlines count
Writing precise headlines containing keywords will incite a greater audience. People will tend to go through your content more frequently if your headlines or titles are intriguing. Try to capture your audience’s imagination with the titles. The more views on your content, the more popularity you gain.
Add a personal touch
In the world of digitalization, everyone craves for some personal touch, and the statistics that personalized content behold will blow your mind. Here’s a trailer – lack of content relevancy generates 83% lower response rates in the average marketing campaigns!
Personalized content develops an affinity amongst the audience towards your brand. You can also create content relating to current issues that your audience might be interested in. Try to respond to all the comments on your content piece, acknowledge the appreciation, answer the queries and discuss the confusion. This will deliver a message that you care about your audience and your feedback
Share content on social media
Social media is one of the greatest tools you can use for marketing your brand and if your content is top-notch, there is nothing that can stop you from being the next Rolex of your Industry! Amidst almost 3.2 billion users on Social media, 54% of social browsers use social media to research products. Well, that makes it all the more important to create content that is social media-friendly.
Create shareable content
Develop content that is downloadable. Add social sharing buttons to all your content. This enables your viewers to share your content directly on their social media accounts. This will help you reach a wider customer base that you may have otherwise missed. According to Okdork’s data, blog posts are the most shared content online. So, if you are still thinking about where to begin, you have got your clue!
Make the content easy to digest
Add headings, subheadings, points, and bullets to your content. Simplify it as much as you can. Try to add a good amount of relevant graphic elements – graphs, pictures, infographics, etc. This will make eye-pleasing and reader-friendly, considering Forbes reveal that 84% of businesses using Infographics found them effective!
Focus on quality content
Uploading new content frequently is very important to keep people hooked to your brand’s sites or pages. However, if that’s your excuse to not create quality content, you are already looking at a dark future. To avoid it, always follow the golden rule of quality over quantity! Create content that is creative and original. More than 58% of marketers said that ‘original written content’ is their most important digital asset.
Well, there’s a reason why big giants like Coca Cola spends more money on content marketing than on Advertising! Here’s what they have in store for 2020 –
Back your content with relevant data
In today’s world, trust is rarely visible. If you want to get into the trust-books of your customers, you need to give them solid reasons. Make it a habit to put up relevant, and correct data from authoritative websites that support the matter in your content. This will increase people’s faith in your brand. Trust me, trust can help you win goals you never thought existed. An overwhelming majority of 95% of B2B buyers consider content as trustworthy when evaluating a company and its offerings.
Content should reflect your brand’s voice
It is very important to develop your brand’s ‘voice’ through the content you are creating. This means that the content you post should follow the same tone and aesthetic. Your brand’s ‘voice’ must be in tandem with your brand, the way it conducts business with other brands and your relationship with the customers. Branded content gauges 22x more engagement than display ads.
Apart from that, make sure your content reflects a consistent tone whether it is for social media, your own blog or a guest blog on other web platform. The varied tone of your content will confuse your customers and your brand will suffer from an identity crisis. Guest blogging is essential but you need to be very careful when creating a content for this since it is the content that is going to interact with a new audience who might have not heard about you.
Choose content distribution channels
Once you are done with the content, you need to choose a distribution channel that best suits your needs. The content distribution channels are divided into two categories:
- Own channels: These consist of channels that are directly under your control – like a website or a social media page or email marketing. This is comparatively cheaper than the other channels as you only have to bear the costs of creating and editing the content.
- Paid channels: There are many platforms where you can pay a certain amount of money for the promotion of your content. You can add links and short versions of your content on these platforms. Even on social media, you can pay some social media stars to promote your brand.
While deciding upon the channel to promote your brand, you must keep in mind the pros and cons of each. Make sure that your selected channels will promote your content with your targeted audience.
Signing off!
All these tips will generate unbelievable results if combined with your creativity, dedication and hard work!
Have you started yet?
Pankaj Singh
Pankaj Singh is a senior digital marketing executive having 2 years of experience in SEO, SMM, SMO, blogging, etc with a wide range of content marketing skills. He is well-qualified literate in this field.