But content marketing isn’t about creating and sharing as much content as possible. Determine how social media channels can be leveraged for sharing content and engaging your audience in conversation or boosting brand awareness. In addition, depending on where customers and prospects are in the funnel, some content tactics might be more effective than others. Check out our resource Content Marketing: Definitions & Tactics to discover the basics of 30 different content marketing tactics. #4 – Be relevant and timely. Personalizing your content to different buyers’ journeys will help you serve up that relevant and timely content, and stand out from your competition. You’ve done your audience research. You’ve created and executed an amazing, integrated content marketing strategy and content plan. Be the Best Answer Whether you’re brand is large or small, you can create the perfect tactical mix for creating and sharing content that resonates with your customers and prospects wherever they’re searching and they are in the funnel. What content marketing tactics have been the most effective for reaching your audience at the various stages of the customer journey?
Thanks to the rise of the internet, the explosion of social media and the development of mobile technologies to feed these two innovations, the customer buying journey has become much more self-directed. According to a Forrester, 74% of business buyers say they conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase.
As a result, content marketing has emerged as an incredibly effective way to arm consumers with the information they seek and need, increase brand awareness, enhance engagement, and ultimately inspire action and conversions.
But content marketing isn’t about creating and sharing as much content as possible. It’s about creating quality content that allows you to be the best answer, whenever and wherever your audience is searching. And understanding today’s customer journey will be paramount to your content marketing success. Below is a great illustration from Forrester on the many intricacies that journey can entail. As you can see, it’s not an easy, neat sales funnel these days.
The bottom line? Your content marketing efforts have to be optimized in a way that allows you to reach your customers and prospects at multiple touch points during their journey.
To do that, as TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden said, you have to: “Stop creating content. And start making answers that are relevant to your buyers at each stage of their journey.”
Below we offer you a few tips and considerations to help you do just that.
#1 – Know your audience inside and out.
In order to serve your customers and prospects with the best content at the right time, you need to understand their motivations and pain points, as well as the questions they’re asking and where they’re looking for answers.
Keyword research and your own site’s analytics are good places to start. When looking at your analytics, pay special attention to your top and worst performing pages, and which sources and devices are driving the most traffic. This will help you understand the kind of content that is or isn’t resonating with your audience, as well as how they like to find content. In addition, get in touch with your sales team. Sales reps are interfacing with prospects and customers on a daily basis, making them amazing resources for gathering insights.
The bottom line? You can’t provide answers if you don’t know the questions your audience is asking—and where they’re asking them. So, do your homework.
#2 – Take an integrated approach.
The customer journey is far from linear, so it’s important that your content marketing strategy integrates a variety of different tactics and channels into the mix for maximum impact.
How do you do this? Here are a few steps you should take:
- Based on the audience research you’ve done, determine which types of content will be the most effective and engaging at…
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