Want to find new customers? Then you have to get in front of them where they are. Best content marketing strategy will help you do just that. Plus engage with your audience at every stage of the buying cycle. Follow this important guide to start the process.
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The marketplace we live and work in today is radically different from the one in which many of us started. Salespeople and store employees used to be the experts, and brands and businesses used to spend advertising dollars to find prospects who needed their services.
Today, the buyer is the expert and the one proactively reaching out to brands and businesses for help. For example:
- The average buyer guides themselves through 60% to 90% of the traditional sales funnel before ever contacting a brand or salesperson.
- 81% of shoppers research online before setting foot in a store.
- Consumers spend an average of 79 days conducting online research before buying.
There is an answer to this buyer-driven environment: information. information marketing is the process of creating high-quality, valuable information to attract, inform, and engage an audience, while also promoting the brand itself. Buyers and consumers are already searching the web for answers that your brand is uniquely positioned to offer. It’s benefits are three-fold:
- Increased brand awareness: As prospects and buyers search the web for answers to their questions and solutions for their problems, your brand continues to show up.
- Increased brand preference: information marketing helps to further establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry, which strengthens relationships with buyers.
- Greater reach at lower cost: It is not a short-term strategy, but over time, a library of great information will continue to reach more qualified leads and interested buyers.
information marketing is the savvy marketer’s response to the new, relationship-based, buyer-driven, digital marketplace.
Creating an Information Marketing Strategy
An effective information marketing strategy is built on two pillars that you (hopefully) have already:
- A set of robust, strategic personas, and
- An understanding of your typical buyer’s journey.
Each information asset should appeal to one (or two) personas at each stage of their buying journey, gently nudging them to the next stage.
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How to Design Engaging information
Design means much more than color schemes and stock photos. The process will look different for every marketing team, and even for every team’s various information pieces.
In general, design starts at the very beginning, as you map out an information marketing strategy. Understanding the brand’s personas and marketing goals will shape the basic style of each design—each should be useful to your personas, and true to your brand voice.
A strong information marketing strategy includes a variety of information types, so as individual pieces begin to take shape, there are some specific things to keep in mind:
Blog Posts
Distill your information marketing strategy into your blog schedule/strategy. The company blog can and should be used to cross-promote other information, which will help keep posts on a consistent schedule. If you don’t have a marketing team member who is familiar with SEO, this is one area where you might want to consult a professional.
Ebooks
Ebook information should follow some sort of narrative structure and include a lot of good, visual design. The goal of an ebook is to educate (rather than entertain), but make sure to keep the language conversational if that is consistent with your brand and personas.
Cheat Sheets
These are short (two or three pages at most). That means there won’t be a lot of room for big images, so you’ll want to use text formatting to make them easy for a reader to quickly scan through. Link or point to other resources for more in-depth learning.
Workbooks and Templates
A great way to keep your brand in front of buyers, while also being really helpful. These resources should be designed for print and made as interactive and practical as possible.
Whitepapers and Reports
These are similar to an ebook in that they are primarily educational materials, but whitepapers and reports are generally less graphically designed and use language that is a little more professional. They can also create opportunities to partner with other organizations.
Infographics
The name says it all: just give readers info and graphics. Use as little text as possible for the former, and let the latter tell the story. If you don’t have a killer graphics artist in-house, this is one for which you might want to work with a professional.
Slide Decks
Slide decks are a great format for breaking down complex ideas into simple steps or bite-sized pieces. Keep the slides simple: minimal text in one font throughout, and use big images & graphics.
Video
The trick to effectively using video as part of an information strategy is keeping it as timeless as possible. Otherwise, you risk wasting resources (time and money) updating videos every year. High-quality video information can also be used to expose your brand to YouTube’s large and active audience.
Case Studies
Build case studies with real numbers and complete stories. This will help keep the information focused on the value and results, not the brand.
information Marketing and Social Media
Social media is one of the primary vehicles for an information marketing campaign—especially the more entry-level, entertaining pieces. There are three tiers of social media promotion for your information:
- Owned: Sharing your information on the brand’s own social media channels is a quick, customizable, and free opportunity to connect with your target audience.
- Paid: Most social networks allow for some kind of paid advertising. Matching a network’s demographics with your brand’s personas will help you determine where to invest.
- Earned: The most valuable, but hardest to create, social media promotion happens when your audience shares your information with their networks.
Each social network tends to gather a different type of user. Match your personas to network demographics to find out where your target audience is social online, and start sharing your information. Let’s cover the differences between social networks:
Facebook is still the biggest social network, and while it is the fastest-growing, that growth is slowing and shifting. At the beginning of last year, Facebook usage was growing fastest among older adults. As of January 2015, Facebook users are most likely to be college-educated, lower-income women.
Emerging markets account for 78% of the traffic on Twitter, with India as one of the fastest-growing. Statistically speaking, Twitter users tend to be recent college graduates living in urban areas.
LinkedIn is commonly known as the professional social network, and it’s obvious that its users are serious. Sixty-four percent of social referrals to corporate websites come from LinkedIn, compared to 17% from Facebook and 14% from Twitter. A glance at the demographics demonstrates that LinkedIn has the greatest percentage of college-educated, higher-income users of all the major social channels.
Consumers love Pinterest. Forty-seven percent of online shoppers have made a purchase because of a Pinterest recommendation, and Pinterest generates 4x more revenue (per click) than Twitter. Pinterest users tend to be more affluent women living in rural areas.
Gated vs. Ungated information
As you build an information library for your brand, it’s important to structure your campaign to drive specific business objectives. information marketing is about giving away information to build relationships and earn trust, but gating some of your best information is an acceptable and valuable practice.
74% of buyers expect to access simple items—like infographics—for free, but 77% are willing to provide basic information for a white paper. Gating bigger resources is a great way to generate leads, learn which of your visitors is serious, and then nurture leads.
Information Marketing and SEO
In the same way that you take a couple of extra steps to help your information succeed on social, take a couple more to help your information succeed with search engines. Weaving some SEO best practices into your information will help make a good impression with Google and move your website up the rankings list.
- Use keywords (naturally): Identify your main keyword for the information, a few synonyms, and a few related keywords. Then make sure you’re actually using them in your information, headers, and page information. Don’t over-do it, though. Search engines have been cracking down on information that is “stuffed” with one or two keywords. Write for the reader, but do make sure those important words are present.
- Earn natural links: Links from spammy sources can actually hurt your site with search engines. Build relationships with industry professionals who will share your information, and link to their primary resources in return. Links from high-quality websites will give yours a boost.
- Media: Include images and video (with descriptive titles and alt text) on blog posts and landing pages. They improve the user experience, which decreases bounce rates and improves your standing with Google.
- The strength of a good information marketing strategy is in providing the information and answers that your target audience is looking for, but your hard work is all for naught if they can’t find it! Make sure you’re creating information for the user, but that search engines will also favor.
From Leads to Sales with information Marketing
Today’s buyers and consumers are empowered and independent, and savvy marketers meet them where they are. A robust information marketing strategy will help your brand connect and engage with your audience at every stage of the buying cycle.
Via https://www.marketo.com/information-marketing/
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