What Goals Should You Be Trying to Achieve with Content Marketing?
Everyone is recommending that Content Marketing is the thing to do this year. We tell you why in our last blog post here, Why Everyone is Talking About Content Marketing. But the most important aspect of content marketing should be to achieve your business’s real goals- increased leads, sales and customer satisfaction. So what’s the best way to do that? Here are our tips:
Set content marketing targets that match your company’s business goals.
Set your KPI targets before you actually write anything. Are you trying to generate new leads? Is your goal to answer a common customer question? Can your piece of content be a natural lead in to have readers (or watchers) find out about your products.
Specify these goals- how many leads would you like a piece of content to generate by when? Use the ‘SMART’ method for this: Specific goals, that are measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Know what your call to action will be that leads from the piece of content, and include it in two places-- with a button at the bottom of the page, and with a large text link from the middle of the article, like this:
4. Research the topics that your customers are searching about, and then match these up with your content pieces, so that over time, you are building a body of work that will completely answer all of their key questions in your given area of expertise. This will keep you from writing about just your product, instead focusing on what really matters to your target customer base- solving their problems and making their lives better.
5. Track which topics of your content are getting the best response, and consider posting more content on those topics in different channels- create a YouTube video, or a Slideshare about it. Different customers will be following different content types.
6. Re-invest your efforts and resources only in the type of content that is delivering results for you. Know what’s working best by monitoring your results.