Because of social media, we are more connected than ever before.
Unfortunately, many marketers have fallen behind in helping companies form and keep customer relationships. In fact, according to LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, only 72 percent of marketers have a content strategy in place.
Likewise, many marketing companies only add to this disconnect. They forget that the experience and familiarity customers have with a company’s brand is more important than good content.
That’s not saying that content isn’t vital to a company’s growth. But the sheer volume of content produced to gain rank and boost SEO often results in more unneeded “stuff” and less quality content. Whether email campaigns, webinars, blogs, or a company’s’ landing page, the content must be consistent and compatible with your client’s voice, brand, and message, as well as resonate with their customers.
In her book, The Brand Mapping Strategy, Karen Tiber Leland highlights how successful companies develop long-term content strategies instead of short-term strategies to build buzz for their brand. “It’s all about the persistent, ongoing process of building a platform, creating credibility and increasing the number of people that you funnel into your potential client and network pipeline.”
Why content often fails to be seen
Assume for a moment that your content contains all the necessary bells and whistles, ensuring a good customer experience and building client relationships. Your client’s blog, website, or customer messaging may expertly explain a company’s brand, but what good is it if it’s not seen? Making sure Google’s bots can categorize your content, and earning links or shares can do wonders for establishing a far higher ROI.
Moreover, it will step up your client’s brand position and reputation. According to SEJ (Search Engine Journal) there are five reasons why marketing campaigns fail to earn shares and links:
- Ideas aren’t unique
- Content is overly self-promotional
- Content cannot be linked
- Promotional strategy fails
- Your marketing is reaching the wrong audience
It is important to find better ways to ensure that people see your content beyond the written word. Videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars and slideshares, among other tools, have become highly-regarded resources to use within your content marketing strategy.
As customers become more engaged, hopefully, they will share a piece of your content or sign-up for your client’s newsletter. Effective use of curation tools like Hubspot will help position your client as reputable and trustworthy in their industry. It will also make your content visible to more people.
Importance of content marketing strategy
Adopting a variety of content tools to reach your audience is just smart marketing. However, it’s not enough to create great content; marketers must also understand how their content is spread across the web. Companies that do their homework before sending out content will succeed. Developing a marketing strategy for content creation and distribution is imperative and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Fantastic content that targets your client’s audience, keeps them coming back, entices them to action, and persuades them to share with others is every company’s dream. So, is content enough? If done right, many marketers would say yes. But, marketers must get better at content marketing if they want to improve performance and drive revenue.
