It isn’t easy to build trust in people these days. It is important to build trust if you want people to spend their hard earned money on your product or service. One way to earn trust is by using strong content marketing strategies that helps in engaging them and turning them into loyal customers for the rest of the life. Don’t take our word for it! Check out what Google trend graphs shows.
Content marketing has become increasingly popular to take elements of your brand and showcase it to the world in a way that’s even more awesome. But just creating content and sharing it on social media is not enough. You need to adopt innovative content marketing strategies and keep updating them in order to grow your business. With more and more businesses across verticals and industries creating content, people have become desensitized towards brand content. People now look for and essentially demand content that gets them involved, creating a more personalized and memorable experience. You need to create content that interacts with them and compel them to buy your products.
Such personalized content lets customers know about your business, without feeling targeted. As we see the importance of content growing day by day, you need to focus on strategies to market it effectively to boost your brand in ever-so-competitive market.
The following pointers will guide you on how to optimize your content marketing strategies and achieve new heights in business.
1. Content Distribution Will Take Centre Stage– Remember, content marketing plans that include efficient distribution of content is perhaps the only way to get visibility for your brand in today’s ever-so-competitive market. But everyone today is in a maddening frenzy of creating content to win the rat race of ranking on the SERPs. In fact, 42% of B2B marketers publish new content daily or multiple times per week.
Today, just about everyone creates and pushes content, even if they don’t how to do it right. So when everyone is doing it, how will you give that extra push to your content? You’ll need to promote and distribute your content through content through owned, earned & paid media. According to marketingtechblog.com, proper use of native advertising, syndication and influencer outreach can take any size client to the next level of engagement and reach. Leverage these channels to promote and push content in the ever-so-competitive market.
2. Interactive Content Will Continue to Rule – In order to break through the noise on the web that is already filled with static content, a fair share of marketers now produce and distribute interactive content. Interactive content could be anything that create opportunities for engagement and entertainment. Some of the most used interactive content types are polls, opinions, quizzes, infographics, etc.
Engaging and interactive digital imagery increases the chances of click-throughs and actual product purchase. Kapost reveals that interactive content, such as apps, assessments, calculators, configurators and quizzes, generate conversions moderately or very well 70% of the time, compared to just 36% for passive content. Online quizzes have helped Buzzfeed reach 169 million people, according to Quantcast. You can also convert your content into an interactive infographic. Check out this amazing example from Designhill. Titled as Factors that Influence Startup success, this infographic became popular as soon as it was published and was featured on several sites including Forbes and Business.com.
3. Episodic Content Is Getting Hotter – This is a must have in 2016. Present your content in episodes and see what magic it spells on people. When people watch or read your content in parts, as suspense grows so do their emotions for a particular character. They get involved in the story to the extent that they start empathizing with the characters.
Yet another benefit of presenting your content in sections is that it is memorable. Just keep in mind the time-frame and where you need to end a episode for the creating the right anticipation. For instance, the “Crossroads” series of Coca Cola is a brilliant example of episodic content. The brand tells their story in stages so that it builds suspense, develop characters for audiences and increase their traffic. Check it out!
4. Video Content Is the Hot Ticket – Marketers had used this content tactic in 2015 and will continue to do so in years to come. Video marketing is the future of content marketing. As they say that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, the value of a one minute video is 1.8 million words.
People too prefer watching videos than reading content. It has become all the more important for marketers to chalk out their video strategy In order to grab the attention of their audience. According to a research online video will make up nearly 70% of internet traffic, by 2017. Here’s an example of Caterpillar Jenga. The company brilliantly uses videos to promote its products in action.
5. Personalization In Email Marketing – In this, we are simply talking of greeting your customers in the mails by their first names or modifying the content according to the needs of the customers. By personalization, you tend to create a bond with the recipient of the mail. It gives a positive impact of your company. Your email should not irritate the reader who does not even open it. In fact, a report reveals that email conversion rates are three times higher than social media, with a 17% higher value in the conversion.
An article in Hubspot.com reveals that only 21% of consumers reported that they’ve received a memorable promotional email in the past two months. That’s why if you personalize emails, there are chances that you are able to engage more people. Personalized emails generate six times higher transaction rates and revenue per email compared to emails that were not personalized. Here’s an example of JetBlue. The company personalizes its email by using their anniversary date to provide a standout experience.
But be advised that organization is the key to successful personalization in emails! You’ll need to ensure that your content is laid out in a way that it stand out from the crowd. Vital elements of your brand should pop-up. For instance, your contact details and logo design should be clearly visible. For another, important information must not be buried under the fold.
6. Shoppable Content on the Rise – Imagine you are reading something and are able to buy it there and then. Don’t believe us? This kind of content is on the rise in the online world. This is the era of shoppable content. An article published in LinkedIn states that according to a report, 77% of those who viewed the shoppable site found it easier to navigate and 66% of them got enough information to make a purchase decision.
Now, buyers don’t need to go through several steps to buy something of their choice. All they need to do is click on the button along with the content. For instance, look at the webpage of Grazia shop with a shop now button (in yellow) in the end.
7. Realize The Value of Contextual Ads – In simple terms, contextual advertising means placing the banners or links of your product or services on web pages that are related (in terms of context) to the service being offered by you. For example, if you want to place an ad for a baking pan, it can be placed on a web page that has cake recipes.
According to Business Insider, 69% respondents viewed advertising as valuable when the ads were relevant to the page content. A great example in this regard is the article about actress Mila Kunis that had a Bing search ad in which a search field had keywords as “Mila Kunis.”
We hope that by using these tips, you are able to turn your content marketing strategies from hero to zero in 2016. We predict that these strategies will surely impact your business in a big way. While you must be knowing some of them already, some are new to the content marketing industry and will be visible across all channels in the times to come. Be confident and don’t be scared to try something new as they say, change is the only thing constant!
[About the author: Damanbir Singh is a Blogger and Marketing Consultant at a crowdsourcing company Designhill. 
