How to curate the most effective content
Sharing a compelling and resonating story to your audience is a goal for any brand. Andrew Davis, a keynote speaker states, “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” From a business perspective, content creation is an integral part of presenting a brand.
Nowadays, content creation is a must-have thing to effectively communicate important information. This can be through various social media channels, blogs, digital presentations, and websites, etc.
What makes the content effective?
Content strategy should be a foundation in curating effective content. Content strategy helps in documenting your marketing plan as it gives you a structure and keeps things organized. There are different ways of how we can develop a content strategy.
Firstly, understanding the ‘why’ or the purpose behind your venture. Simon Sinek, an unshakable optimist describes a golden circle as Why, How, and What? He states, “Very few people or companies can verify why they do what they do.”
Now you’d be wondering how does this relates to creating effective content?
Imagine if you don’t clearly understand your business and the value proposition, you can’t expect your customers to understand your product/services. Delivering content is about clearly understanding the value it brings to the user. If you clearly articulate why it’s worth their time then it’s like hitting a jackpot.
Secondly, customers are enticed by the art of storytelling. If you’re able to sell a story to your customer, you build brand loyalty. Let’s take the example of Apple, Steve Jobs was the one who told those stories. We’re all emotional people and Apple has always targeted emotional intelligence to sell their story. How do they do it?
- Entice the audience first and then introduce the product
- Build suspense
- Resonate or focus your story on customers successfully using your product
We understood the why behind the content but what’s the guide behind curating effective content?
How many times have you read a blog halfway and realized that it doesn’t answer your questions? Often, right? This is how you can solve this issue:
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What problem are you solving for your customer and how you’re unique
The product or the service you’re trying sell solves the customer’s problem. Your content acts as an educator for the customer. This can be for the new customers who are trying to understand your product/services or the existing user who is looking for solutions to the existing challenges.
Your content is a reinforcement of your solution and this is where is you can showcase your uniqueness as a brand. Competition is always a potential threat to the business so your customers need to know how you’re different or what makes your product/services better than others. This is where content can change the decision-making process. Your content needs to sell a story and prove why you’re worth their money and why you’re worth their time.
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Find your target market and brainstorm their journey
Content is about understanding who your customers are and how they interact with your brand. Who will be reading your content and how many people would be reading it?
Your content should be more than one type of customer. In terms of selling sneakers, try to publish content that is relevant to different stages of the buyer’s journey. Effective content allows the customers in decision making and move ahead with the sales process. Make sure to use different calls to action as this engages the customer.
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Provide your opinions on different things
As humans, we seek validation and encouragement every day. Try to provide your opinions, quotes, or attribute other sources so that the user can relate their problems with your solutions.
Try to curate content that is customized and humanizes their problems. Link your content with third parties which align with your core values, opinions, and create that sense of community.
Make sure it’s not self-centered content because the user would be more interested in validating their problems with your brand. Further answering users’ common questions in your content allows them to connect with your brand. These can be FAQs or blogs with your current existing challenges that users may face. While curating your content, be very selective as you’re trying to sell your unique value to them. Anything which is off-track will misguide the user.
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Being elegant in the way you present
The interactivity of your blog, EDMs, social media channels depends on the style of typography.
Texts are a major source of information. Your text is the medium of communication and the fonts attract the readers. Interactivity through your text is an influential intellectual as it showcases the mood or feeling.
If we take the example of storytelling again, it carries a rhythm that creates value for the readers. On average, a person goes through 5000 ads each day so how can you make that one interaction count? Users remember the fonts that you present in your visuals. It specializes and acts as an identification for the brand. Once you have a good visual, selecting a good title will attract the readers.
Outsourcing has been the optimum solution for curating effective content.
The data from B2B and B2C Content Marketing 2020 suggests that 84% of companies outsource their content creation. Why?
There are several benefits of outsourcing your content creation:
- Businesses will have more time to work on other activities like sales and operations. Many SMEs don’t have the time and expertise to create content. Trying to save money they don’t realize that content creation takes a lot of research, analyzing, and writing which can be a full-time job.
- Outsourcing allows you to publish more content and create high-quality engagement. It’s important to utilize the time efficiently so that the content writer can provide the best content and businesses can work on creating an experience.
- Outsourcing will allow you to have a different point of view. Content experts work with different industries and are experienced with what works in the market.
- Outsourcing allows you to reach a wider audience and have customized content. One of the key benefits of reaching a wider audience is being able to experiment with your content with different users.
If you’re unsure how your company can benefit from content strategy. Get in touch with us! At Robotic Marketer, it is our mission is to be the best; empowering talented marketers to produce outstanding results for small and medium-sized businesses. By constantly improving how we work, our technology, systems, and processes, we deliver the best possible marketing solutions to our clients.
Developing a smart marketing strategy
As 2020 draws to a close, many entrepreneurs and business leaders are coming to terms with the underperformance of marketing tactics for the year, most notably as a result of COVID-19. This has prompted many to rethink their marketing strategy and readjust their outcome expectations to increase revenue and performance. In alignment with the cardinal evolutionary practice of adapting in order to survive, companies must now make a choice: to continue as though it’s ‘business as usual,’ or to build a smart, reactive and realistic marketing strategy which responds to the current economic situation and corresponding buyer behavior.
Naturally, the only real solution for businesses who wish to stay afloat is the latter choice, which commands smart marketing strategies as a means of generating leads, increasing brand awareness and fast-tracking business growth.
First things first.
Steps required for a business to build a suitable marketing strategy
A good place to start is by readjusting expectations for performance in 2021 to increase revenue. The marketing strategy should necessarily keep pace with the times, and that means rethinking realistic business goals for the coming year.
Furthermore, maintaining discipline when it comes to the execution of your readjusted business plan and marketing strategy is key. As the holy grail of entrepreneurship has articulated, “Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless”.
Based upon the testimonials of over 70,000 companies which successfully scaled up whilst reducing entrepreneurial contact hours, The Rockefeller Habits outline a clear path to success:
- Ensure that your management team is healthy and aligned.
- Set goals that are specific, measurable and attainable on what needs to be accomplished each quarter to achieve the year-end goal.
- Align management discussions and communication with the need to ensure that not only management is clear on the vision, but the people that make it happen are clear too.
- Use project management tools like ASANA to ensure that every facet of the organization has a person assigned with accountability for ensuring that goals are met.
- Collaborate with your marketing team and ensure that employee input is welcome and considered to identify obstacles and any opportunities as they arise.
- Collate customer feedback and analyze across data points, financial data and surveys.
- Bring your core values alive and ensure that everyone on the marketing team understands the purpose of your company.
- Continually provide platforms for employees to articulate the key components of the company’s strategy, to ensure that the message has not become diluted and off-track.
- Bring company culture to the forefront and ensure that employees are ‘heard and seen’ and that you know whether someone has had a good day or not.
1) Set short term and long term marketing goals as part of your marketing strategy.
Setting a specific goal within your marketing strategy clarifies what tactics are being implemented such as blog posts and what purpose they serve. To execute this, ensure that your marketing goals are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. If your business sets a SMART measurable goal, it helps to determine if it is successful.
According to CoSchedule research, setting many measurable goals can improve the likelihood of success by almost four times as much as those who do not.
2) Market research
While market research can be conducted in any number of ways, platforms like Robotic Marketer are a sure-fire way to efficiently produce comprehensive marketing strategies based upon in-depth collated data.
What can market research tell us about?
- The relationship between the economy and buyer behavior
- Competitor profiles
- The specifics of what consumers want
- Popular content marketing to share in social media and blog posts
- What factors increase the likelihood of purchases
- What trends and challenges are most pertinent in the industry
- Who industry stakeholders are
3) Conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis
A S.W.O.T. analysis helps businesses identify their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Articulating a S.W.O.T. analysis is vital to ensuring that your company stays on track and seamlessly executives their marketing plans and marketing objectives.
While it is easy to think of, it is equally as important to write down and refer back to frequently as a means of tracking your progress and marketing plans. Constant reminders of the opportunities that lie ahead will keep you invested and inspired.
4) Identify customer profiles
It is the perfect time to hone in on customer profiles, investigating who customers are in order to best market to them. When building a customer profile, it is important to consider the following:
- The name of the profile
- What would incentivize this profile to buy from your business
- Profile demographics
- Buyer patterns
- Purchasing references
5) Do a competitor analysis
If you are serious about growing your business, achieving your goals, and taking market share from competitors, you will dedicate time to learning about your competition in order to ‘beat’ them and effectively achieve your marketing objectives. Below is a list of useful comparative platforms:
- Alexa
- SEM Rush
- Mozo
- Sprout Social
- Phlanx
- Social Blade
- Buzzsumo
- Similarweb
6) Develop strategies that support business and marketing goals
This is the fun part. Using your analysis of the market, customers and competitors, implementing the 7P’s of marketing is the key to achieving your goals:
- Products/services: Use tactics for SEO, blog posts, social media, website, email lists, EDMs and lead generation.
- Price: Ascertain the price point of your products and/or services, how big your database needs to be to achieve the sales and specific goals that you have set out for your business.
- Place: Where you are marketing.
- Promotion: How are you promoting your product or service? Through events, webinars, SEO, PPC?
- Physical Evidence: How is your branding is working across all communications touchpoints. Is it consistent?
- Processes: What does your sales model look like? How does your marketing structure work? What processes do you have in place to make sure that your marketing department works like a well-oiled machine? What technologies do you use for project management?
- People: What people and marketing team do you need to accelerate your marketing programs?
Having a powerful marketing strategy is one thing, but executing it is another. The discipline you and your marketing team and setting smart marketing goals will determine whether or not your marketing strategy is successful in content marketing and all activities.
Testing ideas and campaigns are imperative to finding campaigns that have a higher chance of success and to help you increase revenue. Robotic Marketer to develop marketing strategies not only for our company but for our clients. It is an easy to use tool, or if you prefer, you can have a marketing manager from Robotic Marketer facilitate your marketing workshop with your team.
Now more than ever, it is important to ensure that you are setting smart marketing goals, allocating budget and resources to marketing, and optimising your content writing with SEO key words, especially with the way in which business has changed in the past 12 months and how economies recover.
If you need any help in achieving your goals, don’t be afraid to contact us.
Components of a Good Marketing Strategy
A good marketing strategy consists of a comprehensive collection of marketing techniques that enables a business to direct its resources towards the best opportunities in terms of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable advantage over the competition.
A marketing strategy consists of short term and long term activities that contribute towards achieving business objectives.
Remember developing a marketing plan for your business shouldn’t be complicated.
To help you generate an effective marketing strategy, here are eight basic components of any marketing strategy.
1. Market Research
An integral component of any good market strategy is market research. To lay the foundation for your strategy you must collect, organize and write down data about the market that is currently buying the products or services you intend to sell.
You should consider looking at marketing dynamics, customer demographics, market segments, target markets, needs and buying decisions.
In terms of products and services, you need to analyze the market to gauge what’s out there now and what the competition is currently offering. Identifying current sales and benchmarks in the industry in addition to suppliers that you will need to rely on will help you build a more substantial base in which you can effectively build a good marketing strategy.
2. Target and Positioning
Any good marketing strategy begins with the identification of a target audience. This is the most important component. There is no point in wasting your time and resources trying to market your products and services to an audience that isn’t interested in what you’re selling.
You should aim to sell to the market segments that will be most profitable for your business. Direct your marketing efforts towards people that are genuinely interested in your products or services. By narrowing your marketing efforts towards your ideal target audience you will greater optimize your time and resources.
Furthermore, defining your ideal target customer will allow you to adjust the overall style of your marketing strategy in a way that suits your target audience. Your content will be more targeted, using language that connects with your customers on a more personal level.
3. Awareness
The ultimate business goal should be to gain the trust of your clients and create brand awareness among your target audience. A combination of traditional techniques like magazines, TV and word of mouth should be paired with online techniques to boost the awareness of your brand.
In today’s digital environment it’s imperative strategies prioritize online marketing. A business must have a website and a blog where you post high-quality content that connects with your audience and generates traffic. Additional visual and audio content like videos, podcasts, and infographics work to further generate brand awareness and leave a lasting impression in your target audience’s mind.
4. Unique Advantages
To win over your competitors you need to offer your target audience a set of unique advantages that your competitors aren’t offering. You need to distinguish your brand by offering your target audience valuable content that they can’t find elsewhere. Creating unique brand offerings will help distinguish your business from your competition.
Aim to identify one or two things that make your product or service different and promote them as much as possible. In doing so you can create more effective marketing strategies that greater reach your target audience.
5. Communicate With Your Clients
It’s imperative to know how and when to communicate with your target audience. You need to strategize the types of content you are making and how you are sharing them. Think about where your target audience hangs out most and utilize the platforms that will best reach them.
The connection you develop with your customers is a key aspect for the success of your marketing strategy. It’s important to promote your products and services as the best choice on the market, but it’s even more important to focus your attention on the needs and wants of your followers. Identify the problems they have and show them how your business offers the best solution to satisfy their needs.
6. Promotional Tactics
Once you have created your marketing strategy, you must decide which marketing activities will ensure your target audience knows about the products or services you offer, and why they meet their needs.
Aim to execute a combination of tactics such as various forms of advertising, public relations, maintaining an online presence, promotions and an effective point of sale strategy. Remember every action you take must align with your marketing strategy in order to be effective and convert customers. Aim to limit your activities to those methods you think will work best with your target market.
7. Monitoring and Evaluation
This is a key component of any type of strategy and something a lot of businesses overlook. Take the time to analyze how your strategy is performing in practice. Surveying customers, tracking sales, leads, visitors to your website and percentage of sale to impressions are all worthwhile tactics to consider.
Any successful marketer will continually review the status of their marketing strategies against their set objectives. Doing so will ensure ongoing improvements to marketing initiatives and benefit future market planning.
8. Marketing Plan
Once you have finalized your marketing strategy, draw up a marketing plan that outlines how you intend to execute the strategy and evaluate its success. Your marketing plan should be excessively reviewed and if necessary updated to respond to changes in customers’ attitudes and broader economic forces.
Fundamentally, all good things take time and a successful marketing strategy takes not only time but commitment as well. When developing your marketing strategy you must be ready to invest in order to reach your business goals. Focusing on the finer details of a good marketing strategy will allow you to develop a logical, effective plan that will lead your business to success.
10 Ways to Improve SEO
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
Remember Search Engine Optimising (SEO) is a long-term game. To improve your site’s ranking (SEO) we’ve made a list ‘10 Ways to Improve SEO’.
Follow these suggestions and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results.
- Publish relevant content
Quality content is the number one driver for your search engine rankings, and simply put there is no greater substitute for great content. When you create quality content specifically for your intended users, site traffic increases, which leads to an improvement in your site’s authority and relevance. For each page identify and target a specific keyword phrase and repeat this keyword phrase several times throughout the page.
- Update your content regularly
In addition to publishing relevant content, aim to update your content regularly. Remember search engines feel strongly about content. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. Review your content on a regular basis and make any necessary updates as needed.
- Boost pages with internal links
Internal links are links from one page on the same domain to another. When internal links are used strategically, they can significantly boost the performance of pages in search engines because internal links support the flow of PageRank around your site. In simple terms, the more internal links your page has the higher its PageRank, which is important considering PageRank is a confirmed Google ranking factor.
- Refresh content with diminishing traffic
Aim to complete regular content audits of your page. If you notice that organic traffic to one of your pages is decreasing, consider updating the content. Remember updating content doesn’t always mean rewriting the entire page. It comes down to your target keywords and their competition. Quite often all you need to do is refresh the outdated sections.
- Focus on metadata
When designing your website, each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata, or information about the contents of your page. The most important type of metadata is ‘title metadata’. This metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. In terms of a good meta description aim to include generally two full sentences.
- Use ALT tags
A key piece of information that will go a long way in increasing SEO is describing your visual and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. The use of Alt tags allows search engines to locate your page, which is crucial especially for those who may only use text-only browsers.
- Replicate backlinks from outdated, low-quality pages
When you perform a Google Search, often click on the first result only to find a substandard piece of content. It’s likely you started thinking how this page is ranked number one. Moments like this present opportunities in the sense that if poor pieces of content can get tons of high-quality links and rank in Google, so can you. To do this, find the substandard pieces of content that have lots of links and get the people linking to them to link to you instead.
- Have a link-worthy site
Aim to focus on creating relevant links within the text. Rather than having a link that says ‘click here’ try writing out the name of the destination. If you think about a ‘click here’ link has no real search engine value beyond the attached URL, however if you write the name of the destination for example ‘Marketing Eye Blog’ the description is rich with keywords and will more likely improve search engine rankings.
- Optimise the page speed of important pages
Everyone has clicked through to a page that takes ages to load. In most cases you either repeatedly clicked the refresh button or probably clicked the back button and tried another site. Ultimately slow pages are bad for business and SEO. To improve page speed and keep readers on your site consider reducing image sizes and enabling browser caching. This will allow your users to load your page without having to wait very long.
- Improve the click-through-rate of your top-ranking pages
The title tag of a page acts as the headline of an article. Ultimately it is your job to entice the searcher to click through to the page. If you can write a title tag that persuades people to choose your page over the others, you’ve won. Aim to add powerful words to your title that tap into people’s emotions. Keep your title tags short and sweet to capture the reader’s attention and improve readability.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia