There are hundreds of statistics on the benefits of content marketing.
But creating content without a strategy in place is like going down a blind alley.
To re-energize and grow your business through content marketing, you need to know who you’re speaking to, where they are, and how to speak to them.
Each piece of content you create and share must cater to your prospective and existing clients.
In turn, this will influence their buying decision and help drive conversions and sales for your business.
But many business owners struggle with content creation.
In this article, we asked a pool of content marketing professionals to share their best tips on how to create content that drives business growth.
Here’s what they had to say:
- Know Your Target Audience
- Create Content that Satisfies Your Audience’s Search Intent
- Create Content that Solves Your Buyer’s Painpoints
- Invest in an Effective Content Distribution Strategy
- Share Customer Stories
- Repurpose Your Content
1. Know Your Target Audience
“If you don’t know your target audience well, your content won’t connect with them, and they won’t engage with it,” says Heather Ritchie of Writer’s Life for You.
“Spend time getting to know them and answer these questions:
– What keeps them up at night?
– What are their fears, hopes, and dreams?
– What does their average day look like?
– What are they passionate about?
– Do they use social media, and if so, what channels?
– What makes them unique?
– What can you do to give them a quick win
When you understand your avatar well, you can create content that drives business growth and helps you sell your products, services, and courses.”
2. Create Content that Satisfies Your Audience’s Search Intent
“Conduct keyword research to see what they are looking for and what the intent behind those searches are before creating any piece of content,” says Abitha Digital’s Abbey Pallett.
“Conduct a survey via Google Forms or SurveyMonkey or a series of polls on social media. This will provide you with valuable insights into the kind of content that your audience wants to see or the products and services they are looking for.”
First Fig Marketing & Consulting’s Kathleen Marrero agrees: It is important to “Know what your content is fulfilling for your audience. Understanding your audience’s intention with ingesting any content you create will help you deliver valuable and complete information that will build trust and authority”.
“Search engines are focused on user intent, so creating content that delivers for someone on search engines will help with SEO and expedite your expertise because you are creating content that answers a need and provides a great user experience”.
3. Create Content that Solves Your Buyer’s Painpoints
Motif Brands’ Reilly Newman believes that “content should be derived from listening to the audience and created in a way that connects with them according to their aspirations, pains, and identity”.
For content to be impactful it must be relevant to your audience’s needs.
“It’s important to not make it about the business.
Many times content marketers can be so focused on the desire for the business impact they lose sight of creating content that truly resonates with their audience in a relevant and valuable way,” Newman says.
4. Invest in an Effective Content Distribution Strategy
“Irrespective of how valuable your content is, failure to get it to the right audience is a total waste of resources,” says BBSA’s Anna Stella.
“Numerous channels are available for content distribution, including ebooks, blogs, podcasts, social media graphics, webinars, and more”.
“The choice of your distribution channel is based on your goals and target audience. However, there are three main channels to consider; paid channels (e.g., Instagram ads), owned channels (e.g., email newsletter), and earned channels (e.g., social media shares). For successful content distribution, ensure to involve a combination of these channels”.
“Creating an optimal distribution strategy consists in defining your target audience and shaping your narrative accordingly. These steps help determine the types of content to focus on and identify the most effective channels for maximizing visibility and sharing. Ensure your owned channels are optimized because you have the most control over this avenue.”
Sera Chern of Virtudesk agrees: “Make your content shareable, enabling your audience to spread the word about your brand.”
“Consistency is key to maintaining an engaged audience and establishing your brand as a trusted source of information. Determine a publishing schedule that aligns with your resources and target audience, whether it be daily, weekly, or monthly, and consistently deliver fresh, valuable content to foster trust and encourage repeat visits.”
5. Share Customer Stories
According to a study by Nielsen, 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer. 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know.”
This tells us all we need to know about the importance of sharing your customer stories. Whether it’s a quote or video testimonial or case study, it is useful to create content that highlights what your business can do for your target audience.
This will help build your brand trust and credibility, reduce churn, and accelerate your sales cycle.
6. Repurpose Your Content
Want to scale the impact of your content? Repurpose it.
Whether it’s converting a podcast into a blog or an infographic, repurposing your content makes it easy to reach a wider audience, increase your brand awareness, and get more ROI for your content efforts.
Identify your best-performing content and recycle them. If they performed well before they’re likely to drive further growth for your company in other formats as well.
Wrap Up
The best thing about creating evergreen content is that its relevance never dies.
It stays “fresh” for readers over a long time.
While there is such a thing as growing too soon or too quickly, attaining business growth through content marketing is safe-proof and cost-effective.