Why content is Key to your Digital Marketing Strategy ???

According to Hubspot, 47% of buyers engage with 3-5 pieces of content before directly engaging with a company. What does this mean? It means that content is key to any digital marketing strategy. By having a clear approach to all aspects of your content creation, your business will be in a much stronger position when it comes to engaging and converting leads to customers.

Content can be used to engage with your prospects at every step of the buying process, which can be categorised as the following:

1. The awareness stage: when a buyer identifies that they have a problem they need help solving
2. The consideration stage: when a buyer conducts research to solve the problem they are facing
3. The decision stage: when a buyer choosing the right solution for them

Here are different types of content you should be including in your digital marketing strategy in order to engage with buyers at every step of the buying process.

Keyword researched blogs

Blogs are an important tool when it comes to generating awareness-stage content. This audience may not be ready to buy from you yet, but when they are you will be front of mind.

Understand your audience’s pain points and then conduct some keyword research to identify what terms they are searching for online. The key is to create topics and generate content around searcher intent. For example, we recently produced a blog on the business benefits of PR because we identified that our target market (CEOs and c level execs of SMEs) were frequently searching for content helping them understand what the benefits of PR were. Think about the challenges facing your own target market and come up with blog topics based on what they are searching for online.

Yes the content then needs to include your target keywords, but don’t forget it also needs to be useful to the reader and better than anything else out there. Create a piece of engaging content that your audience will remember you for, not just Google.

Gated content

If you’re looking to drive leads, then gated content is something to consider. It can be useful when it comes to generating for top of funnel leads, those buyers at the awareness and consideration stage of the buyers’ journey.
Gated content can take any number of forms, including eBooks, whitepapers or explainer videos.

When it comes to good gated content, it needs to be:

• Persona driven – target your content to a specific audience you want to reach, and has need for your service
• Focused on one pain point – the more focused your content, the better-quality download you will get
• Beautifully designed – a piece of gated content needs to be user friendly and appealing

Whatever you choose, make sure it is helpful to your audience, answers the question and also highlights your area of expertise.

Engaging video

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a video speaks a thousand more. Video is by far the most engaging content a business or brand can take advantage of.

Video can be used at all stages of the buying process. At the awareness stage, videos on social media can be a great way of attracting attention. When it comes to consideration, explainer videos can offer potential customers further insight into what you do while answering a pain point for them. When a customer is ready to make a decision consider using case study videos as these will demonstrate exactly what you do and what your customers are saying about you.

Remember your video content should be one of 4 things (sometimes all of them!) – insightful, memorable, engaging or shareable. Think about who your audience is, how they are consuming their content and what you want them to take away.

Linkbuilding

Content doesn’t just extend to content that sits on your own website and social channels. Targeted digital PR activity can help raise awareness of your business among your target customers, give you more content to share on social, and crucially, generate backlinks that support your SEO.

This is where PR becomes a vital component of your digital marketing strategy. The ability to secure a link in online publications (that have a nice high domain authority) will help boost your search visibility.

By drafting an engaging piece of content, you can secure these all-important follow links while also building the profile of your business or brand online.

Good content should be at the heart of any digital marketing strategy. Consider all the elements carefully – including who your target audience is, what they care about, which channels they consume their information on and then make informed decision about which content to produce.