How To Get Your Content Heard: Beat your competition with effective marketing strategies. Updated
Actionable Content Tips That Work Like a Charm
Along the crowded highway of content marketing companies are clamoring to be center stage. There is an overflow of content amplifying across every channel available.
Are you losing leads? Are your sales funnels, landing pages and sales teams not closing enough sales to meet sales? Are you constantly searching for the right content to acquire new customers?
You are not alone. You experience all too often the decision maker that says we picked the other company or we're not buying right now.
Q: Why did the woman dump her marketer boyfriend?
Answer- Lack of engagement.
The Ability to Present a Solution at Specific Given Moment Brings Success.
There is an overflow of content amplifying across every channel available. Brands must focus on creating legendary content the audience needs at that given moment.
Timing is Everything
Why is Christmas rush time so successful for retailers.
Because it’s the season of giving and receiving within a specific period. Retailers plan holiday sales with email and social media content marketing. Proper inventory planning is crucial to their ads on mobile and online as consumers are show rooming, according to Google.
Consumers expect discounts at holiday time. Are you making your customers feel happy and thrilled like it's 1999 with your content marketing? Offering discounts on some or all of products or services is necessary. It's a fantastic way to get your products introduced and acquire new lifetime customers.
Even B2B companies can offer holiday specials at this time to close out the last quarter. Produce content that reflects the time of giving and receiving.
Storytelling Marketing
Customer-led marketing has proven to be successful because people trust their peers. They look for authenticity.
Whether your audience is in the introductory process or the final buying process, never lose sight of implementing awareness and enlightenment.
Creatively craft some storytelling with your content so the audience can’t wait to turn the page to see what's coming next.
No matter what stage of the sales funnel your audience is in, give them excitement like it’s a first date. This is fundamental to sustaining consistent relationships with clients.
Every company has a story and no two are usually alike. Produce a marketing plan around what makes you unique.
Don’t be reluctant to give the audience a sensory experience led with captivating visuals, videos, and graphics.
Should You Use AI to Create Content?
If you don't understand what quality content looks like, you can end up producing a lot of words that are more harmful than beneficial. If the material isn't unique or engaging, you'll be less likely to get the traffic you are looking for. Understanding the tone of your brand or your style is key, otherwise you can easily become extremely generic. You'll risk losing the emotion that has led people to follow and trust the company.
Google has acknowledged that it can spy on AI content and distinguish it from human writing. As a result, your efforts to generate visitors and increase revenue may be futile.
Don’t rely on AI data and personas alone.
Clever marketing doesn’t only come from the marketing department and the C- suite. It comes from your customers, customer service, sales teams, and even the accountant who looks at the numbers your organization is bringing in.
In fact, if you have a customer service team, you will learn valuable insights about your audience from praises and complaints. You learn more about what you are doing right and wrong from your customer service and sales teams. Study those chat bots and live help comments.
Emails from non-customers asking questions give clues and insights about their desires. Pay close attention to their questions as they give a wealth of information to problems they are looking to solve. Don't be afraid to ask customers about their previous experiences with other vendors in your industry. Ask them what that vendor did right, and where they failed.
Online reviews can help you create new topics for pain awareness. But beware; all reviews are not always trustworthy. And you don’t always get the clear picture. Remember, there are always two sides to every story.
The Pew Research Center reports, “Around two-thirds (65%) of U.S. adults who say they always or almost always read online ratings and reviews believe that they are generally accurate – although even among this group a substantial minority (35%) says it can be hard to determine their truthfulness.”
The Purchasing Manager- Timing is Everything
Many sales teams contact potential customers purchasing agents. They inquire about their calendars for procurement opportunities.
With this helpful information your company can them zone in on making a pitch at the right time.
Companies looking to sell to the government use websites such as the US Contract Registration. You can look up available contracts and view the companies that were awarded contracts or purchase orders.
Any business can use the “connect with the purchasing manager approach.” This is a great step if your marketing includes proposal requests.
It's a terrific way to view competitors in your sector and where they are in the buying process and what contracts are getting awarded. Many of the companies listed are selling commercially along with selling to the government sector.
Build rapport with purchasing managers positioning your organization to a key alliance resulting in a sale.
Prepare a content marketing project that pitches purchasing agents. You may be able to cut to the chase by sending out a well-planned proposal without having to create multiple sales funnels for inbound leads.
Are You Giving What Your Customers are Expecting?
Creating a content road map from internal research determining what needs to be implemented in the production cycle is a given.
When customers see you as an influencer, the generator, and the populist, they will follow your brand and expect consistency. Creating high-quality content consistently helps raise awareness for your brand.
Content must keep content flowing to be seen and heard.
Study the data you collect religiously. Use what you learn to help to time the buyer's decision-making time limits.
Surprise them with something new all the time. Don’t just rinse and repeat. People love habits, but if they know you consistently present something new, you can build brand loyalty and interest.
There are some great content calendars to take advantage of to help you organize and reach this goal.
Problem Identification in Marketing
Check out this study from the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering Medicine. “Diagnose problems: Productivity analysis, particularly the examination of trends, helps identify problems before they become crises and permits early adjustment and corrective action.
Like any other indicator, productivity measurements do not necessarily identify the source of the problem, only that one exists.”
Here is an excerpt from the book- https://www.nap.edu/catalog/2135/organizational-linkages-understanding-the-productivity-paradox from the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering Medicine. Consider measuring actionable intelligence in real time using a service such as KNOTCH before your content starts failing. You can catch any falls and be able to correct them quickly before your content spins down into an abyss.
How You Lose Email Subscribers
You must know what is wrong before you proceed to do what is right. The audience is not going to find you unless you find them first. Know where they are and where they want to be.
If you have not studied this as part of your strategy, you will not be able to engage your potential customer with the right content at the perfect time. Yes, this includes email campaigns.
Stop always asking for money. Create value with a brand story or educate the audience with interesting facts about your product or service.
Know when to back off if a customer is not ordering or engaging. Give them a time-out and resume a new strategy going forward.
You will lose subscribers if you fail to stop producing unrelated information for what was signed up for.
Are your web forms correctly pre-qualifying potential subscribers? Make sure they know what they are getting in your pitches.
Ask yes or no questions within the permission form to personalize what you will be sending, and the person is more likely to stick around.
Don't send too many emails. Emails that don't have an option to request daily, weekly, or monthly frequency options are a failure. If the only way to change emails frequency is to "unsubscribe from all" and not manage preferences, the person will just opt out completely and you will lose them entirely.
How do we know when someone’s attention span is at its peak?
Nielsen pinpoints when and how consumers are most engaged in a study with Taboola. The study quotes-,"In our study, participants were 20% more attentive when presented with a continuous scroll feed compared to articles without content recommendations at the bottom.”
The study also points out – “The highest potential for emotional engagement with your brand message is in the bottom of the article, after the moment of next.”
What Next Means in The Study
First, we must understand what cognitive load is. It refers to the used amount of working memory resources we have in our brain. A heavy cognitive load can have negative effects on competing certain tasks for some, but not all people.
An example would be if a young person is using a smart phone. Smart phones have many distracting features. You can be texting, listening to a podcast at the same time. This type of distraction can interfere with a student’s ability to maintain a high grade level.
Those that experience heavy cognitive load are children, students, and seniors. When the cognitive load in the brain is high, information is not absorbed optimally as when the cognitive load is low.
When the cognitive load is low it is easier to absorb information, and they are more open and receptive to the next step.
Advertisers and publishers have a massive opportunity to reach people right when they’re done reading an article. Marketers and advertisers have a better chance of reaching the audience right at this stage.
Scrolling feeds on social media are downright addicting.
Why? It’s the thrill of now knowing what is coming next. The Neilson study states that “People aren’t just more attentive with feeds; they’re also more emotionally invested in them.” Think about using feeds on your website for more engagement.
There’s so much more to this study. A link at the end of the article will be provided to download it.
To obtain visibility, social platforms are evolving into a pay to play structure. Resonating personally with your audience is a craft on its own to gain traffic organically.
Video marketing is an easy step to compliment other content that has been produced.
It’s easy on the audience.
Video is more visually engaging. It allows your audience to become closer to your message.
The audience can experience emotions. They can cry, laugh, or become sad.
Don’t just plan on marketing the product but market a vision of purpose behind the message of what the customer would want to achieve in becoming a customer.
Subaru does an excellent job of storytelling with its commercials. See how the price is never mentioned.
Secret Video Tips
Facebook, You Tube, LinkedIn, and Instagram what audiences to stay engaged on their platforms as long as possible.
If you are producing content such as video that is too short and leads off their sites too quickly, you will rank lower.
The longer a prospect engages, the more ads they see.
How Long Should Videos Be on Social Platforms?
Instagram- 30 seconds to engage.
Twitter 30 seconds is their limit.
Facebook- 3+ minutes is best for episodic web series, developing stories and live streaming.
You Tube- has no limit. Look at top influencers videos in your niche and get an idea of what works for them. Certain subjects will grab different attention spans.
TikTok- Noticeably short seems to be the trend and lots of content.
You can consider that the length of an effective video can be related to the point in the sales funnel to which it relates.
But this is not always the case. Understand what the audience wants. What do they crave and what do they want to learn more about? What do they want to know about your brand they can believe in?
Facebook Video Advertising
Facebook lets you uplevel your brand’s storytelling. Advertisers can insert ads that are 5 seconds to 10 minutes long, but Facebook recommends a fifteen second maximum, with both non-skippable and skippable options.
In-stream advertisements can offer targeted brand messaging within Facebook's publisher and creator content, assisting in the promotion of ad recall, brand recognition, and intent lift.
They appear everywhere that material is viewed, such as Facebook News Feed and Facebook Watch, and are typically delivered as mid-roll advertisements within video content.
Use specific audiences through Facebook’s built-in targeting features. Conducting a customer survey can help you narrow down your audience and see who your buyers are before you begin spending.
Running conversion only ads where people run off the site – base cost of the ad is higher. Use cheaper ads building storytelling sequences. Average watch for video on Facebook in six seconds. Get to your point right away.
If you don't have a budget for superior quality video, create animated photos as a slide show.
TikTok
Increasingly big brands and marketers are heading over to TikTok, Is TikTok a platform even a business marketer can use? Yes, of course. Decision makers are getting younger, and employees of the younger generation can have significant input into companies' buying processes. TikTok says, 1 in 2 Gen Z TikTok users are likely to buy something while using TikTok. 81% of users use TikTok to discover new products and brands. Big retail brands are using influencers to sell products.
Content Distribution Ideas
Distributing content where others can share is crucial to amplifying your brand's presence.
Your role with content distribution for digital marketing is just as important as preparing the content, if not more.
Here’s a list of places to share your message. You can add just a snippet with a CTA or post a full article. Guest posts require a full article and a bio.
Look up other industry pros in your niche to get ideas where they are sharing. You want to be alongside your competitors as much as possible.
Reddit.com- Message Boards and Forums
Quora.com
Twitter.com
Instagram.com
Facebook.com (Facebook Groups)
LinkedIn.com (Employee Sharing on LinkedIn)
Medium.com
Guest Posting on High Authority Sites such as Business Insider, INC.com
Slack communities Slack.com
SlideShare.com (Upload presentations)
Pinterest
ProductHunt.com
Vimeo.com
Snapchat
Tiktok
GrowthHacker https://growthhackers.com/posts
YouTube
Bloglovin.com
https://www.business2community.com/
EzineArticles.com
https://www.articlerich.com/
https://www.outbrain.com/
Facebook Advertising Video
In-stream advertisements can offer targeted brand messaging within Facebook's publisher and creator content, assisting in the promotion of ad recall, brand recognition, and intent lift. They appear everywhere that material is viewed, such as Facebook News Feed and Facebook Watch, and are typically delivered as mid-roll advertisements within video content.
Improve the storytelling of your brand. Advertisers can place commercials ranging in length from 5 seconds to 10 minutes, however Facebook says a limit of 15 seconds, with non-skippable and skippable alternatives is recommended.
Use specific audiences through Facebook’s built-in targeting features. Conducting a customer survey can help you narrow down your audience and see who your buyers are before you begin spending.
If you don't have a budget for superior quality video, create animated photos as a slide show.
Make sure to include an engaging introduction and a convincing call to action.
Paid SEO
If you have the budget “Using SEO and Google Ads together may give you the best chance of bringing traffic to your site in the short term and enhancing your business’s presence online for long-term success[i].”
Only 29% of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product, while 62% will consult a search engine, HubSpot reports.
Content should be laser focused and highly relevant for the audience on the given topic that addresses specific questions and needs. Your keywords need to optimized on Google based on the terms customers are searching for.
You need more than a writer, you need a content writer/strategist who can work with you on the SEO, keyword and data analyzing strategies to attract the audience.
Remember-Producing generic broad content is dead.
And remember this “The easiest way to make money is -create something of such value that everybody wants and go out and give and create value, the money comes automatically.” ― Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street
Let’s get marketing
Here's a great email marketing tool to try out.
Leslie Cohen: With over ten years of experience at consumer startups, media companies, and an agency, I bring new perspectives using my creativity along with being knowledgeable about data analytics SEO, sales copy. I produce copy that converts for clients. I am recognized for a full-hearted approach with colorful ideas that help you succeed with your marketing plans.
https://go.taboola.com/nielsen-whitepaper/
[i] https://ads.google.com/home/resources/seo-vs-ppc/?subid=us-en-adon-awa-sch-c-bk!o3~COiyuPrF-eUCFVMNgQodr-kDqA~p41804708542~dsm--ahpm-0000000021-0000000000
