The term “content marketing strategy” has evolved over the past few years. Now a full-on strategy involves totally customized communication efforts through channels like social media, email, press releases, and yes, your blog.
Why You Need a Content Marketing Strategy
If you’ve been subsisting on your blog content alone to get you in front of more potential customers, you’ve probably been disappointed with the results. Sure, great content on your blog does drive traffic to you, but it’s often not enough to bring the number of leads you need to convert. If you convert just 3% of your leads (an acceptable industry standard), you’ll need hundreds or even thousands of leads coming in to really boost sales.
Leads come from multiple places. That’s why you need a content management strategy that encompasses more than just your blog. The more places you connect with people through content, the more leads will funnel in.
Quality Over Quantity
While yes, you do want more leads, you also want them to be quality leads. After all, ten thousand unqualified leads with a .05% conversion rate isn’t as good as a thousand really qualified leads with a conversion rate of 50%. It’s an exaggerated example, but you get my point.
How do you get quality? You zero in on your audience. Don’t speak to a mass of a thousand people; speak to each person individually (more or less). Understand what they’re interested in, and tailor your content to them.
Leveraging Segmentation
The closer you can get to what each individual lead wants, the higher you can convert. That means your landing page should speak to her. Your emails. Your content. Everything.
A brief word on SEO: we keep hearing conflicting things about search engine optimization and what Google won’t move up in the search results. But if you focus on those keywords that your segment is interested in when you write your web copy, they’ll find you through search.
An Example
Let’s say you sell women’s clothing. You have landing pages for:
- Shoes
- Athletic gear
- Dresses
- Purses and accessories
If you optimize the keywords on each landing page, only those leads who are interested in that particular category of women’s clothing will click on that page. That keeps away those leads who would be interested in other types of women’s clothing, and helps you get really specific in your messaging.
Carry that one step further. On that page, visitors can sign up to get special offers in that category only. Those people that sign up for emails on the Shoes landing page won’t get emails about dresses or anything else. Again, this increases conversion.
And then, maybe you include a few shoe-related blog posts on the sidebar of that page. You’re keeping your messaging laser-focused on shoes so you keep a visitor’s attention.
Let’s keep going. Next, you’ll send segmented emails to your different market segments. If you’re already using Customer Relationship Management software, try to find one that integrates with an email marketing platform, like Insightly CRM for email marketing. That way, you can integrate the data you glean from emails, such as when a customer clicks on a particular link or makes a purchase. Storing this information in your CRM can provide you with future opportunities to deliver content specific to what that customer really wants.
Pay attention to that data, and use it to your benefit. Your customers’ behaviors can help you shape future content and email campaigns, and further solidify your content marketing strategy.