How do you get content to stand out in a saturated market, and put yourself at the head of the content marketing game, while at the same time not overstretching your budget?
It’s estimated that around 70 million blog posts are published every month so there’s a lot of competition out there! We find there are still marketers who feel that churning high-volume content is the way to get noticed. Unfortunately, quantity over quality very rarely creates results. Your target audience is looking for information that is relative, valuable and informative, they will quickly turn away from poor quality content. Resulting in little to show for your efforts and it can even affect website search ranking due to high bounce rates and poor quality pages.
The fundamentals of effective marketing is to have a structured content strategy, one that is built around the knowledge and understanding you have of your target audience. Once this is in place you can think about the finer details and how to captive your audience and draw them into your brand.
Creativity, individuality and thinking a little ‘outside the box’ will set you on the right path. Here we’ve put together 5 great strategy concepts that will help you create interesting, appealing content.
1. The Art of Storytelling
Don’t underestimate the power of storytelling, it inspires imagination and feeds curiosity
Storytelling is fast disappearing in the marketing world but a savvy marketer understands the power a narrative can have over our emotions and can influence decision making.
A good story can make you cry, laugh, feel compassion have empathy and a whole host of emotions that will draw people into a brand.
Real life stories
Narratives based on real-life examples are also an effective way of explaining difficult concepts, and complex ideas. This is a psychological attribute we all have and very often draw on our own experiences and knowledge in order to make sense of something new.
Captivating an audience
The Aldi 2021 Christmas ad was a perfect example of the effectiveness of brand storytelling. This was a clever campaign in the way they created a brand narrative using the basis of the familiar story A Christmas Carol. This would immediately draw people in and captured attention. Even the music created nostalgia and paid homage to Christmas movies past. On top of this, they created some really clever marketing and brand promotion. Take for example the characters, most of them could be purchased in-store and their names reflected the produce on sale, such as Ebanana Scrouge. This approach would ensure the ad would appeal to as wide an audience as possible children and adults.
2. Niche
Go for niche content rather than generalisation so you produce content to distinctive specific targets with particular interests. In order to make this work well, you need to understand the unique needs of your potential audience so you can appropriately tailor your content.
3. Credible Content
Provide interesting knowledgeable content, that informs and creates credibility. You want to be seen as the go-to place within your market when it comes to finding out information. Aim to be a thought leader!
4. Create Interactive Content
Content that encourages participation, for example, quizzes, polls and competitions are effective ways of creating interest. However make sure you don’t use clickbait, as this will get you frowned upon on some social media platforms like Facebook. Facebook is discouraging the use of clickbait and will downgrade content they suspect of using it.
5. Use Visuals
Using visual images has been proven to increase audience participation and interest. They break up text, reinforce understanding and make a publication more interesting.
Video is a main priority for marketers. The power of video to attract attention is unrivalled and is still the biggest driver of traffic in marketing campaigns. This is increasingly the case since the pandemic, when online viewing increased dramatical, and although has slowed a little post pandemic it still remains popular.
Remember to be all-inclusive so that your content is accessible to people with disabilities. You’d be surprised how many videos don’t have subtitles!
Measuring Success
How do you know if your content strategy is working?
Don’t neglect the data – Look at data to ascertain what content creates attention and meets your desired goals. Marketing is about analysis as much as it is about creativity. There is a wealth of software and monitoring tools available, use it to inform and fine-tune your campaigns. You can find out more about how we use Google Analytics here.
If you have something specific you would like to discuss then please get in touch, we are always available to offer advice.
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