According to research by the Content Marketing Institute, 64% of organizations want to learn how to craft a more effective content marketing strategy. Focusing solely on organic search visibility could be limiting the reach of your content marketing strategy.
Content marketing is equal parts marketing, as it is page copy. This presents the need to invest in alternative tactics to grow your content’s reach and increase its engagement.
According to another survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 55% of marketers can’t even define the goals and KPI’s of a successful content marketing strategy.
It’s no secret that content is an effective demand generator and lead nurturing tool. But the problem remains: content is useless unless it’s being read or consumed. For this reason, we’ve outlined five strategies marketers can leverage to increase their content’s reach and grow their business.
Paid Social
Considering the changes that SERP real estate has undergone in the past five years, I’d argue that you have to pay to promote content. Paid promotion is an effective strategy to capture some short-term traffic flow to your website, as well as increase your brand’s visibility.
This follows the idea that each time somebody is exposed to your brand, they’re more likely to click on an organic search listing the next time they research products or services you offer.
Paid social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, offer advanced audience analytics tools that will allow you to narrow down your reach to customers with high purchasing intent or relevant to your target customer base. This can be segmented by:
- Demographics
- Psychographics
- Behaviour
Targeting customers with top-funnel evergreen or informative content is the perfect way to push them down to more important mid-funnel pages for a sale or increased brand exposure.
Organic Social Media
Along the same lines, organic sharing is still a valuable tool to increase your content’s reach, as well as direct engagement on posts. Some advanced tactics to circumvent the algorithms and increase your reach include:
- Tagging a thought leader/influencer in a post snippet for awareness
- Tagging brand advocates in your industry who would be interested in your post
- Creating an appealing headline, leveraging strong emotional calls-to-action or even controversial opinions
It’s also important to share user-generated posts submitted by users over social media and respond to any comments on a post. By engaging with your customers often enough, you will be more likely to show up in their newsfeed and they will be more loyal to your brand. It’s a win-win.
Influencer Marketing
The effectiveness of influencer marketing simply can’t be overstated. Not only do influencers grant you access to an entire audience waiting to consume your content, but also one that is fiercely loyal.
Consider entering into a partnership with influencers to share sponsored content and get the name out about your brand. Despite being sponsored, if it’s authoritative and relevant enough, it will certainly peak enough people’s interest to deliver results in your campaign.
Focus on Omnichannel
Yet, all of these strategies deal with customer acquisition. Customer retention is actually five times cheaper then acquisition and will encompass the bulk of your revenue stream. Focus on omnichannel marketing efforts to market to your existing customers, as well as prospective ones. Channels include:
- Mobile app development
- Social media
- Organic search
- Paid search and social
- Community forums and groups
- Native website
- Syndicated guest publications or press release forums
Market to a Community
Finally, this all adds up to marketing to an established brand community. Brand communities are composed of advocates who are loyal to a brand and make more expensive and consistent purchases then non-brand advocated. This generally follows the 80/20 rule of marketing: 80% of revenue comes from your 20% of customers who are most loyal.
Focus on omnichannel and offer up branded content to strengthen the bonds within your community.