Identifying a Laser-Focused Target Audience


We’ve talked about the importance of content writing and how you can generate material that resonates with your readers. Now, it’s time to focus on one of the most important aspects of developing a solid marketing campaign – reaching your target audience.
There are a few things that you should keep in mind when coming up with a marketing strategy. For starters, there is no one-size-fits-all method to reach your audience. People are complex. They have different needs, expectations, opinions, and views of the world. For that reason, it’s best to come up with different buyer personas that appeal to your most common demographics. You wouldn’t market your SaaS program to a 75-year-old grandmother the same way you would to a millennial, after all.

Building Your Customer Base

If you’re a small or medium-sized business looking to get big, you’ll have a challenging road ahead if you you don’t know how to capture your target demographics. Before you can successfully do this, you need to look at your products and determine who stands to benefit the most from them. This means that you need to look at a number of demographics and see who’s more receptive to your product and products similar to yours.
Here are some things to consider:

  • What services does your target market need? Think about how you’re going to meet those needs and target all their pain points.
  • Who are your competitors reaching out to? Observe their social media marketing campaigns and see what you can do better.
  • What are current trends in your industry and who’s more receptive to them? Boomers, Gen-Xers, or Millennials?

Finally, you need to come up with something that makes you stand out from the rest. We operate in a world where big businesses have every nook and cranny covered. Just think how Walmart and Amazon sell literally everything you need. In order compete, you need to come up with a niche that makes you stand out, like an incredibly personalized marketing campaign or products with more customization. Whatever the case, the sooner you reach your target audience, the quicker you’re able to build your customer base.

4 Tips for Crafting Show-Stopping Headlines


Your headline is the most important piece of your copy. It’s the only text that most will read. It’s also the only thing drawing in the fraction of users seeking out your content with active interest. The best copy on the web will go untouched without headlines that stand out, so it’s worth making sure that you’re using some winning strategies to capture people’s attention.

1. Lists

Lists are probably some of the most pervasive content structures on the web. This is because most users are looking for quick answers that are easily digestible. Lists get to the point and they’re easy to sift through, so they’re a big hit with our short attention spans.

2. FOMO

“FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out) is another term that made its entry into the lexicon along with “millennial” and “blogosphere.” With the relentless insight we’re granted into the apparent rich and exciting lives of others, many have been left with a fear that they’re… well, missing out.
Teasing the idea that your target audience is falling behind on current trends or dropping the ball on their potential is a great way to inspire interest in an online landscape saturated with social media.

3. Industry Secrets

The professional extension of FOMO appears in the form of industry secrets, breakthrough studies, and new data. It turns out that one of the secrets to being interesting is actually being interesting. If you have something new to bring to the table, put it front line and center with your headline.

4. Headlines that Deliver

This can’t be stressed enough. Your headline needs to reflect the content of your copy. Nothing irks users more than clicking a link that leads to a roundabout fluff piece chock full of ads. More importantly, current SEO algorithms rate sites based on relevancy. In other words, your organic search rankings are going to suffer if you mislead users.

The Humanity of Case Studies


If you haven’t incorporated case studies into your overall marketing campaign, now’s the time to start. Making use of customer case studies is a great way to add an additional layer of depth to your marketing campaign. It does what your content campaign and your top-notch calls to action can’t do: gives concrete proof of how your products are helping your customers.
The importance of case studies is especially true in the world of B2B marketing. Unlike individual consumers, companies prefer a more data-driven approach to help inform their purchasing decisions. And a well-crafted case study filled with success stories, customer testimonials, and statistics is able to accomplish just that.

It’s about Connecting with Your Customers

There’s no denying that content creation is the engine that powers the inbound marketing machine. However, a successful marketing strategy requires a bit more. After all, the purpose of content creation is to educate and generate interest, not reach customers on a personal level. That’s where case studies come in.
There’s a reason why case studies are so effective – they provide us with tangible evidence. They’re filled with customer success stories from people who’re just like us, and that makes it easier for us to visualize how the same product can help us. It’s much easier to find the value in a product when we’re able to see how it’s applied in the real world.
Another reason why case studies are successful is because they’re more credible. Everyone knows that a company is going to represent their brand in the most positive light, but case studies represent the viewpoint of the customer, not the company. In other words, you’re successfully turning loyal customers into your brand advocates every time you release a case study. Having your product vouched for by people with no ties to your company is powerful, and potential customers are more likely to take those testimonials into account than your call to action.
Ultimately, customers want to see the human side of the company and case studies are a way to do that. For the same reason, it’s important that your case study doesn’t come across as too salesy. It’s not a pitch. Customers can notice gimmicks from a mile away, so if you’ve not had experience developing case studies in the past, you may want to outsource to a company who has.

Your Introduction to Content Performance Indicators


Literary value is a notoriously subjective point of contention. Copy in digital marketing, on the other hand, serves a distinct function that can be precisely measured. The goal of your copy is to bring in clicks, views, subscriptions, and calls to action. It just so happens there are plenty of tools available to gauge the performance of online marketing content.

Covering the Bases

Your first point of interest is the interaction of users with your website. How many people have visited and did they stick around? Key performance indicators (KPIs) that gauge your reach and accuracy are pageviews, bounce rates, and time spent on site. Using these metrics, you can determine exactly how many clicks you got and how many of those users found what they were looking for on your site. High bounce rates indicate that your SEO and content are great at pulling people in, but they’re lacking when it comes to delivering what’s promised. Consistently high numbers with time spent on site indicate that you’re doing something right.

Homeruns

With really breakthrough content, it’s possible to observe KPIs that show your users are truly engaged with what you have to offer. Social media shares indicate that someone liked your work enough to want to spread it for you. Sorting through unique versus returning visitors also allows you to figure out how many new hits you’re pulling in and how many users just had to come back for more.
There’s only really one word of warning here. Don’t get bogged down and overwhelmed with metrics and analytics. Beyond the basics, there are so many KPIs available to measure that taking it all in can leave your head spinning. It’s important to figure out which metrics are most relevant to your goals and focusing on what counts.

How to Get Noticed on the World’s Most Popular Social Media Site


As of 2017, Facebook had nearly 2 billion monthly active users. Without a doubt, Facebook is the world’s most popular social media site. And of course, with so many users offering their undivided attention to the social network, there have been plenty of businesses and marketers who have tried to get on the action. Unfortunately, Facebook’s blessing is also its curse when it comes to marketing: The wealth of users makes it difficult to get noticed.

Getting Seen on Facebook

There are so many profiles making noise on Facebook that brands easily get lost in the shuffle.
Take Facebook’s Ad Auction as an example. You can’t just “buy” ad space on Facebook in the traditional sense—it must be purchased through a bidding auction. This process takes several factors into account:

  • Your bid total
  • The likelihood of your market to take action on the ad
  • Ad relevance and quality

These factors were set by Facebook to cater to both advertisers and users: Advertisers want to get seen, users want to see only the content relevant to their interests. What this means for marketers is that content relevance and quality are just as important as how much you’re willing to spend. Even if you have a limitless budget, Facebook won’t post just anything.

Expert Content Is Essential

Marketers hoping to get a piece of Facebook’s huge user base need to guarantee that all material posted is of the highest quality. Of course, nothing is stopping brands from skipping paid ads and just posting their own content, but the outcome is the same. In the sea of Facebook data, only the truly exceptional material rises to the top.
Don’t be shy about reaching out to an outsourced content producer to give you a hand, here. Creative professionals know how to craft the content that viewers crave—and how to help your brand get seen on the world’s biggest social network.

Content Writing: Are You Too Smart for Your Own Good?


The biggest challenge of content writing isn’t researching or coming up with catchy headlines, it’s coming up with material that people can understand. The content writer’s goal, first and foremost, should be to connect with the audience. But more often than not, writers use this opportunity to use jargon and flex their technical knowledge.
Content writing is not the same as writing for an academic journal. If your target audience can’t follow your overall message without the help of a dictionary and Wikipedia, you’re doing it wrong. Leave the excessively wordy sentences, overly technical terms, and rarely used academic words for attorneys and academics.
This is not to say that content writing is an easy job that needs to be dumbed down. It takes a lot of skill to take complicated topics and simplify them in such a way that the average person can relate to.
However, it’s not the content writer’s job to sound clever. Instead, writers should focus more on how they can better connect with their readers.

How to Reach Your Target Market

As a writer, it’s important that you know your target audience so that you can package your content in a way it can understand. Just because it’s easy for you to write complex material doesn’t mean that your average reader won’t struggle to make sense of it.
Suppose you’re writing about the importance of inbound marketing to small businesses. If your goal is to sell your services to companies that are trying to expand, shouldn’t you explain it in a way that small business owners understand? Instead of diving into the complex, technical data, keep it simple and explain what you do and why the company needs your service.
Remember, you can still write with the same level of authority without using overly complicated jargon. Instead, focus on how you can make your content readable and informative.

The Power of Effective Content Campaigns


There’s no denying that going viral with a content campaign can have a huge impact on a business. Creating that one advertisement or social media post that perfectly connects with the general population is like hitting the jackpot.
The thing to remember about going viral is that it’s not something that one can predict or control. Sometimes, businesses do the right thing at just the right time and get an overwhelmingly positive (or negative, in the case of bad publicity) response. However, hitting it big isn’t a reliable method of achieving success. Consistency, on the other hand, you can count on. Instead of devoting so much of their time to going viral, businesses should be focusing on building the best content campaigns they can.

Why Content Campaigns?

Going viral is like winning the lottery. It’s not something that you plan for, it just happens. A good content marketing strategy, on the other hand, starts from the ground up. It’s about creating a platform that uses engagement and valuable information to attract visitors and develop brand loyalty. While going viral will immediately improve your marketing performance, proper content marketing ensures your long-term success.
One of the most important parts of a good content campaign is inbound marketing. Now one of the hottest buzzwords in the industry, inbound marketing was built on the principle if you build it, they will come. Instead of in-your-face advertising, the inbound marketer creates a steady stream of content that is informative and insightful. Not only does this help the company establish itself as an authority in its field, it also makes it interesting. People want to follow blogs and social media profiles of these kinds of companies to learn more.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Content campaigns win over going viral every time because they’re sustainable. With long-term content campaigns, you also get the benefit of increasing your SEO rating while building up your brand and creating customer loyalty.
And you know what is better than going viral? Going viral while having a solid content marketing campaign. That is the real jackpot.

Proving the Value of Content Marketing to Your Boss


Content marketing has become an inseparable part of the low-cost digital marketing strategies making waves these days. Well-crafted content produces numerous benefits for the brands savvy enough to use it:

  • Improved brand authority and thought leadership by way of addressing cutting-edge industry issues
  • Increased opportunities for revenue growth by addressing consumer pain points and helping them down the
    path to conversion
  • Improved SEO potential by increasing the number of pages, keywords, and tags that can be found by search
    engine crawlers

Unfortunately, content marketing often suffers from the same drawback as many other marketing initiatives: Proving its ROI. The whole point of marketing is to increase the value of a business, and naturally, most businesses have CEOs, shareholders, or other C-Suite executives who are responsible for ensuring that marketing efforts are paying off.

Measure the Metrics

The number of methods available to track content marketing ROI are enough to fill an encyclopedia, but the following rundown will give you a good place to start:

  • Google analytics – Free tools by Google can be used to monitor page traffic, determine which pieces of
    content have high engagement levels, and which of your calls-to-action drive the most clicks
  • Social media measurement – Including all social-based metrics such as likes, shares, retweets,
    impressions, and all other mentions of your brand
  • Link tracking – Monitor your dashboards to see which pieces of content are gathering attention and are
    being linked to by other sites
  • Feedback software – Consider using customer feedback software to test specific pieces of content against
    target groups and get an idea of how you’re performing.

    • Get an idea of where these metrics stand before your content campaign begins, and monitor the changes over time. The specific ROI of content marketing can be hard to prove, but with the right data behind you, it can be done.

You Don’t Need to Be an Expert to Produce Expert Content

Blank paper waiting for idea with mans hand and pen

Make a case, provide supporting evidence, and move readers to take action. It’s a low-cost, high-reward system of marketing that produces demonstrable benefits for the businesses that excel at it.
But really, that’s the trick—excelling at content production. Not just any words will produce results that drive a sustainable ROI. This challenge can be tough to overcome, particularly for marketers tasked with developing content for their subsidiary clients. If you’re not an expert in the industry, how can you guarantee thoughtful and high-quality content?

Knowledge by Proxy

This is where outsourced writing services come in. Creative professionals who specialize in content production can ensure that all writing on your behalf meets the industry standard for quality. But the value doesn’t end at proper grammar—outsourced writing teams perform another critical function: Industry research.
Outsourced teams have years of experience working with clients across a diverse range of verticals. A critical function of third-party writing services is to not only craft their clients’ words into gold, but to go beyond the basic and research in-depth concepts that form the backbone of quality content. Add to this writers who have a background in a particular industry, and you have the makings of thought leadership-level content.

Help Them Help You

For best results when working with your outsourced writers:

  • Leverage the writer’s knowledge and research alongside your own industry expertise by giving them insights they can’t find elsewhere
  • Provide feedback after each draft and work together to refine each piece of content before publishing
  • Remember to communicate; even when outsourcing, the best possible product comes from collaboration between multiple minds. Think of it as a marriage between your industry expertise and their ability to craft those thoughts into highly marketable content

With this option on the table, no marketer or executive can use lack of expertise as an excuse for not producing content. If you’re feeling stuck on your content marketing journey, reach out to a third-party digital content producer and see how they can help you along in the process.

The Reason You Aren’t Blogging

It’s no secret that marketing has undergone a drastic shift since the advent of the internet. Businesses are reaping the benefits of low-cost, multichannel online marketing strategies and establishing themselves as thought leaders in their industries.

Of these strategies, content writing has become an inseparable part of finding value through your online presence. So why aren’t you doing it?

Finding a Balance

We’re willing to bet that the reason you aren’t blogging is time. You don’t have enough of it.
Proper content marketing can be a long process, and most top-level executives can’t afford to devote their limited energy to the goal. This usually means that blogging duties get delegated to other staff members, but this solution presents a new challenge in the way of expertise.

Plenty of employees can crank out a blog article given enough time, but a last-minute blog fired off by an over-caffeinated intern and a structured piece of marketing content are different. Few staff members will be able to write copy that produces results.

This balance of quality and efficiency is why you aren’t blogging. Neither top-level executives nor lower-level employees have the perfect balance of time and knowledge to produce value-driving copy. To find a solution, we suggest opening door number three: Outsourcing your blogging to a content services provider.

Outsourced Services

Third-party marketing companies take ownership over your blog and work with your in-house teams to develop high-impact marketing copy that drives value for your business.

The great thing about these services is that they take the burden of content creation off your shoulders along with guaranteeing that your articles will be in the hands of career writers who can do the job well. For overworked executives who want to expand their brand’s online presence without expanding their workload, outsourced content creation is the way to go.