Let’s say you’re producing a healthy amount of content each month and you have a social media strategy in place; you’re on the right track right? The short answer is yes. But, there’s much more to creating a profitable marketing strategy than simply running siloed services. You may capture low hanging fruit, but the real gold mine is hit when you integrate your campaigns and have all wheels turning in the same direction.
What Is Content Marketing?
Simply stated, content marketing is any type of content that speaks to the consumer with the objective of turning them into a profitable customer. Content frameworks include but are not limited to the following: blog articles, web copy, videos, and infographics. Pretty much, content is anything the viewer can digest, whereas content marketing is the strategy and goals you orchestrate prior to generating it.
When creating content, it’s important to think about what will help your audience or provide them with value. Ask yourself “is this useful?” and answer the question honestly before finalizing your topic ideas or publishing your masterpiece.
Related: 7 Content Marketing Tools to Create Content That Will Rank
Many marketers also are scared to give away too much information as they build their content strategy. Don’t be! Put the customer first and share your so called ‘secrets’ with enthusiasm. After all, if they find value, they’ll thank you for it and will keep coming back for more.
If you don’t give your audience as much information as possible, you leave room for your competition to put more on the table. Creating timely content is another great way to engage with your audience. Building a reputation for offering content that’s not only relevant but also is current, is a proven way to increase your trustworthiness and thought leadership in your field.
Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that content marketing is a long term strategy investment and that it is most effective when it is aligned with your SEO or social media strategy. This is why it’s important to understand your objective prior to executing on the content.
- If your goal is to increase rankings, you’ll to work with your SEO team to build keyword focused content clusters linking to the target pages they’ve identified. You probably also will want to huddle up with your PR department and ensure their link building efforts are focused on those same pages.
- If your goal is to capture the attention of social media users (to support your paid social ad strategy), you’re going to want to focus on creating captivating and fun content that’s likely to stand out in their feed.
Let’s Talk Social Media
Social media marketing is the process of generating traffic or attention through your social media channels. When it comes to social, there are two major focal areas: organic social and paid social. They each have different objectives.
Organic Social
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- Increases brand awareness
- Builds following
- Provides credibility
Paid Social
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- Introduces cold traffic to the brand
- Brings audience down the sales funnel
- Retargets website visitors
- Generates conversion
Time To Heat Things Up
As marketing guru, Jay Baer best said: if content is fire, social media is gasoline. This quote couldn’t reign more true. Now that you understand the basics of content and social media marketing, it’s time to marry the two. Instead of creating content based on what you find interesting, create content that will fuel your campaigns and delight your audience.
For example, if you are running cold traffic ads and you want to convert them to warm traffic, you can introduce them to your brand by driving an ad promoting a blog post that exists to bring them value. Providing this type of content helps to lower the CPC (cost per click) and gets you more bang for your buck as you build your audience. The consumer then becomes familiarized with your brand before you go for the hard sell later on.
When it comes to content, it’s important to always have a promotion strategy in place. That way, you aren’t creating just to create. After all, how much does your article matter if no one ever sees it? Your social networks are a great opportunity to increase the visibility of your article and reach an audience that is already ‘owned’ and interested in your brand.
Related: The Importance of Content Marketing: Mapping Out Integrated Campaigns
Sharing your posts via organic social also helps prevent your articles from falling flat. On the flip side, boosting your articles helps to target or retarget consumers in the selected audience, drive engagement, and ultimately bring them back to your site.
One of the most important ways to integrate your content and social ads strategy is to brainstorm together! By working together to brainstorm ad copy and content frameworks to support your social media strategy, you’re creating momentum and providing each other with the assets necessary to find success. Plus, it’s fun to bounce ideas off each other! Creativity and collaboration are two of my favorite parts about working in an agency environment. After all, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Measurement & Results
The best part about digital marketing is the transparency and direct ROI it provides. Creating an integrated digital strategy helps your marketing efforts become both sustainable and profitable. Music to your ears right?
Related: How to Drive Revenue With Content Marketing
Although it’s well known that content is the core of digital marketing, many do not understand how to measure success or drive revenue with content marketing. Thankfully, by taking a quick look in Google Analytics, you’re able to quickly review your KPI’s and pull your desired data.
If your content is working in support of your SEO efforts →
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- Measure the increased rankings of the keywords you’re targeting
- Measure the increase in the page authority of your target landing page
- Measure the increased traffic to your blog or subscribers to your newsletter
If your content is working in support of your social ads →
- Measure the increase in audience growth
- Measure the increase in social engagement and landing page conversions
- Measure the increase in ROAS
As you can see, wins are a team effort, and content works best when your goals are aligned with other departments. By integrating your content strategy with your social media strategy, you set your paid ads team up for success, your articles have greater reach, and you contribute to the overall revenue generated. What are you waiting for? Learn how to take your strategy to new heights today!
