Fresh content, the fuel for any online marketing strategy. Whether you want to drive traffic to your website, social media or convert more leads, you’ll want all of your campaigns to be a success, but in order to achieve this you’ll need a steady supply of content. When we talk about content we mean high-quality, meaningful content that resonates with your audience.
The success of marketing has evolved and now lies in the level of knowledge brands have about their audience; personalisation, dynamic and custom content are all high up on people’s agendas. For many, this poses many challenges as digital content currently supersedes all other channels. The struggle of keeping up with demand and the inevitable commercial burden on businesses means some have no choice but to reshape their marketing models to meet these needs. Some consider in-housing, while others consider offshoring but can entirely depend on the fit for their business.
Creating content that is worthwhile requires planning, the right tools, an effective team in place with clear roles and responsibilities (whether internal or external) and perseverance. The good news is that the fundamentals below are the same for each piece of content you put out there whether producing a single piece or at scale.
1. Plan your content
Having a separate content marketing plan in place is always recommended. It allows you to make the most of your time to deliver on your content ensuring key dates / campaigns are covered giving you a steady stream of conversations.
An ad-hoc approach should only be used for reacting to your audience, competition or an industry anomaly while a long term plan should always be your go to so you stay ahead of competition. Switching up your content allows the message to be meaningful and add value.
You should always consider the following questions:
- What’s the budget?
- What’s your overall goal?
- What’s the frequency of the campaign and which channels will you use?
- Are your resources and assets readily available?
- Are there likely to be any delays?
2. Set the agenda and be realistic
With your plan in place, make the time to have some fun, be creative and engage with your audience to establish an ongoing conversation. Create those memorable pieces of content but be realistic. Short, digestible and sharable pieces of content can be effective and once shared by your reader they ultimately become a brand ambassador for you.
It’s always crucial to develop messages you would want to see and read, ones that are visually attractive and concise. Brands who want to be meaningful should always work to connect with consumers on a more authentic level by offering value-driven content.
3. Weigh up the value
Naturally, video content is going to cost more than a blog post but arguably video content will have greater impact than your less expensive blog posts. According to powerdigitalmarketing.com, a brand’s ability to create an interactive relationship with their customer is one of the most powerful content tools available, especially over social media.
Allow yourself to weigh up all your content based on value and ROI but equally put the customer at the center of everything you do to build trust.
4. Have a workflow / approval process
Ensuring the right people and approval process / technology is in place will take away some of the burden around all those important decisions that need to be made. Team autonomy can alleviate some of the pressures of pushing content through the decision process allowing you to meet the expectations of your audience if they’re used to regularly seeing and engaging with your content.
5. Set your tone
Know your audience. Many businesses fail to understand who their customer is and what makes them tick. Getting the tone right from the start based on your buyer personas will allow for the right people to respond to your content leading to better quality leads. The best messages speak to an individual and their wants or needs. Target them by producing content that is informative, readable, provides value and is visually appealing.
If these don’t already exist in your business, one crucial part of your tone setting should fall part of creating detailed customer personas that identifies exactly who you’re marketing to. Personas usually include information like:
- Age / gender / location / background (education, career history etc.)
- Reporting structure / responsibilities
- Learning / social networks / associations / communication preferences
- Goals / motivators / values vs challenges / pain points
- Messaging strategy / buyer needs / wants
- Tone of voice / keywords to use
Aligning your strategy is one of the most crucial things you can do when producing content at scale. Having a predefined set of brand guidelines including tone, style and content allow you to fully test the waters with your campaign, whilst adhering to your brand guidelines.
Also, it goes without saying, it’s not about being the loudest and blasting your content, it’s about finding the right audience, connecting on a human level, setting your tone (using emotion is always good here) and tailoring your message to them to develop a rich and long-lasting relationship. Whether this is via video content, blog posts or visuals, it needs to be valuable for your audience, even better shareable.
6. Employ external resources
With the right external resource / process in place, freeing up some of your internal team means they can focus on other areas of the business to allow them to plan and bring in new business in other ways. It isn’t simply a question of employing more people internally to fulfil your goals, it’s about maximising your existing resources, finding those efficiencies and sometimes re-considering your marketing structure to adopt a different approach to the way you do your marketing. Whether that’s exploring an in-house model, or building a Smartshoring partnership, whatever model that works best for your business will allow your external partners to do the heavy lifting so your internal team can focus on your core goal.
If you’re looking for a partner who can take away the day-to-day burdens of creating those last minute one off pieces of content, or your bigger campaigns at scale and speed, but within budget, We Are Amnet can help.
As a production partner for multi-channel campaigns, We Are Amnet work alongside many agencies and brands to deliver premedia services across packaging, digital, retouching, retail PoS, to CGI, video and motion and even global advertising campaigns.
For more information, click here or email hello@weareamnet.com
