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The digital era has opened up a plethora of marketing opportunities, and content marketing remains at the forefront of these channels.

But in an increasingly crowded online space, how can you ensure that your content marketing efforts are delivering the best possible return on investment (ROI)? 

The answer lies in using analytics to optimise your strategy. By interpreting and acting on the insights provided by analytics tools, you can refine your content marketing strategy for maximum impact and ROI.

Understanding the Importance of ROI in Content Marketing

At its core, content marketing is about providing value to your audience, building trust and authority, and, ultimately, driving profitable customer action. But how do you know if your efforts are making the desired impact? 

This is where ROI comes in. 

ROI is a crucial metric for measuring the success of your content marketing strategy. It helps you to understand the value of your investment in content marketing and identify areas for improvement.

One way to improve your ROI is to create high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your target audience. This can be achieved by conducting market research to understand your audience’s needs and preferences, and tailoring your content to meet those needs. 

For example, if you are targeting a younger audience, you may want to use more visual content such as videos and infographics, while if you are targeting an older audience, you may want to focus on more in-depth, informative content such as whitepapers and case studies.

Defining ROI in the Context of Content Marketing

ROI is a financial ratio that measures the net profit generated by an investment relative to the cost of that investment. In the context of content marketing, ROI is the return you get for the investment you make in creating, promoting, and distributing content.

This includes both the monetary cost of producing content and the time and effort involved in crafting and promoting it.

However, it’s important to note that ROI is not just about measuring the financial return on your investment. It’s also about measuring the impact of your content on your brand’s reputation, customer engagement, and overall business goals. By tracking these metrics, you can gain a more holistic understanding of the value of your content marketing efforts.

The Role of ROI in Measuring Content Marketing Success

Measuring the success of your content marketing strategy goes beyond simply tracking the number of likes, shares, or page views. While these metrics are important indicators of audience engagement, they do not necessarily translate into tangible business outcomes, such as increased sales or customer retention. 

ROI helps you to evaluate the real impact of your content marketing efforts on your business goals.

Another way to improve your ROI is to promote your content through various channels, such as social media, email marketing, and influencer outreach. By reaching a wider audience, you can increase the visibility of your content and attract more potential customers. 

Additionally, by tracking the performance of your content across different channels, you can identify which channels are most effective for driving engagement and conversions.

In conclusion, ROI is a crucial metric for measuring the success of your content marketing strategy. By understanding the value of your investment in content marketing and identifying areas for improvement, you can create more effective, engaging content that resonates with your target audience and drives profitable customer action.

Identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Content Marketing

To measure your content marketing ROI, you need to track specific metrics that align with your business objectives. These are known as key performance indicators (KPIs). It’s crucial to set SMART goals for your content marketing strategy and identify the KPIs that will help you measure progress toward those goals.

Content marketing has become an essential aspect of any business strategy. It’s an effective way to attract and engage customers, build brand awareness, and generate leads. However, to achieve these goals, you need to measure the success of your content marketing efforts. That’s where KPIs come in.

Setting SMART Goals for Your Content Marketing Strategy

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

An example of a SMART goal for a content marketing strategy might be to increase website traffic by 20% within six months. This goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant to business objectives, and has a set timeframe for achievement.

Setting SMART goals is essential for any business. It helps you focus on what you want to achieve and provides a clear roadmap for achieving those goals. 

When setting SMART goals for your content marketing strategy, you need to consider your target audience, business objectives, and available resources.

Common KPIs to Track in Content Marketing

There are several KPIs that you can use to measure the success of your content marketing strategy, including:

  • Website traffic: This KPI measures the number of visitors to your website. It’s an essential metric to track as it shows how effective your content is in attracting visitors to your site.
  • Conversion rate: This KPI measures the percentage of visitors who take a specific action on your website, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. It’s an important metric to track as it shows how effective your content is in converting visitors into leads or customers.
  • Time spent on site: This KPI measures how long visitors stay on your website. It’s an important metric to track as it shows how engaging your content is to visitors.
  • Leads generated: This KPI measures the number of leads generated from your content. It’s an important metric to track as it shows how effective your content is in generating leads for your business.
  • Sales revenue: This KPI measures the revenue generated from your content marketing efforts. It’s an important metric to track as it shows how effective your content is in driving sales for your business.

Tracking these KPIs will help you measure the success of your content marketing strategy and make data-driven decisions to improve your content and achieve your business objectives.

Using Analytics Tools for Content Marketing

Content marketing is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy, and to ensure its effectiveness, it is crucial to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and measure your content marketing return on investment (ROI). One of the most effective ways to do this is by using analytics tools. 

Analytics tools provide you with a wealth of information on your website traffic, audience behaviour, and content performance. 

By tracking metrics such as page views, bounce rate, and time on site, you can gain valuable insights into how your content is performing and make data-driven decisions to improve your strategy. 

Google Analytics for Content Performance Measurement

Google Analytics is one of the most widely used web analytics tools and provides a wealth of information on website traffic, audience behaviour, and content performance. 

It allows you to track metrics such as page views, bounce rate, and time on site, and set up custom dashboards to help you visualise and interpret your data. 

With Google Analytics, you can also track the performance of specific pages or content types, such as blog posts or videos, to gain insights into what is resonating with your audience.

Furthermore, Google Analytics provides you with information on the demographics of your audience, including age, gender, and location. This data is invaluable when creating targeted content that resonates with your audience.

Social Media Analytics for Audience Engagement

Social media platforms are also valuable sources of data when it comes to tracking engagement with your content.

For example, Facebook Insights allows you to see metrics such as page follows, post reach, and engagement rate, while Twitter Analytics lets you track tweet impressions and engagement. 

By monitoring your social media analytics, you can gain insights into what types of content are resonating with your audience and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Additionally, social media analytics can help you identify key influencers in your industry who can help amplify your content and reach a wider audience.

Email Marketing Analytics for Subscriber Growth

Email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing leads and building relationships with your audience. Email service providers like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor offer analytics tools to help you track subscriber growth, open rates, click-through rates, and other important performance metrics. 

By monitoring these metrics, you can gain insights into what types of content are resonating with your subscribers and adjust your email marketing strategy accordingly.

Furthermore, email marketing analytics can help you identify opportunities to segment your audience and create targeted campaigns that speak directly to their needs and interests. By sending the right message to the right person at the right time, you can maximise the impact of your email marketing efforts.

Analysing and Interpreting Content Marketing Data

Once you have collected your data, it’s time to analyse it and draw insights that can inform your content marketing strategy. 

Analysing your data involves identifying trends and patterns, understanding audience behaviour and preferences, and evaluating the effectiveness of different content formats.

Identifying Trends and Patterns in Content Performance

Looking for patterns or trends in your data can give you a better understanding of what content resonates with your audience. For example, if you notice that certain blog topics consistently generate high levels of engagement, you may want to produce similar content in the future.

Understanding Audience Behaviour and Preferences

Analytics tools can help you gain valuable insights into your audience’s behaviour and preferences. For instance, if you notice that a particular type of content is getting a lot of views but has a high bounce rate, it may indicate that the content is not sufficiently relevant or engaging to your audience.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Different Content Formats

By tracking the performance of different content formats, such as blog posts, videos, or infographics, you can determine which formats resonate best with your audience. This information can help you adjust your content strategy accordingly and focus your efforts on the formats that deliver the best results.

Optimising Your Content Marketing Strategy Based on Analytics Insights

Armed with the insights gained from your analytics data, you can begin to optimise your content marketing strategy for maximum impact and ROI. 

This involves adjusting content topics and formats for better engagement, improving content distribution and promotion tactics, and testing different approaches to continuously improve your strategy.

Adjusting Content Topics and Formats for Better Engagement

Use your analytics data to identify which content topics and formats are resonating best with your audience, and adjust your content strategy accordingly. For example, if you notice that your audience is highly engaged with video content, you may want to produce more video content in the future.

Improving Content Distribution and Promotion Tactics

Just as important as creating great content is ensuring that it reaches the right audience. Use your analytics insights to determine which distribution channels are most effective for your content and adjust your promotion tactics accordingly. This may involve experimenting with different social media platforms, email marketing campaigns, or influencer outreach strategies.

A/B testing for continuous improvement

A/B testing involves running two versions of a piece of content, such as two different email subject lines or two different social media ads, and measuring their performance to determine which version is more effective. 

By continuously testing different approaches, you can refine your content marketing strategy and continually improve your ROI.

Wrapping up on ROI for Content Marketing

Measuring the ROI of your content marketing efforts is essential to maximising your business impact. By using analytics tools to track performance, analysing data to gain insights, and optimising your strategy accordingly, you can ensure that your content marketing efforts deliver the best possible ROI.

Meet Nursyasya Irdina, our Junior Content Specialist who uses challenges to fuel her career success.

One of the things that set Nursyasya apart is her bubbly personality. She brings a contagiously positive energy to the team that helps to lift everyone’s spirits. She is also a firm believer in the power of collaboration and teamwork.

In the 2Stallions Content & Social team, Nursyasya finds comfort in sharing and helping her team members, which has led to growth and less stress for everyone involved.

In this interview, she shares insights and experiences on how she navigated challenges and leveraged them to achieve her career goals.

Gunung Datuk in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan

Tell us about yourself and how did you become a content specialist!

Hi, I’m Syasya! 

I studied science at school and during my pre-university years but realised it wasn’t for me. That’s when I decided to pursue language and completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Linguistics, hoping to find a job related to language and writing. 

After applying to numerous writing and communication jobs, I landed my first job as a copywriter in a digital marketing agency. It was in this role that I became interested in digital marketing and discovered how language could be used in marketing. 

Eventually, I found my way to 2Stallions as a Junior Content Specialist. 

What attracted you to 2Stallions?

As mentioned, I previously worked at a digital marketing agency where I gained some experience in the industry. However, we mainly dealt with local clients in Malaysia, specifically in the cosmetics and clothing industries. 

I was drawn to 2Stallions because of its diverse client portfolio. From local food businesses to global universities, their clients span a wide range of industries. This has allowed me to learn how to create, plan, and write content for various types of businesses and this made me the content specialist I am today.

What is it like working at 2Stallions?

I enjoy the variety of clients at 2Stallions – while it can be challenging at first, it has allowed me to learn about various industries and businesses. 

It took me some time to fully understand each business, but once I did, creating content for their customer base became enjoyable. 

I also appreciate working with an all-women team at 2Stallions – somehow, it makes communication easier and enjoyable. 🙂

What is your proudest achievement? 

In 2023, my biggest accomplishment was conquering Gunung Datuk in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The hike took a total of 5 hours, and it boosted my confidence – I knew I could handle reading and research for 2Stallions clients from home. 

Aside from that, my proudest moments at 2Stallions are when clients appreciate and approve of our work, especially when they like the concepts we introduce.

What have you learned about yourself in recent years?

When I first started working, I didn’t realise how beneficial it could be to share a problem with a colleague. I used to think it was better to stress alone and not bother my colleagues with trivial worries.

I guess I thought it was better to stress over a task alone and not disturb my colleagues with silly worries. But, working with my wonderful team in 2Stallions made me realise that even if the problem isn’t solved immediately, sharing my concerns made me feel relieved and helped me assemble my thoughts, which makes it easier to solve the problem.

I also tend to take tasks too personally, which can cause additional stress. Learning that I don’t have to handle everything alone has been a great relief.

The view at Gunung Datuk in Rembau, Negeri SembilanWhat’s your favourite part or task about being a Content Specialist?

At present, writing articles is something that I truly enjoy. The entire process of outlining, sending drafts for peer reviews, reading feedback from colleagues on how to improve the article, and receiving approval from clients is something I find gratifying. Writing articles brings me joy!

I love it even more when I visit the client’s website and discover that they have published our articles on their blog.

2Stallions has been working remotely since 2020. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement?

After 3 months of working remotely, I just discovered that one of my colleagues is left-handed, while others have tattoos and piercings. It feels strange to learn such details so late, as they are typically evident when meeting someone for the first time.

Despite this, I wouldn’t say that remote working poses many challenges. It adds an intriguing aspect when we eventually meet in person and notice these missed details.

I have benefited greatly from remote working, particularly in terms of saving time and money on commuting and car expenses. We are all aware of the financial advantages that come with working remotely.

 

What is the most challenging/fulfilling part of being a Content Specialist?

I think the most challenging AND fulfilling part of my job is when I’m developing social media content for clients. It takes a lot of brain juice to come up with ideas and to plan the whole thing for weeks, but when it’s done and approved, the feeling I get is great!

If you could give two pieces of advice to your younger self, what would they be?

Do more things! It’s fine to be tired when trying new things but it’s better to feel regret after trying something new, rather than regretting never trying at all.

Strawberry Vanilla Ice CreamFavourite ice cream flavour?

Very basic, but strawberry vanilla cream makes me drool.

Wrapping Up 

We are proud to have Nursyasya as part of our team and excited to share her story with others. If you’re interested in connecting with Nursyasya and learning more about her journey, you can find her on LinkedIn.

Nursyasya is always eager to connect with other professionals in her field and share her experiences, insights, and advice. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn from a talented and driven content specialist!

Get to know our #2Stallionsfamily with the #2Steamstories tag.  Discover the work done by our diverse team of digital marketing professionals who will bring your ideas to life with impactful designs. Browse and download our case studies now!

And if you’re interested in learning more about the services that 2Stallions provides, please follow us on our social media channels. We’re always happy to connect with new clients, partners, and colleagues. Stay tuned for more exciting interviews and stories from our team!

If you’re looking for a Content Marketing expert, don’t hesitate to contact us

 

Search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing (CM), and social media marketing (SMM) might be different tactics but they share a common goal—to increase organic traffic to your website.

SEO works better when paired with the two. Your content pieces will attract more eyes when optimised for search engines and shared on social media. And, you’re likely to improve your social media reach using the right content and set of keywords.

In short, integrating these three techniques enables a digital marketing flywheel that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds and increases your chances of doubling your search traffic.

Understanding the Three Techniques—SEO, CM, & SMM

SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, thumbs up icon, desktop, keyboard, graph, red arrow pointing up,

Search engine optimisation (SEO) focuses on boosting your website presence. It’s all about optimising your site to improve its visibility and rank higher in the search results pages.

Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing content (i.e., videos, blogs, infographics, social media posts, etc.). This discipline relies on SEO to increase brand awareness and consequently—generate visits and drive website traffic.

Social media marketing refers to the use of social media platforms for promoting a business, product or service. Sharing engaging and SEO-optimised content helps increase your brand exposure and boost social media traffic.

Read on to find out how you can increase organic traffic to your website using these three techniques.

Tips for Boosting Organic Website Traffic

Increase organic traffic to your website, desktop, desk planter, keyboard, mouse

1. Optimise for the Search Engines (and Readers)

Ranking on search engines like Google is the primary purpose of search engine optimisation. Broadly speaking, there are three core pillars of SEO: technical SEO, on-page optimisation and off-page optimisation.

Here’s how these optimisation techniques differ:

Three core pillars of SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the process of meeting the technical elements of modern search engines. It involves strategies, including crawling, JavaScript indexing, rendering, linking, and more.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of optimising elements such meta descriptions, headlines, title tags, and content on your website to earn more relevant traffic from search engines. All these on-site elements should include targeted keywords to help your website rank higher.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO on the other hand refers to optimisation techniques done outside your website. Inbound links, social shares, domain age, citations, and reviews are a few of the off-site ranking factors that help improve your search rankings.

While SEO is about befriending the search engines, it’s also crucial that you optimise your website for your readers. So how do you do it? Simple—develop a keyword strategy. You may use long-tail keywords that will identify your website as a destination for a particular topic.

This blog post, for example, is intended for those who want to get more traffic to their website. Using the keywords to increase organic traffic would be effective because there’s less competition for the term and people search for it.

2. Create Content Pieces for Your Buyer Personas

Optimising for search engines is useless if you’re not driving profitable customer or client actions. This is where content marketing comes into action; it connects with your readers and influences them in making purchasing decisions.

To ensure you entice them until the decision stage, create content pieces that fit your buyer personas—fictional yet realistic representations of your target customers. If you haven’t created your audience personas, here are a few tips that may help you in designing them:

  • Check your existing customers and social audience. Gather information, such as age, location, language, spending power and patterns, interests, challenges, and more.
  • Learn why they love your products or services. Tapping on social media listening is one way to find out about customer experiences.
  • Identify customer goals. Are they only researching, looking for reviews, or are they ready to buy?

Once you have buyer personas in place, you can deliver content that will be most relevant and valuable to your audience. The easiest way to use your audience personas is to cater your content to them.

Here are the three stages of the buyer’s journey along with their ideal content types:

  1. Awareness stage: where personas are experiencing that need to be fixed. Blog posts, social media posts, and explainer videos are ideal pieces of content targeting this stage.
  2. Consideration stage: where personas are considering solutions to their pain points. The best content pieces to offer for this stage are product comparison guides, case studies, and free samples.
  3. Decision stage: where personas have decided on their solution or turned into buyers. Examples of ideal content formats for the decision stage are product descriptions, free trials and demos, reviews and customer testimonials.

These stages names sometimes vary. For example, they might be called the ‘Education’, ‘Consideration’, ‘Purchase’ stages instead. The concepts, however, are generally always the same and are tied directly to the market funnel.

3. Promote & Optimise Your Social Media Profiles

Did you know that an optimised social media profile has a high chance of driving organic website traffic? Social media optimisation follows the concept of SEO, where relevant keywords are included in bio sections to make the profiles searchable.

When writing a social media description, be sure to make it keyword-rich. Add relevant keywords naturally, so your target audience can find you in the search. Doing this not only increases your discoverability but also helps increase organic traffic to your website.

Aside from creating keyword-rich descriptions, you can also boost your organic social media reach by doing the following:

  • Upload a high-quality picture. Your profile picture puts a face to your name, so it must reflect your brand. It should also be recognisable; avoid using an image that has nothing to do with your business.
  • Add links to your website. Take advantage of social media’s ability to build brand awareness. Include links in your bio section to lead target customers directly to your website.
  • Use hashtags sparingly. Hashtags are like keywords that categorise the content. Consider adding relevant hashtags to promote your business and boost your visibility.

4. Update Old Web Content & Blog Posts

Here’s another link between SEO and content marketing: when you update your old web content or blog posts, you get Google to crawl your site more frequently. It’s like technical SEO, where search engine spiders crawl your website, but without coding—just upgrading.

Having fresh content is critical for your website because Google favours frequently updated content. If you frequently update your website or articles, Google finds it easier to search for your web pages and add them to the index.

Frequent updates can help you have a better chance of ranking on the search engines. While a higher post frequency doesn’t necessarily increase your overall website rankings, it can increase organic traffic to your website.

Here are some of the best practices for content updates:

  • The key is quality, not more content. If your blogs are only 300 words long, bumping up the wordcount is a good idea. However, adding paragraphs just for the sake of updating can’t guarantee you good results. It’s necessary to keep your content standards high and write around what your readers want.
  • Incorporate valuable, targeted keywords. Keywords are a vital part of SEO. Optimise your content for a more relevant keyword. Targeting new keywords can expand your search visibility and help you bring more traffic.
  • Add new or update old links. Like keywords, internal and external links also play important SEO roles. Interlinking your web pages and linking your blog posts to your website can positively affect your SEO. Revisit your website and blog posts, then do the following:
  1. Find and fix 404. If one of your blog posts is linked to a 404 page, update the link and add a significant link.
  2. Spot outdated references. Blogs typically mention references, such as studies, research, and statistics. External links can build your website authority, so check whether they’re working and update them to more recent findings.

5. Create Meaningful & Evergreen Content

Creating evergreen content doesn’t only increase organic traffic to your website, but it also keeps driving regular traffic to your web pages for as long as you want it. The reason behind this is simple—such content doesn’t go out of date.

Not only does evergreen content stay fresh for readers, but it also remains popular in search engines. Google will find your content relevant, allowing you to become more visible and rank higher in search results pages.

To help you strengthen your evergreen content marketing strategy, we listed some actionable tips that will help you do just that.

    • Choose evergreen topics. Keyword tools like Ahrefs can help you look for popular, consistently searched topics. Use such tools to see what keywords have positive trends and build your content around these keywords.

When writing blogs around evergreen topics, avoid using terms with a short lifespan, such as this month, last year, yesterday, and more. If you’re thinking about writing for a relevant year, for example, ‘content marketing best practices in 2021’, update the content every year or ensure the content will remain valid over time.

    • Update content when necessary. As discussed in the previous point, Google recognises web pages with fresh content. You should refresh your content as often as necessary to ensure it’s evergreen and increase its chances of driving traffic or attracting leads and shares.
    • Build high-quality backlinks. The good thing about evergreen content or regularly update content is that it can generate consistent leads, establish a brand reputation, and above all—give higher search engine rankings.

To ensure your business reaps these benefits, build links to your fresh content, encourage sharing on social media, and consider doing guest posting.

6. Get the Most Out of Social Media Targeting

Social media also holds power in your search rankings. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms can help you reach thousands of customers, which means you get more chances of increasing organic social media reach.

However, publishing content on social media isn’t enough to improve your SEO results. You should also consider capitalising on social media’s ability to reach specific audience types. By choosing who sees your content, targeting ideal audiences and engaging with them becomes easier.

Facebook, specifically, allows you to target any of your posts to a certain demographic. These general demographics include gender, age, relationship, educational status, location, interests, and language.

Suppose you own and run a women’s fashion store in Singapore. You could target your posts to female shoppers who live in or near Singapore and are around 20-40 years of age. Here’s how you can start setting up Facebook targeting:

  1. Click Settings at the top of your page.
  2. From General, check off the box next to Audience Optimisation for Posts.

Follow the steps below to limit your post’s audience.

  1. Click the targeting icon before publishing your post.
  2. Tick Restricted Audience at the top, then select the age and locations of the audience you want to see your post.
  3. Click Save.

To target a specific audience in your newsfeed, use News Feed Targeting.

  1. Click the targeting icon before publishing your post.
  2. In the News Feed Targeting section, enter the criteria of the people you’d like to reach in News Feed.
  3. Click Save.

Also, you could specify when to stop showing your post organically in the news feed—this is called post end date.

SEO, Content & Social Media: Stronger Together

Search engine optimisation, content marketing, and social media marketing are equally essential in helping you increase organic traffic to your website.

One doesn’t outsmart the other as all concepts can raise awareness of your brand, build an audience, and ultimately—convert prospects to customers. Instead of treating them as separate, different practices, why not integrate your SEO into your content and social media marketing strategy, or vice versa?

If you’re up for this idea, 2Stallions(a full-service digital marketing agency) would gladly help you get started. Our team of industry experts will draw your target audience to your website through on-page and off-page SEO, engaging content and improving your social media presence.

Learn more about our complete line of digital marketing services here.

 

Originally published: 13 August, 2021
Updated: 16 December, 2022

Increasing Global Digital Population

It’s hard to imagine a world without the Internet.

Billions of people are going digital to search for information, shopping for groceries or do their banking. That’s why businesses should follow the suit and master the digital marketing basics.

However, you can’t expect to become a digital marketing expert overnight. The field is vast and involves several concepts necessary for establishing a solid online presence and meeting consumers in the digital realm.

In this introduction to digital marketing, we’ll help you understand all the modern marketing techniques it constitutes, why they’re essential for your business, and how to use them to your advantage.

Billions of people are connected worldwide via the internet. From searching for information to shopping for groceries or banking, the internet has become an essential part of our day-to-day lives.

In fact, as of April 2022, there are over 5 billion active Internet users. That is 63% of the global population

What is Digital Marketing?

Very simply put, ‘digital marketing’ refers to all marketing efforts that take place on the Internet.

It involves promoting your products or services on digital channels such as via a website, social media, or email.

Digital marketing is also about leveraging consumer insights. It uses data to formulate marketing approaches targeted at specific market segments.

For example, checking the number of impressions of your blog posts lets you determine how many times visitors view the content. It also gives an idea of what type of topic appeals the most to viewers and tailors your content according to user behaviours.

The advantage of using data to sell online is that it allows companies to make calculated marketing decisions. Knowing who to target and where to sell online gives digital marketers the ability to estimate budget spending for a certain set of Return Of Investment (ROI) goals.

Whether it’s inbound marketing or digital marketing for clients, common KPIs for digital marketers include increasing brand awareness, lead generation and conversions across different digital marketing channels.

Digital Marketing Introduction: The Fundamentals

The role of digital marketing is to help brands gain online visibility, acquire leads, and turn leads into paying customers.


There are several digital marketing concepts that enable business to connect with prospects and attract a steady stream of customers.


Let’s dive in and explore each concept so you can start building an effective strategy!

What does a digital marketer do?

Digital marketers have different specializations, but they often work together as a team to make a campaign succeed with their ROIs. Some of the different departments include:

  • A design team to make the creative assets
  • A copywriting team to write the ads
  • A performance marketing team to create and manage paid ads

To give you a better understanding, you may refer to the diagram down. The chart shows you the various aspects influencing a website and or mobile app, plus the array of digital solutions a digital marketing agency could offer to improve those aspects.

For example, a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Manager is responsible for overseeing the performance of websites and web pages. The manager optimizes websites by conducting regular website audits to identify technical issues to be fixed. He or she will also do regular keyword research to rank the site for certain keywords, so as to boost the position of a website (ranking) on Google’s search results page.

On the other hand, a content marketer is in charge of content marketing. He or she focuses on content development and content distribution. Examples of content creation include writing articles and electronic direct mails (EDMs) that represent a brand’s story to connect and engage with the target audience.

The content marketer often tracks web traffic using Google Analytics and also conducts keyword research in order to know the kind of content readers are looking for.

Performance marketers or advertisement specialists are also critical to many marketing campaigns.  These are the people responsible for social media marketing (social media ads) and also search engine marketing (Google’s display ads).

Here are some examples of digital marketing elements that people specialise in:

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a low-cost marketing channel that can be used by any business, from small startups to large corporations. It has been proven effective in driving conversions, generating revenue and building a loyal customer base.

In a nutshell, email marketing is a type of direct mail marketing that provides information about products and services to potential customers. Its goal is to get people interested in your business’s product/service offerings so they will purchase them.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined audience.  

The key objective of content marketing is to create both evergreen and timely assets that will serve as a foundation for your business’s growth.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing helps companies to reach customers by connecting with them on the platform through content and other promotional methods. It can also be used to develop brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and improve sales and lead generation.

The value of social media marketing can be seen in the fact that as of July 2022 there are now 4.7 billion global social media users.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is the process of promoting your business or website by paying for advertising on search engines like Google and Bing. It’s a digital marketing technique that helps businesses rank higher in organic search results. 

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website or web page to improve its ranking in search engine results and thus increase traffic.

The first step in SEO is to create content that will attract users. The second step is to ensure that the content on your website or blog is accessible, easy to read, and relevant for users.

SEO can be used for a variety of purposes including increasing online visibility, driving traffic, making money from advertising on your site, boosting brand awareness, building authority and credibility with key influencers, and attracting new customers.

Digital Marketing Is A Crucial Part Of Any Business Strategy Now

Digital marketing is more in demand than ever.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses and individuals were forced online, triggering a digital transformation. As a result, the Internet is now being used at a rate never experienced before. 

Companies with digital solutions can easily answer customers’ queries online and are better able to grow in this post-pandemic normal. Due to their digital transformation experiences, companies are now better equipped to move forward in a digital world.

Digital marketing is likely to be a critical part of any company’s business strategy in the future. It is also evident that digital marketing is crucial for any company to remain adaptable to any market situation. The firms that cannot adapt digitally are likely to be left behind.

Wrapping Up

Now that you have a better understanding of digital marketing, it is time for you to consider how your business can transform digitally too. If you’re interested in making a digital marketing campaign for yourself or need advice on digital marketing, contact us.

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Orignal publication date: 11 May, 2020
Updated: 25 November, 2022

Brand personality is critical in digital marketing. In an increasingly information-saturated world, it helps your brand stand out and lets you tell your company’s story in an engaging and interesting way.

Your company profile is your public persona online. Everywhere you have an opportunity to tell that story – from your “About Us” webpage to your social network profiles – provides a chance to showcase your brand personality with an audience, and it’s imperative that it resonates with them.

Take the two examples below, which company profile below piques your interest more?

Example 1:

“Hey, we’re Company A. We work to provide solutions to your issues. We have several high-profile projects coming up in the next few months. If you’d like to work with us, you can always give us a call!”

Example 2:

“Hey, we’re Company B! We’ve been part of the recent (high profile program you recognize) in conjunction with (company you’ve heard of). It is focused on improving the welfare of people from (community or area you know). Our recent case studies, (case 1) and (case 2), have been published in (publication you recognize). These projects have (results that you would value for your business). If you believe we can help your business with a solution, inquire with us. We’re here to help!”

Shorter doesn’t necessarily mean sweeter.

Besides its brevity, Example 1 lacks details. It is vague, using terms like “provide solutions”, “several high-profile projects,” and doesn’t attempt to build any rapport. There’s no substance to it and it comes across as a generic, automated email – no one is interested in reading more than a few of those in a week.

Example 2 is specific. It sends a “value-driven” message, with examples and results that you, their audience, can relate to. To top it off, it comes across as far more personable and approachable than Example 1. 

What makes a company profile boring?

In Example 1, any audience considering the company’s services may not get past the first line. There’s no information available on the actual services on offer and no detail to make it appealing. Less ambiguous statements that are backed by data and specific can improve it tremendously.

In fact, Example 1 committed almost every company profile-writing sin on this list because it was too brief. In a way, it doesn’t consider any interest of its audience, which just makes it plain boring.

The importance of company profiles for brand development

Your website is your virtual business card – your virtual office -, and your social media profiles are your online “outlets” representing your brand on their respective networks. Anything you say in these profiles reflects the image and values of your company.

A company profile should reinforce and proliferate your brand’s authority in your respective niche or industry through a well-developed story. It is therefore important to invest some time in creating a good one. Here’s how you can bank on your strengths without going overboard.

Five Ways To Create an Exciting Company Profile

1. Create Your Unique Tone Of Voice

Everyone knows this: black and white are boring when compared to the spectrum of colours on the colour wheel. In the same way that a colourful website drives attention to elements you wish your audience to focus on, a ‘colourful’ company profile can really make your brand stand out and be noticed.

It is first important to develop the right tone of voice that resonates with your defined customer persona. More importantly, the tone of voice is something you must be comfortable with personifying to the world. The table below shares voice characteristics you may consider for yourself.

company-profile-characteristic

The right ‘colour’ for your company profile can have an amazing inbound effect as it proliferates.

2. Keep It Simple

A company profile should not be too short, à la Example 1 above. At the same time, being overly verbose can be detrimental too.

Here is an example that comes across as tooting its own horn without caring for what a reader may be interested in:

“Hello there, we’re Company C!

“We have recently worked with Company A’s project in Africa. Handled by our personnel A, B, and C, each specializing in (expertise 1, 2, and 3), we’ve achieved stellar results in the project that made (variables 1, 2, and 3) each have a respective 230% increase while having only a 2% margin of error.”

On the surface, it seems like it has all the ingredients that might sell your company right. However, it is too lengthy and has lots of unnecessary details that borderline on narcissism. Your audiences want to know what you did, how you did it, and how it ended up with just enough details that are easily digestible in a few seconds.

In comparison, Example 2 is about the right length. Each sentence is focused on improving the understanding of the reader about their business. Specifics are kept to a minimum, enough to impress readers, but shies away from overloading them with percentages as listed above in Example 3.

The language utilized also needs to be simple enough that even an 11-year-old can understand it. It is important to ensure audiences outside your industry can easily understand your profile. This helps it to proliferate faster.

3. Tell a Story

linkedin coca-cola

People bond over stories. While discussing your company’s results with clients, your profile also needs to mesh its personality with a mission and purpose. Get readers to “be in your corner” when they read it. Humanize your profile to help your audience connect.

If pitching your profile online, via social media, for example, utilize the area provided for writing your “About Us” section. Try including the origin story of your brand and the values that make your company what it is.

Check out Coca Cola’s LinkedIn profile as an example. LinkedIn allows more space to write a lengthier profile. On other social networks, you’ll need to condense it while maintaining the story.

It takes practice and some work, but you can keep telling your brand story and keep your audience engaged.

4. Organize Your Narrative

As you may have guessed – there are many perspectives you can add to your company profile. We describe 3 different styles, each focusing on different things for their company narratives:

The Friendly Neighborhood Business: Small and medium businesses targeting their local communities benefit greatly from this type of narrative. The narrative focuses on the brand’s values when it comes to creating its products or providing its services.

For example, Riverside Foods’ narrative focuses on the founding family’s first food mart and their experience forging the standards they have in providing their quality products and services.

 

The Professional and Clean-Cut Solution: Medium to larger businesses targeting other businesses use this particular narrative in their descriptions. It focuses on its processes and continuous development of practices to optimize its operations.

An example is Addiction Foods. It is a custom pet food manufacturer for dog food brands, writes on its ‘About’ page that they focus on reinventing and revolutionizing pet food formulation and production consistently for its clients.

The Doer:  All businesses of different scales can find this particular narrative style efficient in developing brand retention despite its objective and achievement-driven voice.

Henrik Plumbing from California uses a third-person narrative approach in its description. It details their specialization in residential, commercial, and industrial piping services. Further stress is placed on their efficient operations due to their 25 years of experience providing their services.

5. Test It Out

Before publishing your company description, have someone else read your profile. This isn’t just to spot editorial mistakes.

You can easily develop tunnel vision when writing descriptions. Another set of eyes helps to reveal areas to make it appeal even more.

The more people you share your profile with, the better. It’ll allow you, over time, to collate feedback and craft an even better company profile that has a greater impact on your business.

Wrapping Up

Company profiles tell people what your company can do, how it began, and what it can, and has, achieved. It’s something worth investing time in and crafting with care. Best of all, it’s easy to do!

We hope these five simple steps can ensure that your profile stands out from the rest and creates the right traction for your brand.

Originally published: May 2 2018
Updated: 25 November 2022

When chasing audience engagement and building customer satisfaction and loyalty, content marketing plays a key role. Content marketing is the act of using content to attract and retain customers. It’s any media that can be used to create awareness about a product, service, or event.

The goal of content marketing is to create valuable and compelling information so that people will keep coming back for more. The easiest way for marketers to do this is by creating blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, etc. Content marketers want their content to be informative and interesting or entertaining enough that people will want more of it.

Why Content Marketing is the Most Important Skill for Marketers

In the age of digital marketing, content marketing has become a significant factor in many marketing strategies. The long-term success of a company hinges on its ability to produce and distribute high-quality content that resonates with customers. In recent years, marketers have started to recognise the importance of content. They have begun embracing content marketing as a means of targeting their customers and driving sales.

Key Content Marketing Skills:

  1. Understand customer behaviour: Marketers should have a good understanding of what customers want and how they behave in order to create effective content that will resonate with their target audience.
  2. Storytelling: Good storytelling is what makes a marketing message memorable. It’s the art of telling a brand’s story in an interesting way that will resonate with the audience.

Developing a Successful and Sustainable Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing works hand-in-hand with integrated marketing – a marketing approach that takes into account the customer’s journey and touchpoints.

Integrated marketing is more than advertising across multiple channels; it integrates all aspects of communication (i.e., advertising, public relations, events, web design and social media) to create a cohesive customer experience. 

When developing a content marketing strategy, take the integrated approach.   Convey a clear, unified branded message to drive higher customer engagement on your company’s products or services. Also, keep in mind that your four P’s of content marketing – Purpose, People, Placement, and Promotion – should work together in an integrated marketing campaign.

Marketing’s Four P’s and Their Role in Your Content Marketing Strategy

The four P’s provide a solid foundation for your content marketing strategy. They serve as the building blocks for creating content that’s relevant, valuable, and engaging. 

Purpose

What’s the purpose of this piece of content? What goals are you trying to achieve? The purpose of content is to provide value to your audience. When you’re creating content, ask yourself “what am I trying to accomplish with this piece?” If you’re trying to make your audience laugh, for example, then you’ll want to create humour. If you want your audience to get more engaged with the brand, then focus on a call-to-action or build awareness about your brand.

People

People are the most important part of content marketing. Without people, there would be no need for content. So, it’s crucial to know who your target audience is and what you’re trying to reach with your content.

There are many different types of people in our world today and each type of person has their own interests and needs. Suppose your business sells vegan products. Your target audience will be individuals who want to eat healthier or people who have dietary restrictions. If you run a business that sells athletic equipment, then your target audience will be those who want to improve their health or those who are athletes themselves.

Placement

The placement of your content is another critical aspect to look at. If it’s being used for a social media campaign, it needs to be distributed on the appropriate channels. For example, if the content is about how to make an omelette, post it on social media channels that are popular with foodies and those interested in cooking.

Promotion

How are you going to promote your content? Promotion is essential to make sure your content gets the attention it deserves. In general, there are two main types of content promotion: organic and paid. Organic promotion includes submitting your content to directories like Hacker News, Reddit, Quora or Facebook Groups while paid promotion includes services like sponsored tweets on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Key Elements of a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

A good content marketing strategy is a mix of various content types, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and webinars. Remember that content marketing isn’t only about writing content, but also about distributing the content across your website and social media profiles.

  1. The strategy should be tailored and varied.

    For example, if the content is for a company website then it should be geared towards attracting potential customers. If it’s for an email marketing campaign, it should seek to build relationships with current customers. Content should be tailored to the purpose it serves and varied so that it does not bore consumers.
     
  2. The strategy should be executable and achievable.

    Every content marketing strategy needs to be achievable – setting objectives that are too far out of reach will only cause stress and frustration in the long run. It’s important to set targets that are doable and achievable will boost productivity and morale.
  3. The strategy should be continuous and never stop.

    Your content marketing strategy should not be time-limited like regular marketing campaigns. Aim for ongoing engagement, instead, it should be ongoing and sustainable, so that your potential clients feel that they can trust your company at all times.

 

Best Practices for a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

1. Know your audience and their need for information.

The more you know about your audience, the better able you will be to provide them with what they want. This means that you must do some research on who’s reading your blog or website. 

You should also understand what types of articles they like and don’t like. Your content needs to be useful and applicable to your readers. If you write something that doesn’t interest anyone, no one will read it.

2. Create a plan and think about the message you want to deliver

Before you start writing, come up with a clear idea of what you want to say. Think about why you’re writing and what you hope to achieve from your content.

You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t start somewhere. Start by brainstorming ideas for your first draft. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling at this point; just focus on getting your thoughts down on paper. A good way to start is to write down ideas that come to you in an ‘Idea Bank’. 

3. Focus on quality content and not quantity

Quality content is the key to success online. While blogs with low-quality content can get quickly shared and become popular on social media, these posts are rarely read for long periods of time. 

Focus on publishing quality content that appeals to your target audience. Write content pieces that educate people, engage or entertain readers, or provide a point of view that’s difficult to find elsewhere.

4. Find your voice and start creating content that is uniquely yours

“Finding your voice” is often the first step people take when starting to blog. There are many different styles of writing and finding the one that suits you best can be difficult. One way to find your voice is to start by asking yourself what it is that you want to say. Once you know this, it becomes much easier to determine how to say it, what tone of voice would be best on a personal or professional level.

5. Make sure that you have enough time to write content every day

It’s important to make sure that you have enough time to write content every day. Anyone who wants to be successful with copywriting or just writing, in general, knows that it can be hard to find time to write. 

Content development can take a lot of time, especially when you’re first starting out. So, be sure to set aside enough time to work on your content every day. Just like with any new skill, it will improve with more practice.

6. Have a clear goal or target audience in mind before writing any content

Writing for the Internet and the search engines shouldn’t be a guessing game. By focusing your writing on your specific goal and target audience, you can create content that will resonate with your site visitors. The more focused you are on these areas, the more likely your visitors will find what they’re looking for.

7. Be consistent with the frequency of publishing new pieces of content

The frequency with which you publish new content is dependent on the goals of your company, the needs of your customers and what your competition is doing. Posting content at least once a week will help to maintain high levels of traffic to your site, but this may not be possible for all companies.

8. Know what type of content works best for your product/service

The content you create for your product or service is one of the most important factors to its success. Knowing how to create content that works for your target demographic will help you gain followers, generate engagement, and drive conversions.

Creating the right content is the first step to helping your target demographic find you. However, people are bombarded with content all day long on social media, through email, and on other platforms; which makes it difficult for people to notice your post or message. If you want them to take notice of what you’re posting, make sure you put in enough time and effort into creating it.

9. Make sure that you know the different types of social media channels where you should publish your posts (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.).

Social media has been a major influence on the way people interact with each other. In addition to being a place to share news and connect with friends, social media is also where people find jobs, make business deals, gather news, and access entertainment. However, it can be difficult to keep up with all of these different channels and make sure your posts are seen by the right audience. 

Be mindful of what kind of content your target audience wants to see when they visit different social media platforms as opposed to your blog – your content should be tailored to match the channel it’s being published on or delivered to. The best way to do this is by understanding the audience that will be viewing your content.

 

Building Dynamic Buyer Personas for Content Marketing

You have a list of 10,000 possible customers. What do you do? You can’t target all of them, but you need to decide which ones to focus on.

Buyer personas are a tool for narrowing that list down to a few key groups, based on the roles they play in their lives and the problems they’re trying to solve. When you’re developing your buyer personas, remember that they should never be static – that is, your buyer personas should be constantly evolving and be adapting to changes in the market and their lives.

People don’t stay the same after all, so why would your buyer personas stay the same? Their needs and pain points change as they grow older, move, have families, start and leave school, etc. It’s important that your buyer personas reflect the developments in your buyer personas’ lives, that way you can adapt your content to match their interests and needs.

For example, if you have a buyer persona named ‘Homemaker Hannah’, a homemaker in charge of housekeeping, looking after the family and taking care of the home. Let’s say she was only recently married and you were targeting her as a young woman.

After a few years, however, your ‘Homemaker Hannah’ may have started a family, started a job to earn extra cash, or maybe she got divorced… Either way, her life no longer fits the label ‘Homemaker Hannah’. Time to change it up and update ‘Homemaker Hannah’ to match whatever your new research dictates.

 

Creating Successful Content

People want to find new information on their own, but they also want to be told what to do. If you’re an expert in your field, share your thoughts on trends and new developments in your field. Be careful to avoid “sales pitches” and instead offer value-added content that provides new insights. Remember, one of the principal purposes of content marketing is to earn your audiences’ trust and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your content:

  1. Make your content relevant
    The content you make should address your target audience’s needs. When you’re setting your goals for your content creation, make sure you’re thinking about what questions it’s answering or the problems it’s solving for your audience. 

  2. Make your content Interesting
    When was the last time you actually read an article or watched a video that was boring? Probably never. Why would you? Boring content is boring, after all, why would you read something that you did not find interesting? This is a key point when you go about creating your content: if it’s not interesting, your audience isn’t going to read it.

  3. Make sure your content is understandable
    Having the best content in the world isn’t going to do you any good if no one can understand a word of it. Nothing turns audiences off faster than a technical, jargon-filled piece of content, whether it’s an article, video, or podcast. 

    Your audience is only human, and not all of them will be experts in your field so make sure you’re using lay terms and not overloading them with jargon.

 

 

A Note about ‘Going Viral’

In the world of content, people often talk about ‘going viral’. Social media trends are defined by the number of people who view them. Virality means that something spreads quickly throughout social networks. 

A video goes viral when many people watch it online. An article goes viral if many people read it online. A petition goes viral when many people sign it. A website goes viral when many people visit it online. Viral content goes viral when it reaches a large audience. When someone shares something online, that person gets at least one other person who visits the page.

For example, if you write a blog post about how to make a doughnut-shaped cake, then three people read the blog post, and two of them share it with their friends. Their friends may also read the article and share it with their friends, and so on. Each person sharing your content is called a ‘viral’ user. In this case, the number of visitors to your site could be as high as 1 million people.

Virality ratios are calculated by dividing the number of new visitors from a given period by the number of existing visitors from the same period. A site may go viral if the virality ratio is above 1. For example, if you have 10,000 visitors per day and 2,000 of them come from the previous month, then your virality ratio is 20% (2,000 divided by 10,000). This means that you need to increase the number of new visitors by 20% to reach viral status.

Pros and Cons of Viral Content

As with most things in life, trying – or succeeding – at going viral is a double-edged sword. There are many benefits of viral content that you shouldn’t ignore, including:

  1. Good source of traffic: Viral content by its definition reaches a lot of people, and so has the potential to provide you with a lot of traffic.
     
  2. An efficient way to get your message out: Due to its wide reach and massive sharing, viral content allows you to get your message out more efficiently than non-viral content.
  3. Great way to build your brand’s reputation: Do you want to spread the word about your brand? Going viral has the power to spread your reputation far and wide.
     
  4. A refreshing way to market your business: Viral content has the potential to reach potential customers who may not otherwise see your content or hear about your brand.
     
  5. Save a lot of money on advertising: Viral sharing is a positive experience and allows your customers to keep the message going by continually sharing and resharing it, thus saving you money down the road that you might spend on advertising.
     
  6. Adds creativity to your marketing: Digital content doesn’t always go viral. In fact, it’s quite the opposite – you have to put in the effort and focus to hit your virality targets. This means adding creativity and really speaking to your audience.
     
  7. Let’s you stand out: Viral content is interesting and makes a lot of noise, allowing you to cut through the chaos of social media channels.  

On the other hand, there are also disadvantages to going viral that should be taken into consideration if viral marketing is the strategy you’re going for:

  1. People might not take your content seriously because they think it’s just a joke: Viral content tends towards the amusing or entertaining, and if you’re not careful your original message can get lost in the ensuing sharing-frenzy.
     
  2. Less control once you’ve put it out there: Once it’s live, it’s out there forever and you have little control over where it goes or what people do with it. While this is true of almost everything that gets published online, viral content draws a special kind of attention to itself so it bears warning you of the loss of control.
     
  3. Needs more hands-on messaging to keep reinforcing your brand messages: Viral marketing is more engaging than other kinds of content marketing, and requires marketers to stay plugged in to limit the negative content that may be generated as a result.
     
  4. Can be a waste of time if it doesn’t hit your actual target audience: Your viral content may go viral with the wrong audience, and there’s not really much you can do about it.
     
  5. Can be hard to achieve virality: Generating viral content isn’t something that you ‘just do’. It requires a solid understanding of your audience and their psychology. It can be very easy to get it wrong and never go viral at all.  

Measuring Content Marketing Success

Measuring your content marketing success is a two-pronged approach: metrics and return on investment (ROI). Most marketers, especially when first starting out, are more familiar with metrics than with ROI, so let’s start there first.

Which Content Marketing Metrics Should You Measure?

Many first-time marketers start off with vanity metrics – page followers, likes, etc. – rather than look at engagement metrics, which is where the truth of success or failure truly lies. There are six key content marketing metrics that you should be measuring:

  1. Lead Quality
    How good are the leads that your content is generating? How valuable are they? How long do they stay with the company? It’s a good idea at this stage to know how to calculate lifetime customer values (CLTVs) which is done simply with this formula: “Customer Lifetime Value = (Customer Value * Average Customer Lifespan)”. 
  2. Conversions (Sales)
    What percentage of your leads generated are converted to real customers? It’s easy to talk about leads brought in, but their true value lies in whether they become customers or not.
  3. Web Traffic
    How many visitors does your content pull to your website? Calculating the unique visitor count and understanding the demographic that visits your site will help you ensure that your content is hitting its mark. 
  4. Onsite Engagement
    What is your website traffic doing once it’s on your site? Is it exciting at certain points or lingering at others? Knowing how your website’s visitors are moving through your website can help you optimise their touchpoints and improve your content at each level.
  5. Social Media Engagement
    Only now do we get to dive into all those shiny metrics that many of us are familiar with: likes, shares, comments, followers, etc. These metrics are all great ways to track just how engaging your content is and whether it is having the effect that you were aiming for.
  6. SEO Success
    Content marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) go hand in hand and should always aim to work together. Making sure that your content is helping drive SEO and vice versa will provide a solid foundation for your content marketing success. For more information on SEO and how to make it work for you, check out our SEO Ultimate Guide.
Happy Content Marketing Team

What is Content Marketing ROI?

Content marketing ROI is the percentage showcasing the revenue gained from your content marketing initiatives versus what you spent on it. For content marketing to be successful, the ROI must be positive. 

The success of your content marketing strategy goes beyond just the money you make. If you don’t get any pageviews, shares, or visitors, then no one will find your business to buy your products or services. To get an accurate idea of your content marketing ROI, you have to identify what metrics will provide the clearest picture of its performance.

4 Steps to Measure Content Marketing ROI

You can calculate your content marketing ROI in four simple steps:

Step 1. Calculate your Expenditure

How much did it cost to create the content? If you’re working with an in-house team you’ll need to take into account the salaries of the team members involved in the content creation – copywriters, designers, etc. Also, be sure to include any expenses you incurred for content assets; for example if you needed to purchase images, video or audio stock.

Step 2. Calculate your Distribution Cost

What did it cost to get your content out there? Again, don’t forget to include in-house costs that may fall under this category. This will also include your paid promotions like PPC, social or SEM advertising. Be sure to include any costs for special tools or software for your content distribution or creation. 

For example, if you pay for and use a social media management tool like Hootsuite, Buffer, or SproutSocial, or you use content creation tools like premium Canva, then these costs need to be added to your calculation.

Step 3. Calculate Sales Value

When your content strategy is working, it will generate leads that convert. In other words, you’ll be adding to company revenue. 

In some cases, this is incredibly obvious and easy to track – a basic call-to-action on a content piece that someone clicks to buy a product. 

Other times this relationship is less clear and indirect, in which case you’ll need to get a little creative with how you calculate the influence your content piece had on generating that specific lead. Most marketers do this by claiming a certain percentage of the lead revenue rather than the whole hog.

Step 4. Apply Formula

Steps 1 and 2 provide the total cost of your content development, and with step 3 you now have the value. 

To get your ROI percentage,  simply apply the formula below:”.

Everything Keeps Changing

“Omnia mutantir, nihil interit.” – Ovid

We live in a dynamic world, where things are constantly changing. Digital transformation has been spurred along by the pandemic of the 2020s, and content marketing strategies have had to swivel, pivot and overcome a whole host of challenges.

What was once a simpler game has now become a complex warren of strategies and goals. Content marketing leads the way in the development and showing of new ideas, innovations, technology and communication with target audiences. There’s little doubt that the impact of the global pandemic will leave its mark on digital marketing as a whole, and force content marketers to keep up with changing trends. 

Everything is constantly changing and we are constantly learning how to adapt to the changes and use them to our advantage. As a content marketer, it is your responsibility to accept change and build on what came before you.

Ready to supercharge your content marketing initiatives? 2Stallions has an award-winning Content Marketing Team ready to help you achieve your objectives and grow your business.

Key Takeaways

  1. Messaging: Understand how to tell a good story and communicate your brand message to your audience.
  2. Target Audience: Know who they are, what they do and who to reach them by crafting dynamic buyer personas.
  3. Strategy: Build a content marketing strategy that is tailored, executable and continuous.
  4. Create Quality: Focus on creating quality content over a lot of content.
  5. Objectives: Set goals, understand them and know how you’re going to achieve them.
  6. Channels: Understand which channels you are going to be using and how best to use them to reach your target audience.
  7. Successful content: Know how to build content that is relevant, interesting and understandable.
  8. Innovate: Consider how to disrupt the market with your content.
  9. Metrics: Know what metrics you should be tracking and how to measure their success for your content marketing strategy.
  10. Value: Know how to measure and calculate your ROI.
Content Marketing Strategy Key Takeaways

In the wake of International Women’s Day on 8 March, we are very proud to announce that our Head of Content and Social, Olwen van Dijk-Hildebrand, has been recognised as one of the Top 10 APAC Women Content Champions for 2022.

Organised by CMS Asia, a jury panel consisting of high-performing women from across Asia-Pacific, working at companies like IBM, Visa, Netflix, and Citibank, to name a few, announced the winners at a virtual awards ceremony on March 14. 

This was the 2nd edition of awards dedicated to women content marketers. Over 50 nominations were received for this edition and 10 participants were declared as recipients of the top honour:

  1. Jennifer Alejandro
  2. Ruchika Rana Malhotra
  3. Tuhina Anand 
  4. Sita Kalluri 
  5. Trishna Mahtani 
  6. Yuko Tsukada 
  7. Meng Wu (Cheryl)
  8. Olwen van Dijk-Hildebrand
  9. Natasha Puri 
  10. Watson Tan

“I was incredibly nervous during the ceremony, there were so many amazing women in this group, I thought to myself: there’s no way I can win, not matched up against this crowd! And then they said my name and I felt a wave of giddy excitement rush over me,” Olwen said shortly after the ceremony.

After her recognition as one of the APAC Content Mogul 50 last year, it comes as no surprise to her team that she has once again been recognised for the great work she does at 2Stallions. With her as Head of Content – and now also as Head of Social – 2Stallions saw an increase of 35% in web traffic in 2021, an increase in lead generation conversion of 184.5% from 2020. Content downloads also increased by 252%, and the 2Stallions social following doubled in size.

On LinkedIn, Olwen added that “[t]he work I get to do as a content marketer is rewarding, but it’s also enlightening – I learn new things every day, I talk to different people all the time, I encounter new perspectives and fresh inspiration at every turn… It’s truly a privilege to be a content marketer right now. And it is truly an honour to have my work recognised in this way – especially by this amazing panel of judges! What a powerhouse of amazing women, each of them an inspiration.”

This award is an inspiration and motivation for the entire team, and, we hope, for our clients as well.

If you’re out there, wondering how you can drive sales and increase your lead generation, perhaps it’s time to look at improving your own content marketing. If so, get in touch today, we’re happy – and clearly equipped! – to help.

Social media has turned into the most prominent platform used for connecting with friends, forming communities, networking, engaging with customers, and promoting a business. 

Through this tool, marketers and business owners can reach new audiences and engage with prospects. It also enables them to attract a wider, targeted audience by placing ad campaigns.

First, What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing, a.k.a. SMM, is the process of interacting with your target audience through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

SMM is a powerful way to build brand awareness, draw in potential customers, stay on top of engagements, and promote your products or services, among other things. This practice also includes creating and sharing compelling content pieces, including articles, images, and videos.

Social Media Marketing Glossary

Check out the list of commonly used social media terms to keep yourself in the know.

A-H

  • Algorithms – is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.
  • Advertisement – short for ad, it is the promotion of a product, brand, or service to a specific audience. 
  • Brand awareness – is the level of familiarity consumers have with your brand. It’s often considered one of the main goals of social media marketing. 
  • Content marketing – is the practice of attracting and retaining customers through the creation and distribution of original, valuable content such as videos, whitepapers, guides, and infographics. 
  • Direct message(DM) – refers to a private message sent directly to a user’s social media inbox. 
  • Digital marketing – is a concept that uses the Internet and digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other d online platforms to promote products and services. 
  • Engagement rate – is a social media metric that tells you much about a post that motivates people to interact with it. It’s defined as (number of people who engaged with your post/number of people who saw your post) 
  • Follower – refers to a social media user who has subscribed to see your posts in their feed. Both personal and business accounts can have followers. 
  • Frequency – is a Facebook/Instagram advertising term that refers to how many times your ad was shown to the average user in your target audience. 
  • Hashtag (#) – is a way of connecting your posts on social media to other posts on the same subject or trending topic.

I-N

  • Influencer – is a social media user with a significant audience who can drive awareness about a trend, topic, company, or product. 
  • Influencer marketing – a strategy involving collaboration with an ‘influencer’ to promote a product, service, or campaign.
  • Insights – refers to the analytics and performance statistics you can see on your Instagram profile in the Instagram app. 
  • Mention – is the act of tagging a user in a social media message. Sometimes called @ mentions, these usually trigger a notification for that user and allow your audience to click through to their bio or profile.
  • Newsfeed – is the Facebook term for the screen that shows all the latest updates posted by people the user follows. 
  • Notification- is a message or alert indicating new social media activity. For example, if somebody likes one of your Instagram photos, you can receive a notification on your phone that lets you know.

O-Z

  • Objectives – are the results you want to achieve through your ad campaign. These objectives are used to determine which key performance indicators to follow and optimise ad spend.
  • Platform –  means the same thing as “social media network” or “social media channel”. However, a social media platform is technically the software behind a social network, including its API, backend, and markup language. 
  • Reach – is a social media metric that tells you how many people have seen your post. It differs from impressions in that even if a user sees your post multiple times, they still only count as one person reached.
  • ROI – short return on investment, is a measurement of how much revenue your activities on social media are generating for your company versus how much you are spending on them. 
  • Social media analytics – is an umbrella term used to describe both social analysis tools and the information those tools provide. 
  • Targeting – is a social media advertising term that refers to how you select the potential audience for your ads.
  • Traffic – is the number of users who visit a given website or page. 
  • Trending – is a subject or event that had a sudden surge in popularity on social media. 
  • Viral – is a term describing content that spreads exponentially on social media. This typically occurs when people share the content with their followers, then their followers share the same content to their followers, and so on, creating a snowball effect.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Iphone, notification, laptop, office, man

1. Build Brand Awareness and Recognition

Social media marketing helps build better brand awareness and recognition. Unlike conventional media, like TV or print, social media brings your business in front of customers more rapidly. The reason? It’s because half of the world now uses social media.

On average, people spend 145 minutes on social platforms. The fact that the average daily time spent on social media continuously grows means more exposure for your business.

Prospects might come across your social media post–and they might share it when they find the content handy and relatable. The shared post could attract more eyeballs and encourage engagement (i.e., likes, comments, shares), helping spread the word about your brand faster

Building online communities are one of the most effective ways to get your name out there. Here’s the good news: forming a community has now been made easier, thanks to social media.

Facebook, in particular, lets you bring as many people as possible together through Facebook Groups. Members can invite their friends, family members, or colleagues to join the community and share their stories, posts, and opinions.

Apart from creating a Facebook Group, you can also create a community by sharing meaningful content. Getting your social followers to tell their stories sparks conversation. It encourages others to participate in the thread, allowing your social media posts to appear in the News Feed.

When your posts show up in the people’s News Feed, you’re likely to prompt more discussion–and promote positive word-of-mouth. For instance, existing customers may recommend your products and encourage prospects to give them a try.

2.  Form Online Communities

Social media marketing helps build better brand awareness and recognition. Unlike conventional media, like TV or print, social media brings your business in front of customers more rapidly. The reason? It’s because half of the world now uses social media.

On average, people spend 145 minutes on social platforms. The fact that the average daily time spent on social media continuously grows means more exposure for your business.

Prospects might come across your social media post–and they might share it when they find the content handy and relatable. The shared post could attract more eyeballs and encourage engagement (i.e., likes, comments, shares), helping spread the word about your brand faster.

3. Increase Website Traffic

While social media marketing and search engine optimisation are two different concepts, the former plays a pivotal role in the latter. Social media allows you to scale up your SEO efforts in different ways, including:

  • Social media profile optimisation. Adding branded keywords to your social media profiles lets your business become searchable. It also helps to include links to your company website, products, or services.
  • Content distribution. Social media gives you access to a much wider audience than your website alone. Publishing and sharing content across your social networks helps attract more traffic to your site.
  • Link building. Building links is one of the many SEO techniques. You can incorporate links in the call-to-actions (CTAs) of your social media posts or link the product you’re promoting to a specific landing

4. Improve Customer Satisfaction

Social media allows you to establish direct contact with your target audience. You can engage with your audience consistently and respond quickly to their questions or concerns via the platform.

Since social networks provide you with opportunities to connect with fans and followers, building healthy customer relationships becomes easier. Here are a few ways to use social media in enhancing the overall customer experience:

  • Connect with customers who have questions, complaints, or feedback 
  • Keep followers updated on the new services and product offerings 
  • Involve prospects and followers in campaigns (i.e., polls, giveaways, share to win, etc)

Social Media Marketing Strategies

Like in other digital marketing concepts, you’ll need a solid strategy to succeed in social media marketing. Thankfully, there’s not just one but a handful of techniques you can implement to leverage the power of social media. Here’s how you can use the tool to its full potential: 

1. Personalise Social Media Content

According to a study, 81% of customers want brands to know them deeper and find the best way to approach them. Users crave personalised experience and respond better to content tailored to their needs and interests.

This is where crafting personalised content comes in handy. Personalisation can give your business a boost in social media engagement, not to mention customer loyalty and brand affinity.

Below are some tips to get your content personalisation right:

  • Segment your audience. Start by creating buyer personas, a profile of your ideal customer. Then, compare them against your existing customers’ data, such as age, location, language, interests, goals, and more.
  • Create content for each segment. Once you have your personas in place, produce content that’s most relevant to them. While blog posts and videos are the most comment content forms, you can also explore other types including:
    • case studies
    • product demos
    • product comparison guides
    • Keep personalisation offline and online. Investing in AI-powered chatbots is one way to facilitate personalised, real-time conservation. 

2. Partner with Influencers

  • Influencer marketing is another tried-and-tested social media marketing strategy.  Collaborating with ‘influencers’ (thought leaders, celebrities, other individuals with a large following) lets you expand your customer base and drive purchase decisions. 
  • A post by an influencer can have a much bigger effect than a post by an everyday user on the same platform. The reason behind this is either because consumers find influencers credible or they look up to them.

3. Run Social Media Campaigns

Social media marketing works hand in hand with social media advertising. Advertising on social networks is a sure-fire way to reach your target audience fast. So if you have more funds to support your SMM initiatives, consider placing ads on different platforms.

Types of social media ads include Facebook ads, video ads, stories ads, slideshow ads, playable ads, ads in Explore, and more. Whichever ad you plan to run on whatever platform, make sure to set marketing goals. A few objectives you can include are:

  • Obtain user input 
  • Create email marketing lists
  • Increase website traffic 
  • Increase overall brand engagement
  • Generate more sales

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

The best thing about social media marketing is that it allows you to measure the performance of your SMM efforts. In short, it helps you determine whether your strategy is hitting the mark or not.

Here are four of the most important social media metrics:

  • Engagement. The engagement metric measures how users actively interact with your content. Engaged audiences interact with a post through likes, comments, shares, retweets, and brand mentions, to name a few.
  • Reach. This metric is influenced by two factors–timing and content. It indicates the number of unique users who have seen your post.
  • Impressions. This social media reporting metric tells you the number of times your content appears on someone’s feed.
  • Conversion. The conversion metric lies at the end of the funnel–it measures the number of leads converted to sales.

Evaluate & Adjust Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

By this point, you should have a clear grasp of your social media strategy.

You’ll never know how one campaign performed until you evaluate and compare it against your goals. 

The ability to take a bird’s eye view of your social media interactions can help you put things into perspective. Take a look at your best-performing content and modify your campaigns when your material isn’t working as expected.

Befriend social media analytics. Use data to track your social presence. React to your social media ads to keep the momentum and most importantly, maintain a laser focus on your goals. 

When things become overwhelming, go back to basics. Revisit this guide to start anew and come up with an even better strategy.

Do You Have Your Social Media Marketing Plan for 2022 Figured Out?

A well-thought-out strategy is insufficient if not carried out in the same manner as planned. You must design visual content so that the user is fascinated by the post even before they read information. 

It might be as simple as a designed social media post, a video, or even a picture of your product that has been professionally or artistically photographed. The goal is to catch people’s attention before they get interested in your product or service.

The goal of social media marketing is to connect with your target audience. So, put a strong emphasis on this to keep your business ahead of your competitors.

This article emphasised the fact that there are several parts to having a current social presence. Making your own doesn’t have to be time-consuming or a drag. If you create measurable objectives and follow each of the processes above, you’ll be well ahead of the game when developing a social media marketing plan for your company. 

Need help boosting your brand awareness, audience engagement, and online visibility on social media? 2Stallions got you covered! We provide social media marketing services that can help you grow your audience and business.

Learn more about our social media marketing services and process here. Wishing you the best in 2022!

Content marketing has evolved from a revolutionary marketing concept to a critical marketing tool for virtually every company across every sector. The value of content marketing stems from its capacity to boost the amount of high-quality traffic to your company’s website. 

Many business owners do not realize that content reigns supreme in raising awareness and producing high-quality leads, both of which are necessary for healthy revenue growth. 

The truth is that well-planned and executed content can attract your target audience to your company’s website, where they eventually convert into leads and, finally, sales. Here is what you need to know about content marketing and why it is essential for your business.

What Is Content Marketing?

Traditional advertising involves letting your target market know how great you are at what you do. The same concept applies to content marketing. 

Content marketing is an approach that involves developing and sharing engaging and relevant online content, such as blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos, other material in trying to entice, connect with, and retain your target market. 

This method demonstrates your expertise, raises brand awareness, and puts your company at the forefront of people’s minds when they need to purchase what you sell. 

Why Is Content Marketing So Important?

If you aren’t yet convinced that you need to incorporate content marketing into your marketing strategy, here are a few reasons why content marketing is so important.

We Live in a Digital World

Because we live in a digital world and most of what we do as people depends largely on our online activity, your business’s future depends largely on content marketing. This is because your target market is online, and in order to reach them effectively, your business needs to have a strong online presence.

The bottom line is that your target market is online, and if you want to reach them, your marketing strategy has to concentrate on reeling in your audience through quality online content.

It Helps to Create a Trusting Relationship with Your Target Market

When you supply your viewers with interesting and relevant material, they are more likely to trust your business. You’re effectively developing a relationship of trust with your customers by connecting with them in this way and offering answers to their questions using helpful content.

Produce high-quality material on a regular basis to boost your brand presence and ultimately encourage loyalty, which can help boost your company’s revenue.

Establish Yourself as an Expert in the Field

Publishing high-quality content allows you to demonstrate your competence and expertise in your industry. When your videos, articles, blog entries, podcasts, and other material responds to your readers’ inquiries and help them fix actual issues, you establish yourself as an expert in the field who is worthy of their time. 

People are more likely to remember the brand or company that provides them with the information they require. Higher ranks for your site in search engine results are likely to follow once you have established your expertise in your respective field.

It Encourages People to Return to Your Site

When you provide your online visitors with quality content, you offer them a favourable experience and create a positive impression. This favourable experience is likely to reaffirm their opinion of your business and encourage them to read or watch more of your material in the future, which means they are more likely to return and more likely to make a purchase.

Good Content Increases Your Conversion Rate

The goal of any marketing strategy is to drive sales, and consumers today are a lot wiser nowadays. They do not like being bombarded with advertisements while enjoying their favourite show and are no longer hooked by catchy jingles.

In a world where information is readily available, audiences want to have their minds fed. Therefore, it is much easier to reach your target audience and encourage them to convert after establishing a relationship of trust through quality content.

Boost Your SEO Ranking

When they want to find the answers to a question, the first thing people do is pick up their phones and type in a search query on Google. If you want your brand to be seen by your target market, your goal should be to rank high on search results.

Google has made it mandatory for companies to generate only helpful content if they want to rank towards the top of users’ search results. Your organization can increase its online visibility and achieve greater SEO rankings by continuously creating high-quality content.


About the Author

Evestar’s Imo Bennard is a marketing professional who originally hails from Nigeria. He enjoys spending time with his family and friends by hanging out on the vast coastal plains of the southwest regions. Unless he’s on a mission of creating meaningful relationships with his business associates while ensuring that each client achieves their business objectives with each content campaign that was developed.

 

Let’s face it, getting the attention of your target audience isn’t easy in today’s marketing environment. 

The concept of viral content is a modern enigma. It might appear as though videos of singing babies or fascinating deep-dive profiles of Instagram influencers suddenly gain millions of views. When it comes to viral material, there is frequently an unexplainable element of luck and timing, but for the most part, it boils down to planning, thinking, and attention to detail.

Here are four tips to create content that goes viral:

1. Know your audience

Successful content is entirely dependent on your audience and how they respond to it. 

The first step to “virality” begins with your audience. Understand why your followers follow you, understand their background, then deliver posts that fulfill what they’re looking for. It’s hard to grow an audience without first establishing your brand and deciding the sort of follower you want to attract. Determine your desired niche or area of expertise, such as industry expert, social media maven, or brand influencer.

It’s hard to grow an audience without first establishing your brand and deciding the sort of follower you want to attract. Determine your desired niche or area of expertise, such as industry expert, social media maven, or brand influencer. 

2. Find a great hook

When it comes to social media, people want to know upfront what they’re looking at. 

People will see your title and choose whether or not to click through. Include precise and actionable information in your headline to make it more appealing. Use a statistic in your headline or inform people how many tips they will receive. 

People actively seek out information that guarantees a reaction because we know that if we respond, others will most likely react as well, ensuring that your shared content receives guaranteed views and likes.

3. Create content worth sharing

Another way to create viral content is to write content that people can relate to. Once you’ve captured the attention of your audience, you must deliver on the emotion or content promised in your hook.

People watch silly cat videos on the internet because they feel something when they watch them – a sense of levity in a chaotic world, a connection to a cherished pet, or just the opportunity to chuckle. The video of a cat about to pounce isn’t life-changing, deep, or even somewhat significant, but it does evoke emotion.

The most current trend in internet content is toward authenticity, which acts as an emotional hook in and of itself. After the audience complained that they didn’t want to see picture-perfect versions of life, the Influencers or content creators are now sharing about their hardships, life lessons, and day-to-day lifestyle

Their content is effective because people can connect with and relate to it, and they believe that others in their networks will as well. This is how content becomes popular: the creator understands what their audience wants to see and delivers it in a way that encourages the audience to share it.

4. Make it visual

The packaging of everything needs to be pretty, isn’t it? Can you imagine the value of video if a static image is worth a thousand words? 

Many industry professionals propose producing video content across social media networks to promote engagement lately. You might believe that making a viral video is risky, but there are a few things you can do to help your content take off. 

To begin, keep in mind that longer isn’t always better when it comes to videos. The majority of individuals use mobile devices to access social media. This indicates that people are probably on the go or multitasking while watching your video. The key to a good video is to quickly hook viewers with an engaging title or thumbnail image and then end the video before they are bored.

 

Bottomline

In today’s oversaturated digital market, making viral content is more difficult than ever. A great social media post requires a combination of attention to detail, planning, and chance. A solid hook, good content, and an awareness of what your audience wants to see are the three components of viral content. 

How you approach social media now should be an extension of yourself — an extension of who you are. Don’t try to be something or someone you’re not. Don’t try to hack the algorithm. Just show up as your true authentic self and watch what happens.

 

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