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Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy in 5 Simple Steps

Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy in 5 Simple Steps

 

To create a winning content marketing strategy, you must take a look at what you have done in the past and assess why you didn’t reach your goal. When we meet with business owners along the Gulf Coast, we provide them with a free digital marketing consultation. We look at what they are currently doing that is working, not working, where they are, and where they can improve. Our team of digital marketing specialist will analyze current market trends and determine where they can best dominate their industry. 

There is more to just posting on social media and paying for boosted ads on Facebook. It isn’t so much about the amount you post on Facebook anymore. By delivering the right content at the right audience, your opportunities are endless. Stop beating yourself up over not getting much engagement, or what little engagement is from a friend, family member, or co-worker. We’ve all heard the saying. “Content is king,” but the truth is not all content is created equal. 

In this blog post, we will discuss five simple steps for you to create a winning content marketing strategy.
 

Step 1 to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy is 

 

A Captivating Message 

People have very short attention spans. We live in an age of instant gratification. We have been taught that we can get any information we need at our finger tips in seconds thanks to smartphones. We are in an age of digital advancement that changes in a blink of an eye. How are your everyday business owners to keep up with these changes and appeal to the right audience? 

It is said that marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. You must decide which specific market you are going to target to and stick with it. A retailer of women’s clothing may decide to target women of a certain age, income bracket, and geographical area of residence. It’s not enough to just run an ad targeted at these ladies. You must appeal to them with your message. 

How do you captivate this audience to draw them into your business? Think like they do. Find out what they like to do and what they have in common other than just clothes. Maybe many of these women are soccer moms. What kind of car do they drive? Where do they like to eat out? Where do they hangout? 
By finding these commonalities, you can figure out how to speak to them and get their attention. Every clothing retailer is targeting them, but not everyone can target them the way you can. Dare to be different in order to be successful. 

Let your social media post or email targeting campaign be a message directed at them as if you are talking directly to one person. Allow them to feel like you truly understand and get them in a way that makes them feel important, appreciated, and understood. 

The way that you target the example audience in this step isn’t much different than you would approach anyone else. Just realize that some target audiences need more social proof, more or less words in order to create a winning content marketing strategy. Remember, to captivate an audience, you have to genuinely know them.
 

Step 2 to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy is 

 

Images

Images matter in all aspects to create a winning marketing strategy. Your images must be high-quality, high-resolution, captivating, and visually appealing. You want your images to portray the image and lifestyle that your brand offers. You want less of advertising, product images, sales pitches, and other gimmicks. Be more strategic with the authenticity and frequency of your advertising, but don’t limit yourself to the possibilities of lifestyle posts. 

When it comes to the resolution of images, any photographs you take should be with a camera that has a minimum of 12 megapixels. The higher the megapixels the better quality of images you will have. 
Stock images can be a great source of imagery, but be selective in your choices. Many images are overused. Dig a little deeper when choosing images that are available for stock because anyone can access them. 

When in doubt, hire a professional photographer. Choose a photographer that is experienced in the type of images you need. One who photographs people well may not be able to photograph product images for your e-commerce, and vice-versa. There are diamonds in the rough that can photograph anything. 
 

Step 3 to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy is 

 

Strong Call-To-Actions

Giving a clear and concise call-to-action is where many businesses miss the boat. They don’t want to come across as rude or bossy by limiting themselves on effective digital marketing. You want to tell you visitor what to do in the next step of the process so they don’t get lost along the way. You prompt them with buttons that say, “Buy Now”, “Request A Quote”, “Call Now”. 

If you are familiar with a conversion funnel, you know that taking a customer from the wide part of the funnel to the small part can sometimes be tricky. If you have delivered a compelling and captivating message and successful brought the visitor to your website, then you have done half the work. The rest is easy, you just have to point them in the right direction. 

CTA’s that give specific and short directions will get more traction than one that is vague or makes the user have to do more work. Try to avoid CTA’s like “learn more” or “read more” as they aren’t usually relevant to what your business does. These CTA’s work for bloggers and journalists, but not necessarily for a retailer or other services. You want your visitor to have the best user-friendly experience that entices them to return again and again.  Feel at ease consulting with specialist to determine what you can do best to create a winning content marketing strategy for your business.
 

Step 4 to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy is 

 

Landing Pages

When speaking with most business owners, we find that not many are familiar with the digital marketing term ‘landing page’, the purpose of landing pages, and how they can drive more business. What is a landing page? Essentially, a landing page is a one page website that gives the visitor a specific message and strong call-to-action. This page is different from your traditional webpage or blog post. We are delivering one particular message in order to capture the users email address in exchange for information or other special items. 

Even if the landing page does not generate a sale, you capture email addresses of those who expressed an interest in what you do. You can use an email marketing campaign to convert them later. For now, we will just focus on the landing page and how you can get it in front of your potential customers. 

Use a paid ads strategy to direct traffic to your landing page such as: Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google AdWords. Go where your audience is and find out what they are searching for that is relevant to what you do. The best thing about paid digital ads is that you get to select who seems them. This is why it is imperative to really know who your audience is so that you can better serve them. 

 

Step 5 to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy is 

 

Test and Re-Test

It’s going to take some time to adjust and create a winning content marketing strategy. You are going to need to continually test and adjust your strategies until you find one that works the best. Algorithms, rules, regulations, and requirements, are constantly changing.  It can feel disappointing to not generate as much or any sales from your paid advertising. 

We find that business owners get burned on paid social media ads because they don’t really understand them. They usually use to broad of an audience because the reach appears more enticing. In all honesty, you will get better results with a narrow audience reach of 1,000 people than 1,000,000. Otherwise, you end up wasting a lot of money on paid advertising to the wrong people. This is another reason why it is best to really get to know your customer base. 

 

Conclusion of How to Can Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

The end goal is to convert people from visitors to paying customers. You can have the best products and services in the world, but without a proper content marketing strategy, you miss out on full profit potential. Whether you want to appeal to your local geographic or worldwide, the sentiment of the content is the same, it’s just delivered on a different level. 

Use these five steps when you being to analyze your digital marketing plan. Rinse and repeat. The digital world has an excess of potential that’s waiting for you to capitalize. If you are utterly confused on how to do this and would like a free digital marketing consultation, please call us today to book your appointment with our specialist. 

 Phillip Long, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.

 

About BIS Technology Group

BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com.

You may reach out to us at:
Phone: 251-405-2555

Email: info@askbisdesigns.com


6 LinkedIn Marketing Strategies to Attract More Clients Today

Has your business been struggling to find new clients? Consider LinkedIn. This powerful professional networking site has proven to be very effective in generating qualified leads and prospective customers. 

Maybe you’ve tried LinkedIn, but you’re not getting the results you want. Well, you’re not alone. Business owners often tell us they know they are not leveraging this platform’s opportunities to yield the fullest result.

But…you can. What if I told you that if you spent a little bit of dedicated time on LinkedIn each week, you could start receiving a continuous flow of qualified leads? Well, that’s just the case with these five basic LinkedIn strategies that you can implement today to start seeing results immediately. 

Sign up here for our next Executive Business Luncheon on May 19th, 2016, at Wintzell’s Oyster House in Fairhope, Alabama, to learn more about how to develop and implement a successful digital marketing plan to increase your company’s revenue.

Strategy #1: Create a professional profile.

 
When we meet with our social media marketing clients, the first step is to understand their business goals, their target audience and their unique market differentiators. Once these are defined, we cater their business profile on LinkedIn to those target audience decision makers. Here are some helpful tips to assist in making your profile stand out:

Make sure that your profile is professional, search-optimized, and most of all, client-focused and written to get the attention of the prospective decision maker. 

If you’re the owner of your business, list your title as CEO, President or something in that realm. Other CEOs often want to associate with CEOs, not “Business Development” people.  

Be specific. You must have it clearly spelled out who you are, who you help, and how you can help them to avoid confusion for those who land on your profile.

Get to the point fast in your “Summary”. Forget telling stories about how you used to play with computers when you were two. It’s ok to tell an origin story, but do that after you tell me what you can do now.

Try to throw in a little creativity and personality into your profile where appropriate to make it the least boring as possible. 

Strategy #2: Connect with everyone you know (or have known in the past).  

LinkedIn is all about business and personal connections. You never know where that next connection is going to come from or where someone in your past might lead to your next big deal.  Here are a couple tips to maximize your efforts: 

Send a personal message along with every request to connect with that person.  Unless you’re close friends, don’t assume that someone will remember who you are. Gently remind them and most people will connect with you. 

Never miss a chance to connect. Build up your contacts by reaching out to your second and third level connections. When you meet someone online or off, make sure you follow up with a connection request while you are still fresh on their mind.

Strategy #3: Identify prospects.

 
Join as many relevant groups as you can find. Look for your college alumni groups, groups from previous jobs, social groups, industry groups, and anything else you can find. 
Most LinkedIn users rely on groups to stay abreast on industry news, but they can also be an excellent source for new sales leads by:

Giving insight into a prospective company’s current situation through reading their comments in the group activity.
Allowing you access to more personal details of the LinkedIn user, whereas unless you already have a first level connection, you usually cannot see their full name.
Creating an opportunity and reason to connect, as one of the options available when sending a connection request is that you both belong in a group together.

You can also use the LinkedIn Advanced Search tool to find prospects who have job titles within your target audience such as: CEO, Accountant, VP Sales, Marketing Director, HR Specialist, etc. 

This search can be performed with or without selecting specific groups to search in.
Just type in your keywords (the job title) under the Advanced People Search then select 2nd connection under Relationship, then check the group you wish to search in.
LinkedIn Advanced Search
 

The Advanced Search Tool can also be used to search for companies within a specific area. Once the results list returns results, you can choose to follow those organizations and/or research their company pages to find out who their decision makers are.

Strategy #4:  Use InMail to connect with those hard to reach senior decision makers.  


LinkedIn allows you to send an InMail to anyone using LinkedIn without having to request a connection first, and ensures that it goes straight to their inbox. However, they are only available on paid accounts but with the Sales Navigator Professional premium plan, you’re able to: 

Send 15 InMail messages a month
See who’s viewed your profile
Have an unlimited profile search ability 
Hone in on the decision makers and create custom lead lists with advanced search filters 
Get lead recommendations able to be saved to a list

*As a side note, to avoid the costly InMail messaging options, if you do not already have a premium account and are not able to get one anytime soon, when you join a group, you are able to send 15 free messages per month instead of expensive InMails to people that share the same LinkedIn Groups as you.

Strategy #5: Write LinkedIn recommendations for your fellow colleagues.


LinkedIn’s recommendations are incredibly powerful when it comes to hooking your dream job.  The more you can obtain from different colleagues, the better.  With permission of course, you can take these testimonials outside of LinkedIn to be used on your website or other marketing materials. More often than not, when you write a recommendation for someone, they recommend you back (LinkedIn also sends them a reminder).

Strategy #6: Research and connect with Joint Venture and referral partners. 


Start by making a list of people that are a natural fit for your company. Depending on your industry, this could be a variety of local companies that interact with the same type of target audience clientele you do.

As explained above in the Identify Prospects section, once you have your list, start plugging in keywords in the “People or Company Search” on LinkedIn.  

Whenever you find someone on LinkedIn who appears to be a potential partner, you can ask to connect with them by saying something like this in the connect request: 

“Hey ‘Firstname’, I just happened upon you here in LinkedIn. We happen to both be friends with <insert mutual 1st connection>. I’m the CEO over here at ‘YourCompanyName’ and we often find the need to refer out business to people such as yourself. I’m not sure if you’re taking on any new business at this time, but figured that I’d introduce myself and connect with you here on LinkedIn in case you are. -­‐’YourName’.”


The Boolean search abilities on LinkedIn are staggering. Most people do not realize how targeted they can actually make their search criteria. You can read this Tip Sheet from LinkedIn here on how to use modifiers like quotes, parenthesis, AND, OR, and NOT.

We hope this breaks down some of the mystery behind how LinkedIn works for business prospecting. The strategies outlined here are tactics we employ with our clients when they opt in for the LinkedIn Prospecting services we provide. We also provide several different social media marketing and search engine optimization packages. To learn more about how to develop and implement a successful digital marketing plan to increase your company’s revenue, sign up here for our Executive Business Luncheon on May 19th, 2016, in Fairhope, Alabama at Wintzell’s Oyster House.