The word ‘marketing’ is so heavily used today that everybody knows and hears
about it all the time. Yet, even when I stepped into my first year of university, I never
fully understood the meanings that the term encapsulates.
“Doesn’t marketing just mean trying really hard to sell something?”
After marathoning a 5 hour content marketing webinar by SEMRush (shoutout to my ex-internship supervisor for tasking me to watch it), I understood that marketing meant a lot more than just calling strangers up trying to sell a product, or using cheap methods to advertise a service.
Here are 8 lessons I took away from the video.
1) Check out your Competition
The very first lesson I learnt is to check out your competition. By looking at the sort of content that your competitors are pushing out, we can ride on their existing knowledge of customers’ interests (they have already done the research for you!) and garner inspiration from their concepts.
Conversely, checking out your competition also informs you on what they have missed out on doing, which gives you an opportunity to try something new.
Another way to check out your competitors is by checking their SEO keywords. By sieving out the sort of keywords your competitors are using, we can better gauge which keywords we should fight to rank higher for, as well as find out what customers are searching for.
While you research your competitors, you might uncover information that is useful for your understanding of your company, especially if you have just joined a new company.
2) Start with the Right Fundamentals
The next lesson I learnt is to begin your content marketing journey with the essential fundamentals for your website, which is something often missed out by many who
jumped straight to other more fancy strategies. There are five fundamentals which I have noted down:
1) Have a Built-in Wordpress
Having a built-in wordpress can make the written content readily available and accessible to visitors so that they can have their questions answered. Besides, Wordpress is also helpful as it has SEO built into its platform, allowing search engines to find your content and get you up on the search rankings.
It is therefore crucial to consistently upload content on the blog to maintain the relevance and traffic of the website.
2) Have an SEO team
The greatest benefit of hiring an SEO team lies in the fact that they are the experts in that field. While it is always good to have a basic knowledge of how all these works, it makes more sense to assign the job to an expert who has plenty more experience (and who might be able to teach you a few things) while you focus on other matters.
3) Have Well-placed Call-to-Actions
Having well-placed call-to-actions is undoubtedly one of the most basic aspects to
get right when it comes to curating a website. Getting your customers to take action and purchase your product/service attains the ultimate goal of the website, which is why it is extremely crucial to make that process completely smooth and hassle-free for your potential client. For instance, make sure your call-to-actions are easily visible in more than one place, such as towards the top of the website (when the visitor first reaches your website) or towards the bottom (when the visitor finishes scrolling the page).
4) Ensure Cohesive Branding
Next, it is recommended to maintain a cohesive branding throughout the website. This can refer to using the same shades of colours, the same fonts, the same vibes from your images etc. This not only improves your visitor’s browsing experience which can lead to increased conversion rates, but also significantly boost your company’s brand image. A poorly designed website is a massive turn-off that
presents your company as unprofessional.
5) Avoid Random Pop-ups; Try Exit-Intent Pop-ups instead
As a frequent website browser myself, I know how annoying pop-ups are when you
are browsing a website. It doesn’t matter if you are offering them an excellent discount or you are eager to share great content with them through email newsletters, there is a high chance they only serve as disruptions to your visitor’s browsing experience.
Instead, use a more sophisticated method aka exit-intent pop-ups. This is a technique whereby websites can attempt to retain visitors who are trying to leave the site by tracking their mouse cursor movements (towards the upper boundary near the tab bar). This movement will then trigger a pop-up consisting of incentives for them to stay. They can include discounts, collection of emails or a push to a demo. On a mobile phone, the pop-up can appear when the user clicks the back button or tries to close the browser tab.
3) How to Get Found in Google and Build your Brand
There are a few steps important to get found in Google, and here are 6 of them.
1) Submit a Site Map
A site map is basically a list of pages of a website, intended to allow search engine
crawlers to fully understand the organisation of your site content, which enhances the ranking of your website in the search engine results. This step is recommended for
1) large sites with many content pages that are not well linked to each other
2) new sites with few external links to it
3) websites with rich media content (videos or images).
2) Check for Duplicate Content
To ensure that all the content on your website is there for a reason and does not overwhelm your visitor, it is important to check for internal duplicate (and redundant) content.
A useful (and free) tool will be the duplicate content tool here, which also allows you to check both internal and external (other websites) duplicates.
3) Know and Choose the Right Keywords
While it is tempting to emulate what successful articles have done by recycling their keywords used, effective and popular keywords are often so competitive that your page will probably end up getting buried under hundreds and thousands of articles with similar keywords.
The key is to find long-tail, low competition keywords to generate organic traffic. For instance, instead of just “wisdom teeth”, a long-tail keyword with lower competition might be “wisdom teeth removal cost singapore east”.
Along the way, you can experiment and adjust your keyword strategy and use the data you have collected to formulate new strategies.
4) Promote, Promote, Promote!
Once you have your content out, the next key step is to promote it, vigorously. The
straightforward way to do this is to stay active on social media and maintain a strong online presence. Come up with a strict upload schedule to ensure that your followers are kept updated with what's going on.
5) Imagine you are a Visitor and Go Over your Website’s Map
Just like the header suggests, use your website as if you were a visitor. Think from the perspective of a user. What is one feature on the website that made your browsing experience smoother? What can further enhance your user experience? Jot down those thoughts, or even ask a friend to provide you with some honest feedback!
6) Create an account on Google My Business
Google My Business is a helpful but often overlooked platform that helps to manage your online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. If you verify and edit your business information, it increases your outreach to potential customers by allowing you to tell them your story! Keeping your potential visitors up to date on information such as your opening hours, your current promotions etc. is also a detail that shouldn't be ignored.
4) Quality > Quantity of Content
“An article should only be as long as it needs to be.”
When it comes to content marketing, the golden rule of quality > quantity applies
very well too. While it is important to ensure that you provide your readers with
ample content (such as consistently posting long-form blogs once a week), it is
crucial to create the deepest impression within seconds, which is why having a
catchy and attention-grabbing headline is so important.
And what’s even more important is to make sure the contents of your article can
successfully deliver what your catchy headline promised. This can be done by ensuring the comprehensiveness and authoritativeness of your article. Make sure that the flow of your article makes it easy for your reader to follow by always including relevant content that answers the questions that they have. One tip is to make use of bullet points. Build a sense of authority by making your article substantial with frequent credible sources.
5) Building Trustworthiness and Credibility
According to the results of a survey,
● 65% of buyers don’t trust ads
● 55% don’t trust companies
But... 81% trust their friends and families
The next lesson here is how important it is to build a relationship of trust with your
customers. There is a saying that the best form of marketing is through word of mouth, which is why being credible and trustworthy (being able to deliver what you promised) is so important. One way to do this is through interactive content development, such as contests, games, quizzes, interactive infographics and assessments.
6) B2B Interactive Content: Working with Influencers
A key step to take note of before approaching influencers is to pick an interactive
content type that tells the story you want to tell.
For instance, @bellywellyjelly is an influencer known for her beauty and makeup content,
which encompasses themes of self care and self love. With her followers mainly
consisting of young people on a similar journey as her, it makes her very suitable to
promote beauty and self care products. This can be done so through interactive polls on her stories that allow a two-way exchange of thoughts between her and her followers.
Another point to take note of is to make the collaboration effort a great one for the
influencers by making the process a smooth ride for them. Nurture them for future
engagement by repurposing content and make them appreciate you for the
exposure.
7) Thought Leadership: How to Build Authority
Thought leadership refers to “free deliverables that organisations or individuals
produce on a topic that they have expertise in and feel others can benefit from
having their perspective on”. It does not include content primarily focused on
describing an organisation’s products or services. Basically, provide your readers
with knowledge without expecting anything in return. Serve the community by
enlightening people on important knowledge that you are qualified to share, and in
turn gain more authority in your field.
You can do so by combining two factors:
Strong Opinion + Original Research = Authority
Don't be afraid of publishing controversial content and making a stand. Just
because you might disagree with something doesn’t mean you are right, it just
means you are taking a stand.
Think about what kind of things that people in your industry often say but
rarely support , then find this missing statistic to fill up the knowledge gaps. By
having your own original research, you can also attract more backlinks because you
are the primary source. This can in turn help you to get higher organic search engine
rankings.
8) Targeting Consumers during Covid-19
“People will forget about what you said, what you did, but they will never forget how
you made them feel.”
According to a survey, consumers expect advertising to help them navigate the
new normal with a positive perspective. As we navigate through this pandemic, it
is important to make sure that the bridge between you and your customer stays
undisrupted. Stay relevant, empathetic and innovative!
Conclusion
Phew, thanks for making it all the way here. That's it, the 8 lessons I have gathered from the video (and definitely not all of them)! For someone who knew nothing about content marketing, forcing myself to sit through those 5 hours really opened up my eyes. I hope you have learnt as much as I did. Feel free to check out the full video here.
Credits to SEMRush for organising the webinar.
Comments