Attracting and engaging an audience ain’t easy. Our attention spans are so short, your window to impress sometimes closes before you even open it. Now, content marketing is an art form, bringing an audience into your brand through valuable content, killer strategy, and the ability to speak fluent robot. (That’s our attempt at making an SEO joke, did it land?)
Our main point in this article is that you shouldn’t settle for subpar content. Does a chef settle for wilted lettuce? No. Does an interior designer use mismatched furniture styles? Nope. Does a web designer use blurry stock photos? Actually, yeah, some do, but not us!
Let’s get into content marketing, if it’s right for your business, and what you must have in a content marketing package for it to be worth any of your time and money.
Setting Your Content Marketing Goals
Buying into a content marketing package is great, but it’s just the beginning. You as a business must know your goals.
Think: What are my overall business objectives for the next year? Who is my ideal customer? What content will engage them? What key performance indicators (KPI’s) am I looking for? What is my content marketing budget?
The list goes on and on but you get it—you must have clear goals to define direction, focus, and a way to measure progress.
Let’s break this down in five simple steps to get you started:
Step 1: Think about your company’s main goals, like boosting sales or building brand awareness. Consider how content marketing can get you there. One way is to create content that attracts leads, builds trust, and positions you as an industry expert. A reputable and trusted marketing agency will work with you when it comes to your goals. (Hello, M&P is right here!)
Step 2: Figure out who you’re creating content for. You can pump out content till you’re blue in the face, but if it’s floating in the ether, who cares? Imagine what your ideal customer wants and needs to see, then figure out where they hang out (social media, chat boards, coffee shops). Wherever they are, you are.
Step 3: If you’re tired of hearing the phrase SMART goals, get over it. Here it is again. We’re all disorganized to some extent and structure is what keeps us going. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals are clear and trackable ways to actually goal set. So just do it.
If you want to read even more in-depth about SMART goals, click here!
Step 4: Isolate which goals (and you can have quite a few) that you’re aiming to target. We often help clients with brand awareness, lead generation, sales, and website traffic (just to name a few).
Step 5: Content marketing is a long game. A social post may go viral, or a blog post may rake in traffic, but it doesn’t stop there. An agency worth your time will track your progress and communicate that progress with you. Come time to adjust, they’ll actually make changes to progress your brand. (Even though meetings are blah, we’ll take time out of our day to pivot the right way, not just make some dumb change for the hell of it.)
Is Content Marketing Right for Your Biz?
Hard to say, but schedule a call with us and we’ll let you know!
But actually, content marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. If you have a compelling brand story you must tell the world, a target audience you know will love your brand, and valuable expertise that needs to be shared, then sure, content marketing is a great way to increase awareness, drive leads and sales, and increase customer engagement. But if you’re tight on funds and lack a clear strategy, then maybe you’re not at the point to invest in content marketing yet. (Let’s build your brand first!)
Self-assess where your biz is at, start small and see if there’s a return without shelling out tons of cash, and ask someone in the marketing world. (Seriously, we joke, but our first 30-minute discovery meeting is FREE.)
7 Must-Haves for Content Marketing Packages
The subheader says exactly what we would type here anyway, so let’s not waste your time or ours.
Robust Analytics & Tracking
Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. Those who engage in analytics and tracking are the real heroes of content marketing. Our analysts dive deep, reveal who your audience is, what content resonates best, and how your content drives conversions.
Marketing agencies like ours use a variety of tools to track these details, transforming data into actionable insights that then help the content team optimize your content strategy and maximize return on investment.
The “why” behind your content’s performance creates content that truly connects and delivers results.
Keyword Opportunity Research
All that sh*t you type into Google, we can see it (and oh boy, can we see everything). Keyword research isn’t just about finding popular words, but rather the diamonds in the rough—high-traffic, low-competition keywords that tell you exactly what your audience is looking for.
There are a number of (expensive) tools that marketing agencies use to ensure your content attracts the right visitors and actually ranks. A good SEO strategy prioritizes high search volume with relevant topics your audience actually cares about.
Google’s “Helpful Content” Updates
Thank God for Google. But seriously, could you imagine if we had to read books to find out our information! (Gosh, that’s so 1970.) Because Google is where the ENTIRE WORLD gets their information, they’ve prioritized updates around “helpful content,” meaning the algorithm favors content that is genuinely useful for people, not just created to solely rank high.
An agency you should pay for will know the ins and outs of how to rank while also hiring a really good writer (who definitely isn’t the one writing this sentence right now) so Google finds your content legit.
Content Strategy
Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Content strategy is the brain of the body that is content marketing. It maps out exactly who you’re trying to reach, what kind of content they want (articles, videos, whatever), and what you ultimately want to achieve (remember those goals we talked about?).
Marketing agencies help you with all this—define your target audience, set measurable goals, brainstorm content ideas, and create the content itself. The best part? This strategy adapts along with your audience and industry.
Content Creation
The old cliche has arrived—here’s where the rubber meets the road. Marketing agencies are the ringmasters of your brand’s content creation. They’ll bring in the Mark Twain’s (writers), the Ansel Adams (photographers), the Walter Murch’s (video editors), the Chip Kidd’s (graphic designers)—a rich ensemble of creative talent whose perfectionism and OCD won’t let them settle for anything less than great.
High-quality content that aligns with your brand’s voice includes everything from blog articles to ad copy, videos to photography, and social media to website design. If it deals with anything content, folks like M&P are on it.
Client Communication
In our experience, this is the must-have that is way too often overlooked. Regular meetings, open lines of communication, and clear goals keep you in the loop and ensure the agency you’re working with creates content that hits the mark.
Here’s how we do it in three simple steps:
- A free 30-minute discovery meeting where we meet you and learn about your brand.
- A free one hour analysis and audit to bring strategy and direction suggestions to your brand.
- A paid campaign launch where we tailor a package to meet your budget.
Once we start with you, we are in constant communication on how progress is going and if anything needs to adapt. It actually is that simple. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
F*ck Vanity Metrics, Get Real Content Marketing Success
You know vanity muscles? The same sh*t happens with metrics. Big biceps and lats don’t help you run faster. Same is true for something like views—great, lots of people saw your content, but did they find it valuable, did they pay attention, did they take further action to your site, or better yet, actually buy something?
Focus on metrics that actually drive success and don’t just look good. Take one of our clients for example. Social CBD had a hard time convincing skeptical clients that they’re CBD products were reputable, so we stepped in and increased:
- Search traffic by 481%
- Blog traffic by 311%
- Web conversion rate (turning website visitors into customers) by 993%
- Social followers by 74%
Those are REAL F*ING METRICS. It’s not to put us on a pedestal, but rather to show you what a genuinely thoughtful and talented marketing agency can do for you.
(Feel free to read the full case study for Social CBD on our website here.)
If vanity is what you seek, that’s totally cool. But if you care about all those content marketing acronyms like ROI, KPI, UX, SEO, and CTA then make the decision to partner with an agency who will help achieve your goals.
Schedule a call with our team today and see what M&P can do for your brand!
