STRATEGY AND TACTICS TO IMPROVE DIGITAL MARKETING ACTIVITY – CONTENT STRATEGY
📷ow you have a better indication of where your marketing activities and assets stand in the grand scheme, now you need to look at
driving more traffic and push your content out there.
You should have an idea of what content performs or not on your site; what kind of social updates generate good engagement rates; what you need to do to compete with your competitors; and, any improvements that you need to make to your assets, that will guide your content strategy.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content Marketing is the practice of creating and sharing high quality, engaging and relevant content in order to attract, engage and convert visitors.
It is the conversation between your brand and your customers through stories. It’s about building long-lasting relationships to current and potential customers, by providing valuable content with the aim to build trust, awareness and engagement through various channels in the digital marketing mix.
In today’s hyper-connected digital landscape, you need to talk with customers, not to them. And you need to provide high quality, relevant and engaging content to do this.
PAID, EARNED AND OWNED MODEL
In the previous section we introduced the Paid, Earned and Owned model, which can be very useful in defining your content marketing strategy.
When visualising this model, each overlap presents an opportunity to boost your marketing strategy through a specific marketing tactic:
The intersection of all assets is essentially the ideal – the balanced marketing strategy that leverages paid, earned and owned media in equal measure.
For example, a content strategy that overly depends on Adwords PPC and Display Ads to drive traffic would most likely see poorer performance onsite in terms of bounce rate or time spent on site. Organic traffic can balance this, i.e. site visitors who naturally made their way to your site through a relevant search query or interest. But to generate this organic traffic channel, SEO tactics are required.
Similarly, an over reliance on free-to-post social channels like Facebook and Twitter might get good interactions with a portion of your target audience, but this interaction might be constantly with the same segment, which does not push your communications out to wider audiences, as such the % of new visitors on the site could be very low, an problem if you have a one-time only product for example.
REACH, ACT, CONVERT AND ENGAGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS
This guide to digital strategy aims to get you thinking about how to improve your marketing strategy by considering further activity, channels and platforms to push your strategy into a more advanced stage.
The number of options available to you might seem a bit overwhelming, and often there is an element of clarity or simplification required. The RACE Planning Framework by Smart Insights is a useful, simplified outline that helps you to focus on some of the applicable marketing activities
at various stages of the traditional marketing funnel that will make your digital marketing strategy a success and achieve your goals:
We have broken down the framework further below, working through from top of the funnel to the bottom, highlighting the appropriate strategic approach
to take at each stage and summarising the relevant tactics to consider in your digital marketing strategy.
REACH Acquisition strategy to build awareness
📷📷●● Relevant tactics/approaches in your marketing strategy: SEO
📷PPC
📷📷Affiliates and partnerships Online/display ads
📷PR
📷Social media marketing
ACT & CONVERT Persuade visitors to interact and meet one of your conversion goals by connecting them with useful, engaging and relevant content
📷📷●● Relevant tactics/approaches in your marketing strategy: Content strategy
📷📷Conversion rate optimisation Lead generation
📷📷Homepage/landing page optimisation A/B testing
ENGAGE Retention and growth strategy to build customer relationships into repeat visits and sales and brand loyalty
📷📷●● Relevant tactics/approaches in your marketing strategy: Content strategy
📷📷Email strategy – newsletters, promotional emails Mobile strategy
At this stage, you should now be able to start taking a more in-depth approach to your marketing activities, starting with your goal hierarchy and analysing your own objectives. Use deeper insights into your target audience and competition, and consider your key pieces of converting content – the content that will drive traffic to your site and various platforms to raise awareness and drive conversions.
Smart Insights RACE framework is an easy one to remember to simplify that strategy, but always ensure a balanced approach of utilising all areas of the Paid, Earned and Owned model for optimal performance.
driving more traffic and push your content out there.
You should have an idea of what content performs or not on your site; what kind of social updates generate good engagement rates; what you need to do to compete with your competitors; and, any improvements that you need to make to your assets, that will guide your content strategy.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content Marketing is the practice of creating and sharing high quality, engaging and relevant content in order to attract, engage and convert visitors.
It is the conversation between your brand and your customers through stories. It’s about building long-lasting relationships to current and potential customers, by providing valuable content with the aim to build trust, awareness and engagement through various channels in the digital marketing mix.
In today’s hyper-connected digital landscape, you need to talk with customers, not to them. And you need to provide high quality, relevant and engaging content to do this.
PAID, EARNED AND OWNED MODEL
In the previous section we introduced the Paid, Earned and Owned model, which can be very useful in defining your content marketing strategy.
When visualising this model, each overlap presents an opportunity to boost your marketing strategy through a specific marketing tactic:
The intersection of all assets is essentially the ideal – the balanced marketing strategy that leverages paid, earned and owned media in equal measure.
For example, a content strategy that overly depends on Adwords PPC and Display Ads to drive traffic would most likely see poorer performance onsite in terms of bounce rate or time spent on site. Organic traffic can balance this, i.e. site visitors who naturally made their way to your site through a relevant search query or interest. But to generate this organic traffic channel, SEO tactics are required.
Similarly, an over reliance on free-to-post social channels like Facebook and Twitter might get good interactions with a portion of your target audience, but this interaction might be constantly with the same segment, which does not push your communications out to wider audiences, as such the % of new visitors on the site could be very low, an problem if you have a one-time only product for example.
REACH, ACT, CONVERT AND ENGAGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS
This guide to digital strategy aims to get you thinking about how to improve your marketing strategy by considering further activity, channels and platforms to push your strategy into a more advanced stage.
The number of options available to you might seem a bit overwhelming, and often there is an element of clarity or simplification required. The RACE Planning Framework by Smart Insights is a useful, simplified outline that helps you to focus on some of the applicable marketing activities
at various stages of the traditional marketing funnel that will make your digital marketing strategy a success and achieve your goals:
We have broken down the framework further below, working through from top of the funnel to the bottom, highlighting the appropriate strategic approach
to take at each stage and summarising the relevant tactics to consider in your digital marketing strategy.
REACH Acquisition strategy to build awareness
ACT & CONVERT Persuade visitors to interact and meet one of your conversion goals by connecting them with useful, engaging and relevant content
ENGAGE Retention and growth strategy to build customer relationships into repeat visits and sales and brand loyalty
At this stage, you should now be able to start taking a more in-depth approach to your marketing activities, starting with your goal hierarchy and analysing your own objectives. Use deeper insights into your target audience and competition, and consider your key pieces of converting content – the content that will drive traffic to your site and various platforms to raise awareness and drive conversions.
Smart Insights RACE framework is an easy one to remember to simplify that strategy, but always ensure a balanced approach of utilising all areas of the Paid, Earned and Owned model for optimal performance.