Establishing a content marketing strategy for local businesses

adding value with social media
05
Jan

Great content can help your website, and business, stand out from your competitors and rise to the top. Once a potential customer has arrived at your website, its only the content that’s keeping them there. And great content will guide this potential customer through the whole purchasing process, leading to increased conversions and sales. From blog posts and articles, to your page content and product write-ups, every piece of content you produce needs to be high quality, original and relevant. And while setting up a content marketing strategy can be a challenge, it is something every business should consider. Here at Pumpkin Web Design, we are web marketing and content experts. As a result we work with businesses across the region, from Wigan to Southport, to set up and establish effective web solutions. This includes content marketing. But what exactly does this involve? And what are the benefits of a content marketing strategy?

Establishing a content marketing strategy

Great content is good. But great content as part of a wider content marketing strategy, is better. Especially when this is aimed at growing and promoting your business and customer base. As such, a content marketing strategy will involve:

  • setting targets
  • identifying your audience
  • mapping out your content
  • creating your content

Content marketing and Setting Targets

As you already know, business is 100% data driven. And your content marketing strategy should be no different. After all, how will you know your content marketing is working, if you have no evidence. As a result, setting targets is one of the first things you need to do. It will help to decide on the purpose of the content. Are you aiming for more views, more engagement, or more sales? Whatever you decide will guide the content marketing strategy, and influence the micro-goals, including:

⦁ how often to post
⦁ the number of viewers or engagement you want to achieve each time
⦁ the individual goals for each piece of content

Content marketing and your audience

In addition, you will also need to consider your audience. This might seem bizarre, but you’d be surprised how many companies misrepresent their own audience. Take Twitter for example. It’s billed as a type of social media that the younger users are ignoring completely, in favour of Snapchat and Instagram, while actually 37% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29, and 25% users are 30-49 years old. As a result, before you begin thinking about the content, check out the statistics about your followers on social media. How old are they? How else can they be categorized? Make sure you know the demographic you are aiming for, then the content can be geared towards them.

Content Mapping

The next stage is content mapping. This involves taking a look at how the content on your existing web pages is performing, and mapping out ideas for new content to replace poor content. In addition, you will also need to consider ideas for new content and themes for this content across the duration of your strategy. This is the perfect time to consider the kind of image your company wants to present? And what kind of content would fit with your branding?

Content Creation

Finally, you can begin to create the content and release it as per your strategy. Make sure your content is original, interesting, engaging and relevant, as these are all markers set out by Google to influence your website ranking. Content that is simply duplicated will result in a penalty by Google, while content that is not good quality, or that is seen as spam, will also knock your Google ranking.

What are the advantages of a content marketing strategy?

After you’ve gone to all that trouble to create a strategy for your content marketing, you be wondering if it was worthwhile. So what are the benefits you might expect from an effective content marketing strategy?

In short the advantages include:

  • Credibility- content that is thought provoking, interesting and unique can raise the credibility of your company, which in turn will help more customers choose to shop with your businesses or use your services
  • Traffic- Good content shared on social media will increase the amount of click-throughs to your website, while great content will increase your organic traffic driven from the SERP
  • Brand presence- content will raise your brand presence by providing shareable, regular content that many of your customers will see
  • Focused results- a content marketing strategy will help you see the results of your content, and focus your attention to areas that are performing well, or that need more support.

In summary

Content marketing is the perfect way to help your business grow. It will promote more sales while raising your brand credibility and presence. However, you need to implement a content marketing strategy to get the best results. This means identifying your content purpose, your audience, mapping out ideas, and finally creating content that will not only meet your micro-goals, but be fresh, relevant and original.

For more information or advice, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design.

Pumpkin Web Design Ltd is a small and highly results driven digital agency working for like minded clients in Preston, Chorley, Southport, Blackburn, Burnley, Morecambe,Wigan, Manchester, London, Warrington, Blackpool, Lancaster, Leyland, Lytham St Annes, Bolton, Chester and the UK. Our services include web design, SEO, content marketing, video production, brand design and much more.