6 Tricks To Improve Your Content Marketing

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Content marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your business. However, many companies have gone the content marketing route and struck out. Chances are, those businesses made some content marketing mistakes in their strategy. With the following tricks up your sleeve, you are bound to see results in the content marketing realm.

Focus on Your Goals

What are your goals for content marketing? They can vary from business to business. Now is the time to consider why you want to pursue content marketing and what results you want to get from it. Deciding and focusing on your goals early on will allow you to filter future decisions through this lens. If something doesn’t help you reach your goals, it shouldn’t be part of the plan.

Choose Your Players

Who will be a part of your content marketing strategy team? It could be tempting to do it all yourself. However, that probably isn’t a good idea. Time is money, especially for a business owner. Consider the time it would take to figure out how to do everything minimally well with limited results. This would have a far higher cost than hiring a professional in the field to handle it for you.

At a minimum, you should find someone with website, graphic design, and search engine optimization knowledge on hand. This person wouldn’t have to be full time, and most of them work on a contract basis, providing the services that you desire and that fit within your budget.

If you have more room in your budget, consider hiring a creative professional to develop content and delivery. All kinds of professionals could be involved, from videographers to writers and designers. The sky’s the limit if you have enough money to make it happen.

Stereotype Your Clients

Although “stereotype” often carries a bad connotation, that is precisely what you need to do with your clients. Figure out what they all have in common, then deliver content based on that commonality. The majority of your clients will have similar needs as far as products and services go, so focus on those and go for the gold.

Create Deadlines

It is easy to put off projects, especially those that don’t have a hard and fast deadline. Do yourself, and your team, a favor and create realistic deadlines. Create a timeline that maps how you are going to get to where you want to go, then set deadlines according to the overall picture. This will help keep everyone, even you, accountable for reaching your goals.

Make It Happen

So far, there’s been a lot of talk about creating content. Now it’s time to make it happen. A representative from Preszler Injury Lawyers suggests that your business is represented as honestly and realistically as possible while still reflecting your brand and personality. Once your content is created, it’s time to get it out into the world. Publish it online via your website or social media platforms. (This is where a professional can come in handy!)

Optimize Old Content

As you continue creating content, your old content is still floating around out there on the internet. Revisit old content occasionally, tweaking it to make sure it is still pertinent and relevant to your customers. There’s no need to get rid of good material just because it’s older, as long as it is still timely and drawing views.

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August 21, 2019 at 02:35PM

Also, check out  Avoidable Content Marketing Mistakes

By: Andrew Epprecht

Marketing Insights From the Man From Mars

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Rob Rakowitz, Global Director of Media at Mars, has done some fantastic content marketing for varied consumer brands like Whiskas and Uncle Ben’s. He also happens to be a winner of the Content Marketing Award from The CMO Club. So what can the man from Mars tell us about marketing strategy? Well, among other things, “keep it simple.” Read on for more insights.

Drew: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received from a peer and how has that influenced your career?

Rob: Keep things simple. Media is starting to hit more and more functions both within marketing and outside of it so it would be easy to make things complicated. I find that the more you can simplify down what it is that we’re trying to do from a vision perspective, the better an idea travels.

Drew: You received The CMO Club award for Content Marketing. What’s your overall approach to content?

Rob: We’ve done some absolutely fantastic content programs for Uncle Ben’s, Pedigree and Snickers. These brands truly understand that they need to reach more and more consumers and the way that they’re going to do that is not just by throwing advertising out there, but it’s by actually really figuring out what is their brand’s purpose, what is understanding culture and how can they actually provide the solution that brings the brand, consumer and customer together. It’s what I really like to call that idea of 4C Conversion, where we bring consumers, customers, communications and commerce closer together.

Drew: Let’s talk about Uncle Ben’s because I think some readers might scratch their heads and say, wait, Uncle Ben’s has a purpose?

Rob: Uncle Ben’s is about helping consumers make sure that they’re making great food choices, on a daily basis. It’s really interesting because when you get into the data. We find out that consumers who start meals with rice are more likely to choose a lean protein or a vegetable to go along with it. This actually leads to healthier outcomes from an eating perspective. And that’s actually what stands behind a lot of what we do from a content perspective and with a program like Ben’s Beginners, which aims to get kids and parents cooking together.

Drew: Got it. So what did you end up doing for Uncle Ben’s?

Rob: In the UK is we had this new ready-to-heat product that comes in this little pouch and is really quick and easy to make. What we found out was that consumers weren’t aware of it; they didn’t see it as being relevant. So luckily enough, we had smart agency folks and smart marketing folks — BBDO, MediaCom, and then our own internal associates, what we call our triads, working together. And what they decided is that a typical TV spot would fail, because it wasn’t going to reach the right audience and it wasn’t going to overcome the relevancy issue. So what we ended up doing was creating a series of short videos. Then we put them up online, looked at the behavior metrics, figured out which videos were popping and what recipes were actually working. The video idea, by the way, centered around a celebrity chef who shows up at a park, starts cooking meals, engages people who are living healthy and active lifestyles and shows them in two minutes how to actually cook a healthy meal.

Drew: Fun idea. What then?

Rob: With these eight videos that we had out there, we looked at the performance metrics. We then figured out how to take that two-minute video and cut it down to 30’s, which we could put on TV and various social channels (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram). It was a very content-driven idea backed up by behavioral data. We were able to use social media to make sure the content was as personal as possible. And it actually yielded some really nice business results for us.

Drew: Interesting that the whole program wasn’t 100% digital and that you ended up deploying TV as well?

Rob: I think that any marketer worth their salt today knows that if you’re dealing with mass audiences and mass reach, I think it’s not a question of “or” but it’s a question of “and.” What you want to have is a video-neutral approach where you’re thinking about multiple channels in combination. Are there certain brands where a digital-only approach will make sense? Absolutely. But for Uncle Ben’s, a combination of TV and digital was optimal.

Drew: How did you measure the success of the Uncle Ben’s program?

Rob: The two measures that we’re obsessed with are reach and sales. First, we look at the overall reach of the content program. And then also did some testing to actually make sure that there was a positive lift in sales. That’s generally, the way that we look at measurement. Now, within the campaign we look at behavioral metrics including likes, shares and comments. What we did for Uncle Ben’s was 100 percent behavioral, digital metrics that are available to a lot of marketers. And the question is are we truly leaning into those as the marketing community and embracing it as much as we could and should be. And I think that’s very much an agenda I had where a lot of my colleagues out there is taking more and more advantage of things and to drive better planning strategy and activation.

Drew: Let’s talk about what you did for Whiskas.

Rob: For Whiskas, we actually rolled out one of our first global content plays. Recognizing that people who are adopting cats or kittens rather weren’t equipped with all of the knowledge and insights that they should have as new pet owners, we created Kitten Kollege. Featuring irreverent tongue-in-check videos, we equipped kitten parents with all of the insight that they needed to understand the life stages and the leaps forward that their kitten is going through. Partnering with Google and YouTube and eventually some of our retail partners in local markets, we raised the brand’s profile, simultaneously educating and entertaining and then closing the gap with commerce.

Drew: I love that story because it fits into a framework that I call Marketing as Service in which marketing actually has value, inherent value, both obviously the entertainment but also the education. One thing that someone might say is well, you educated everybody about kittens, but what connects that to the brand Whiskas?

Rob: We did that via a serial content series that was done with a lot of the insights from our Pet Institute in Waltham, UK. This is where a lot of our pet research happens. So a lot of the insights that we shared were actually proprietary to Mars and we were able to connect that back to Whiskas.

Drew: So you mentioned global for Whiskas–did that mean that Kitten Kollege got translated into multiple languages?

Rob: Yes, it did. And we have been rolling it out market by market. In certain markets, I think we have it dubbed and other markets we actually have it subtitled. But yes, it is a global program.

Drew: From a media perspective standpoint, give me two “do’s” and one “don’t.”

Rob: First on my do list–get obsessed over the business challenge. Don’t be lazy about briefing the agency and really being able to uncover where your growth would be coming from and how that translates down to a real tangible consumer behavior. My second do — embrace the ability to be agile. Don’t plan your full budget to the last cent, hold some funds back for a timely opportunity. And my don’t — don’t message push. Think about creating an experience and a solution.

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February 16, 2017 at 11:42PM