Content is king, which means your business needs to be delivering high quality content in order to stay relevant to the right audience.
There are 4 key questions you need to answer when you start creating a content plan:
What does my audience want to know?
Do they want a list of your products or services? Do they want to know more about your company? Do they want to hear customer testimonials? To be honest, the answer is probably all of the above, but it depends on where your customer is on their purchasing journey.
A lot of customers will research a business before they make any purchasing decisions, which means they can click through your website a number of times before making a purchase. Luckily, with the digital technology that is now available to us, you can target customers specifically if they have visited your website. This means you can create more personalised content and deliver it when they want to see it.
As an example, let’s say you owned an online shop. As generic messaging to your target audience, you post about your company and why you established the shop. Then, to those people that have visited certain product pages on your website, you create social media ads that feature those products. If customers still aren’t biting, you can create a sponsored post targeting the same people again with customer testimonials raving about what you offer. This kind of strategy ensures you’re exposing your brand to the right customers at each stage of their purchasing journey.
What type of content will my audience interact with?
Whether you want to share articles, videos, blogs or images, you need to make sure it’s what your audience wants to see or read.
Videos are always a hit with audiences, particularly if those audiences are between the ages of 14 – 55, and the videos are visually effective. Dynamic videos that use bold colours and fun transitions are generally going to keep people’s attention (as long as they’re kept fairly short – 3 minutes max!), but you also need to consider what fits with your brand’s personality as well (fun, upbeat videos won’t really suit the brand personality of a funeral home).
Blogs are a great way to offer valuable information to customers regarding the certain products/services you offer, as well as new industry news or best practices. It demonstrates your knowledge and passion for the area your business is in, therefore making you a trustworthy source for customers to refer to. Be careful not to overload readers with information though, aim for around 500 words, or something that only takes a few minutes to read. Sharing articles that aren’t written by your company, but do offer industry insights, can also give the same impressions of passion and trustworthiness (just ensure those articles aren’t from competitors).
How often do I post on social media/publish adverts?
There’s no real right or wrong answer for this question, but ideally you want to post a few times a week at least. Audiences aren’t interested in stagnant pages that haven’t had any new posts in months. You need to make sure you’re active on social media, offering all types of content to enhance exposure and keep your brand relevant.
A digital campaign including social media posts and a digital ad can be a highly effective tactic to generate repeat customers as well as gaining new customers. If you’re new to digital ads, you may want to start with 1 campaign per quarter/season, to play around with the content and messaging so you can recognise what works with your audience. Once you’re more confident with your advert delivery, one campaign a month could prove to be even more effective.
How do I know it’s working?
The great thing about social media and using digital ads, is that they generate data from their platforms for you. They can show you how many new followers you’ve received each month, how many people interacted with your posts, and how many people clicked on your advert. However, they can’t show you where else a lead visited after the landing page of your ad, or whether the person that clicked your ad is already a customer or a brand-new lead.
Platforms such as our Local Insights solution, can offer that additional information, along with extra data regarding how you obtain most of your leads (whether that’s by social media, organic search, or local listings pages), and much more.
Discover how we can help you get started with effective digital marketing, by contacting us today.
