Guest post by Hristina Nikolovska

Content marketing is a tried and tested marketing strategy that can build your brand’s reputation while simultaneously helping you bring prospects to the top of your sales funnel. However, these only come with successful campaigns. According to a 2016 study, only 30% of B2B marketers said their organizations were effective at content marketing.

Successful content marketing campaigns do not happen by chance. They take a lot of time, attention and, most important of all, planning. The process involves a good understanding of the dynamics of the relationship between customers and businesses.

Unfortunately, most business owners and marketers do not approach their content marketing campaigns carefully. Many are careless with their approach, piecing together various strategies and merely hoping to see good results in the end.

While there are no two successful content marketing campaigns that look exactly the same, there are a set of characteristics they have in common.

Highlighted below are some essential aspects of successful content marketing campaigns.

Made for a Clearly Defined Audience

Before crafting any content or considering your marketing funnel, you must establish who you’re directing your marketing efforts at.

This will ensure that all your content is tailored to fit the needs of your ideal customer or client.

The following questions would help your cause:

• What problems is my product or service aiming to solve?

• Who would most likely have these problems?

• What are their defining characteristics? (consider status, age, and general demographic)

Crafting Educational rather than Promotional Content 

Having identified your target audience, the next step is to create what suits them. While creating your content, be sure to mention what the exact problem of your target audience is and how your products help solve them.

In content marketing, producing value-adding content is the main focus. Unlike what is obtainable with ads, your product or business shouldn’t be the center of discussion.

Offer 

While your content isn’t crafted to promote your business, your offer will do justice to that. But you have to be aware this offer isn’t a hard sell.

Its main goal is fetching mails rather than effecting immediate sales. To make sure of this, however, your content must be unique and valuable.

The main goal is fetching mails rather than effecting immediate sales. Click To Tweet

This offer could take the form of case studies, free consultation, white papers, ebooks, etc. When your customers download these materials, you establish a connection with them. You can do this by requiring that they create an account with their email address in exchange for the material.

Promotion and Distribution

Producing high-quality content is not enough. Your reach is equally as important. Unfortunately, a host of content posted online gets seen by a limited audience base. Producing high-quality content is not enough. Your reach is equally as important. Click To Tweet

Investing in distribution is key to helping your content reach its target audience, for which it was produced in the first place.

You could distribute and promote your content through one or a combination of the following ways – PPC ads, shares via social media, and paid sponsored blogs, among others. In this way, you can ensure your content marketing campaign is off to a good start.

Infographic URL: https://review42.com/content-marketing-statistics/