Content Marketing Strategy in 2024: 7 Goals to Consider
Talking about Content Marketing Strategy, if you were asked, “which content marketing goal is most suitable for your business in 2024?” Would you answer confidently?
One of the major reasons for this confusion is the misconception many have about marketing campaigns. People think it’s an uphill task to achieve the kind of success that mega companies enjoy year in, year out.
The truth is, having a huge marketing budget is one thing; following the right strategy is another. One wrong strategy, and you’ll watch your money go down the drain.
Before you can develop a working Content Marketing Strategy, you need to have a clear goal.
If you’re a new business, what do you want to accomplish? Maybe you want people to discover your products or sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re already in the game, how do you want to expand? Do you want more engagement, or do you want to acquire more customers?
If you need help discovering what your goal should be, you’re reading the right article.
But before we discuss the different marketing goals you should be considering while developing your Content Marketing Strategy in 2024, let’s delve into what marketing goals are.
What is a marketing goal?
A marketing goal is a specific and measurable aim that helps you reach your overall business goals.
For example, if your overall business goal is to be the market leader in your industry, marketing goals can range from increasing brand awareness to generating high-quality leads and increasing traffic to your website.
The functions of marketing goals are to provide a sense of clarity, purpose, and vision, and they lead to success. They’re like touchpoints in your business growth, which, when measured, give you a picture of your progress over time.
Depending on the stage your business is in, your marketing goals may vary from your competitors.
Below are the major marketing goals you should be looking at when creating a marketing strategy.
1. To Increase Brand Awareness
Shopify study states that 72% of shoppers make purchase decisions based on brand trust. J.D. Power also reports that 60% of car buyers begin their research online, while Hubspot’s survey reveals that 48% of marketers aim to improve brand awareness with marketing campaigns. These reports highlight the significance of brand awareness.
If everyone is upbeat about increasing awareness for their brand, you’d agree it’s worth the attention, right? Besides, if no one knows your brand exists, how will they know what you offer?
Every business can surely do with a bit more awareness. But if your brand is just starting out, this should be one of your major goals as it allows people to know and remember your brand. It’s the key to attracting prospects and eventually turning them into customers.
How to create brand awareness
The first thing to consider before creating awareness is to determine the personality of your brand. What do you want people to think when they remember your brand? What type of tone do you want your brand voice to have?
People like to buy from people. So having a unique personality shows the human side of your brand, which customers will resonate easily with. After determining your personality, here are some steps to follow to create awareness:
- Tell your brand story: People connect better with stories as it sparks a sort of emotional feeling in them. Tell your brand story, including your customers’ problems that you’re trying to solve, and the steps you’re taking to solve them. This adds a bit of humanity to your brand and attracts people’s interest.
- Locate your target audience: No product is a great product unless it gets to those that need it first. Likewise, no service would sell if they’re presented to the wrong people. So to make your story heard and your brand known, take your message to your ideal customers where they’re found. This could be a particular social media platform like Instagram and LinkedIn or other emerging channels like podcasts.
- Be consistent: According to experts, it takes a minimum of 7 exposures to your brand before a prospect can recall it. This calls for consistency in sharing your message to stand above the crowd online. Show up everyday, share engaging and educating posts. As you show up consistently, more people recognize your brand, and you begin to generate awareness.
2. To Get New Customers
New customers drive your business growth. So, gaining them is crucial to the long-term sustainability of your business. The big question, however, is, “Do you have a clear strategy in place to attract new customers?”
If your customer acquisition process involves cold emailing or calling prospects, do you have a team in place to research them? If content marketing is your major customer acquisition strategy, have you got a process that streamlines your content production process to resonate with your target audience?
Tips to Acquire Customers
If your goal is to increase your customer base, focus on leveraging flexible tactics to grow your business.
These may include:
- Researching your existing customer base to draft an updated persona based on needs and preference.
- Reforming your offer for first-time customers.
- Offering competitive pricing that may appeal to prospects.
- Offering attractive incentives (discounts, free products) for existing customers to refer friends and family or expanding your referral program with tiered rewards for repeat referrals or high-value customers.
- Choosing the platforms where your target audience hangs out and engages actively. Run targeted ads to reach specific demographics or interests.
- Create fresh, valuable content (blog posts, infographics, videos) targeting your ideal customer’s pain points and interests. Share on social media and relevant online communities to attract organic attention.
3. To Increase Website Traffic
You know what they say about websites in this digital age?
It’s your headquarters online, where you show prospects and customers who you are, what your brand represents, what products and services you offer, and how to contact you.
So, it totally makes sense that 54% of marketers surveyed in 2021 considered web traffic to be the most important metric in their content marketing campaigns. As a new or existing business, driving traffic to your website is important to drive business growth.
Content Marketing Strategies to drive traffic to your website
Unlike social media where a single algorithm change can alter your entire marketing strategy, your website is yours to do as you please. You can monitor customers as they go down the marketing funnel.
Hence, one of the major goals you should be considering is how to get people to your websites.
Consider:
- Starting a blog on your website where you share content that appears on Google search.
- Increasing your paid ads campaign with the aim of increasing traffic.
- Putting more effort into your SEO processes to increase your ranking on search engines.
- Including CTA buttons leading back to your websites from social media.
4. To Drive Engagement
What’s better than knowing your audience enjoys your content and listens to you. Brand engagement shows you how much of your audience you resonate with and increasing it successfully means you’re doing a good job talking to your audience.
Why care about driving engagement?
Positive engagement builds trust and goodwill, shaping how people perceive your brand, while engaged customers are more likely to become repeat buyers and recommend your brand to others.
Engagement also creates a two-way communication channel, providing valuable feedback for product development and marketing strategies.
How do you drive engagement?
Driving engagement is no mean feat. It could take months of hard work to get your audience talking. But it’s worth the effort in the long run and can increase reach and revenue.
The following steps will help you boost brand engagement:
- Research and identify what your audience cares about.
- Consistently share content that your audience can relate to.
- Use conversational tone in your posts. Include questions, teasers, and encourage participation by asking them to join.
- Respond to your audience comments on your posts to make them feel valued.
- As much as possible, personalize communication, especially through channels like emails and newsletters.
- Build a sense of belonging by creating online communities, hosting events, and interacting with your audience directly.
- Provide exceptional customer service that goes above and beyond, building positive and lasting relationships.
Always remember that consistency is key to increase engagement and authenticity matters. Be genuine and transparent in your communication to build trust.
5. To Increase Your Revenue
In the end, one of the major aims of any business is to make money. In fact, it is the highest goal when creating marketing campaigns according to marketers, second to only brand awareness.
Marketing plays an important role in increasing revenue as they can target customers at every stage of the funnel.
Content Marketing Strategies to boost revenue
You can use Content Marketing Strategy to boost revenue at every stage of the marketing funnel.
However, here are some general tips for revenue boosting:
- Upselling and Cross-selling: Recommend complementary products or services to existing customers based on their purchase history and preferences.
- Subscription Models: Offer subscription options for recurring revenue and increased customer engagement.
- Loyalty Programs: Reward repeat customers with points, discounts, or exclusive benefits to incentivize continued purchases.
- Price Optimization: Analyze your market, competitor pricing, and customer value perception to determine the optimal pricing strategy. Consider value-based pricing or dynamic pricing for specific situations.
- Reduce Costs: Identify and eliminate unnecessary expenses to improve your profit margins without compromising quality or customer experience.
- Offer Bundles and Packages: Create bundled product or service offerings at a discounted price to increase average transaction value and attract new customers.
- Content Marketing: Create valuable and engaging content (blogs, videos, infographics) targeting your ideal customer’s pain points and interests. Share it on social media and relevant platforms to attract organic attention.
- Social Media Marketing: Utilize relevant platforms where your target audience hangs out. Run targeted ads, experiment with different content formats, and actively engage with users.
6. To Generate High-quality Leads
If you have a sales department, you’d understand that they depend heavily on a non-stop flow of leads to nurture and convert into paying customers.
High quality leads involve prospects who are highly likely to become purchasing customers due to their needs, interests, online behavior, and other metrics.
Tips to generate high-quality leads
- Host a webinar and collect emails from registration.
- Share a free downloadable resource. This could be in the form of templates, PDF guides, tutorial videos, etc. Prospects can input their emails and get the resource sent to them.
- Host quizzes, where participants register with their emails or phone numbers.
- Share a free e-book explaining how people can solve a particular problem.
An example of a lead generation strategy
A marketing agency offers content marketing strategy. They write a blog about creating a content calendar for effective content planning and organization.
In this blog, they included a downloadable customizable content calendar template for business owners to use for their content marketing. Prospects have to input their email address to have the template sent to them, so the agency collects several email addresses through this means.
Later on, the agency sends targeted emails to them, getting them to carry out a desired action.
The result of the lead generation strategy?
A rich email list of prospects who are highly likely to be interested in the agency’s services.
This makes marketing easier as the agency can send tailored messages getting them to either purchase their services or carry out any other action.
Another example of a lead generation strategy
- A brand having an online store, where they sell pets.
- They create a fun and engaging quiz with questions about pet preferences
- They tailor the quiz answers to specific categories of their pet supplies, showcasing relevant products subtly.
- At the end, they offer personalized product recommendations based on quiz results, along with a discount code in exchange for an email address.
- Share the quiz on their social media platforms, encouraging followers to take it and tag friends for added reach.
Results of the lead generation strategy
- The quiz attracts visitors through its quirky theme and personalized recommendations.
- Sharing on social media expands reach and encourages community engagement.
- Capturing email addresses allows targeted email marketing with relevant product offers.
A good marketing strategy starts with a clear goal in mind. It’s important for brands or marketers to understand how to create effective goals to grow their business.
Eager to know the right goal for your brand’s content marketing strategy? Book a FREE consultation call with us.
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Very impactful