Content marketing is one of the key components of online business success. Content marketing allows businesses, large or small, to have a significant online presence through digital assets.
What are Digital Assets?
Digital assets are media properties such as copy, podcasts, videos, and blogs that stand as landmarks for your brand. Each has its own place in the digital world, attracting prospects as well as web crawlers that index this content.
Types of Platforms You Must Have to Create Success Online
There are plenty of debates about what types of media you should focus on. But the best idea is to use any media that works for your audience. Here are some of the most important types of content:
- Websites – Your website is the focus of your online brand. You should present your brand in a positive but interesting way that appeals to your audience. Copy should be relevant to the reader. Including video, podcasts, and links to your blog and other digital assets increases your results over time.
- Podcasts – Podcasting appeals to those listeners who enjoy listening to broadcasts through podcasting platforms. You can place your podcasts on many platforms, including social media, your website, and blogs.
- Video – Video can be produced and uploaded to YouTube or other platforms to embed in your blog or website or to share on social media. Video appeals to people on a higher level than ordinary text. You can speak directly to people through video or create an animated video to tell your story about your brand or product line. Adding a written version of the video script helps with search engine results.
- Blogs – Blogs are a necessary tool for business today. They allow you to speak to your target audience more informally and answer or comment on their questions. You can also place videos, podcasts, infographics, and photos within your blog to promote your material.
- Email Marketing – Email marketing is still considered to be one of the best ways to promote your brand. You can include a link in your emails that go out to your subscribers to increase their level of engagement and include a call-to-action to get more people to respond. Most good emails drive traffic back to your website.
- Social Media – Social media is one of the best ways to get new leads and followers. With a Facebook business page, for example, you can exponentially increase your reach by getting new followers featuring something your audience will respond to.
How to Create and Run an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
Most business owners understand some of the ways and means that they can promote their brand and products. But they may not be so sure about how to get a content marketing strategy started and which techniques to use. That’s where we come in. Developing a content marketing strategy is critical.
We take an experimental approach to content marketing. First, we suggest the channels that make the most common sense, based on your target audiences. Then we run experiments across those different marketing channels until we see what works best. Then we hit the accelerator and ramp up so that you get the best results.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence
A.I. is here to stay. It is being used in multiple contexts and industries to help automate processes and increase productivity. We also use the positive aspects of A.I. to improve the results of the marketing process.
Creating a Marketing Strategy
Creating your marketing strategy is one of our primary purposes. We focus on the individual needs of our clients so that we find the best solution for your business and brand. We do this through digital media buying, content marketing, SEO/SEM, local SEO, Pay-Per-Click advertising, and many other methods.
If you are a local brick-and-mortar business, you need local marketing to attract the attention of local customers. We can help you choose effective keywords, including geographical location names that will improve your results immediately.
What is Retargeting?
One of the reasons many marketing agencies fall short is that they stop with marketing and don’t use retargeting. Digital retargeting allows us to display a repeat ad to someone who’s already visited your website.
The prospect may have come originally to your website to seek information. Once they’ve found that information, we need to push them toward taking action. Repetitive retargeting ads do just that, following the prospect wherever they go on the Web, and even in emails.
We can control both the number of ads that they see along with the length of time that they’re shown.
Retargeting (also known as remarketing) is a very effective marketing strategy. Still, your site must have a decent amount of traffic (at least 5k visitors a month) for it to be effective.
Retargeting works off of cookie-based technology that uses simply a JavaScript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your audience all over the Web. The code (or “cookie”), which is unnoticeable to your site visitors and won’t affect your site’s performance, is dropped on each new visitor that comes to your site.
Later, when our cookied visitor is browsing the Web, the cookie let’s use retargeting provider know when to serve ads. This ensures that your ads are served only to those who have already visited your site and are therefore more likely to be interested in your offer.
In some cases, retargeting can be even more effective than PPC, so it’s definitely an option to consider if your website gets plenty of traffic. With the right retargeting approach, we can help prospects get ready to act and ensure that you’ll be the business called when the timing is right.
We have found retargeting to be a highly effective digital tactic and one that many agencies are unable to accomplish without the specific tools and resources of Bake More Pies.
What is Digital Content Marketing?
Digital marketing is a term that refers to the process of building your online presence and brand awareness. It creates an image of your brand through many techniques, methods, and digital media assets.
We take this a step further by applying a scientific approach to how these methods are working for your brand through effective digital marketing. Then we tweak the process so that you are having the most significant impact, thereby increasing your ROI (return on investment).
Some of the techniques we use to do this include:
- Geo-Fencing
- Geo-Targeting
- Behavioral Targeting
- Social Advertising
- Marketing of materials
- Retargeting
We would love to explain these methods in more detail when you call us to set up an appointment.
What is the Risk?
What we do carries very low risk because we work on finding the method that best works for you and your business, saving you hours of time and research, money, and resources. Then, once we find it, we pour on the gas so that your results will come quickly.
What Types of Marketing Should I be Doing?
At the very least, you should spend time with the following types of content marketing so that you are getting the most for your time and money.
All these types of content marketing can be used in a variety of platforms and contexts to reach your most valuable customers and prospect targets. Additionally, the following aspects of digital content marketing are always a part of an effective marketing campaign.
- Social Media Management – It’s not enough to make an occasional post on Facebook or Twitter. You need to have a managed plan to keep your social media accounts working for you. Sometimes, you may need to change your branding to draw the type of people you need to market to. Creating the best digital content for your brand is vital if you are going to use it to your advantage. It can be scary putting your brand’s social media in the hands of outside vendors. We understand. Often, we can help get you past the initial social media setup, including signing up for social media sites, configuring profiles, designing custom background designs (Twitter & YouTube), and setting up social media management tools such as Hootsuite. Usually, these are the biggest hurdles to getting started with social media for any business. After the initial setup and configuration, we will start managing social media, including some of the following:
- Twitter – how to monitor brand mentions & industry discussions, send status updates, check direct messages, formulate great messages in 140 characters, and additional Twitter marketing strategies.
- Facebook – how to check your Facebook wall for customer wall posts and replies, use the data in your Facebook insights, add status updates to your wall (including photos, videos, and links), use Facebook as your page, and additional Facebook marketing strategies.
- YouTube – how to upload new videos, create playlists, and comment on other videos.
- Instagram – how to use your profile to build brand awareness through hashtags and interacting with others.
- LinkedIn – We will work with you to come up with a monthly social media strategy plan, including a content calendar, what types of updates to send, and how to integrate social media into your online or media relations marketing campaign.
- Branding – If you get your branding right, everything else will fall into place. Provided you have quality products and services that solve a real problem for your customers or offer them a benefit that they value, you can win with digital content.
- Design – Your design may not be quite as important as the content, but it is very important. The visual elements of your design include everything from the colors you choose, your logo, the background, the readability of your pages, and more. Our expert designers can look at your current design or your design ideas and show you how to improve upon them.
- U.I. – The user interface (U.I.) is the way the reader interacts with your material. Whether it be through a smartphone device with an app or a desktop computer, you need to keep in mind what types of devices people may use to access your content. Then we help you make sure your content is friendly to all users. People surf the Web on all types of different devices, so we make sure that our layouts work on the widest variety of different user devices. We keep essential parts of your message (i.e., the logo, headline, call to action, and the supporting visual) in the center top of the screen. This means that even if a landing page is cut off by small screen resolutions, the important information will always be above the fold.
- U.X. – U.X. is the “user experience,” and it is necessary for your brand to succeed online. For example, how easy is it for the user to find what they were searching for? Often, we’ll use heat mapping and other tools to see exactly how people navigate your site. This allows us to make recommendations to improve user experience.
- Photography – Taking and editing photos plays a vital role in the branding of your business. Whether it be to share product images, displaying your business location, or any other picture that is significant, photos can sell your product and brand if done correctly. The arrangement of photos on your website is also critical.
Other Elements of an Effective Marketing Campaign
Once you have your plan in place, you should make sure to include the following components as well:
- Web Design & Development
- Website Hosting
- CRM Integrations
- Requirements Gathering
Contact Bake More Pies
Many businesses have effective marketing campaigns. Then they get to the end of their presentation and forget the most important thing. Without a compelling “call-to-action” that tells customers what you want them to do, your entire sales pitch falters.
Make sure and include a compelling call-to-action that makes your readers and viewers want to take the action that you want them to take. Be specific in your statement so they understand what you want them to do and give them a reason why they should.
This may seem like a lot. But it’s not that hard if you have a plan in place. In the end, it’s all about creating value. When you create real value for your clients, they’ll keep coming back. And that is the goal.
If you need a professional marketing plan that includes all the essential factors that get real fact-based results, contact Bake More Pies today! It’s the first step to a successful business.
