It’s no secret that high-quality content helps to significantly increase revenue and build brand loyalty.
An effective content marketing strategy can increase your online exposure, bring new visitors to your site and generate leads for your business. One study even found that “B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t blog.”
It can also help you to increase customer loyalty: 62% of millenials believe that online content increases their loyalty to a particular brand.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, content marketing can help you generate revenue by incentivizing visitors to engage with your brand. Email marketing alone can generate an ROI of 4,300%.
Content marketing may be expensive, but it’s still cheaper than traditional marketing. Generating a lead via traditional marketing costs $373, while generating a lead via content marketing costs less than half of that: only $143.
But developing a content marketing strategy that works isn’t easy. Digital marketing is developing at a rapid pace, and it can be hard to keep up with trends.
So…Curious as to what type of content will bring the best results in 2019? Keep reading to find out.
Importance of Personalization
According to the 2017 State of Personalization Report, 71% of consumers are frustrated by impersonalized shopping experiences, and 44% of consumers say they are likely to become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience.
Let’s consider these two messages, which both convey the same thing, but in a different way:
- “Hi, Jess! Are you ready to fly back to Paris? We have found special tickets for you at a 20% discount for you!”
- “This week all our clients have an opportunity to get 20% off flights to Paris”
Which email do you think will have a higher conversion rate? If you guessed the first one, then you’re right. Studies done by HubSpot reveal that 50% of marketing influencers gain more success with individualized messages than with generalized, mass-produced content.
A customer wants to feel like he is the only person in this world who deserves this special offer. He doesn’t want to share his virtual rewards with anyone else.
But personalization goes far beyond just addressing your customer or client by their first name in an email and acting more personable. In order to really personalize your emails, you’ve got to use data to better understand your customers and then segment your emails based on that data so that the right person receives the right email at the right time.
A personalized email speaks directly to the needs and desires of your customer or client. It tells them “I get you.”
Here’s an example: The wedding specialist website, Paper Style, was having difficulty getting people engaged and interested in their emails. So they sent out an email asking their customers what they were planning for:
Based on their response, people were segmented into the appropriate group and then received a series of five emails that spoke directly to their needs.
The result? Paper Rate’s open rate increased by 244% and their click-through rate went up by 161%. All thanks to more personalized emails.
Go Niche…or Go Home
If you sell weight loss programs and are targeting everyone who wants to lose weight, then you might provide your customers with basic recommendations like “do exercises and stick to a healthy diet”. But is this information really helpful for a person who wants to lose extra weight?
Instead, it would be much more effective if you targeted a very specific audience, like “weight loss programs for busy female entrepreneurs under 30” or “healthy diet for travel bloggers”.
Not only it is easier to rank for more niche, long-tail keywords, but it also allows you to hone in on a very specific audience and stand out from your competition.
Let’s say, for example, that you’re looking to buy roses. Would you rather go to the florist down the street that sells all kinds of flowers…or to the florist that only sells roses?
By selling just one type of flower, you can create more niche content, rank higher for that content, become an expert in your area, and stand out from all the other florists.
High Demand for Video Content
Experts state that video traffic will be over 80% of all consumer internet traffic in the next two years. There’s no doubt that video is becoming a new king of the digital world. The great news is that this change brings amazing opportunities for small business growth.
If you’ve never produced video content before, you can start by shooting explainers, how-tos, and product reviews. When creating your videos, keep in mind that video for YouTube should last around two minutes, and video for other social platforms should last around one minute, if not shorter.
Post-sale Marketing
Nowadays, a company should think not only about how to attract new customers but also how to retain them.
According to research done by GainInsight, increasing your customer retention by 5% can increase your profits by up to 95%. So if you want your small business to survive in the modern world, you’ve got to build long-lasting relationships with your audience.
So how can you build trust with your audience? Here are a few ways you can do that:
- Establish a unique and personable tone of voice (show a little personality!)
- Invest in a beautiful web design (first impressions are everything)
- Use customer testimonials, quotes, and case studies
- Spruce up your About page
- Be transparent
- Provide value (don’t think about how you can make money…think about how you can help your audience)
- Be consistent in your marketing efforts
- Provide remarkable customer service (follow the golden rules!)
Diverse Content
Modern users are spoiled with choices and they will undoubtedly lose interest in your company if you stick to only one type of content.
Do a little research (or ask if you have to) to find out what type of content your audience is interested in. Do they like blog posts? Videos? Infographics? SlideShares?
More likely than not, it will be some combination of textual, visual and audio content. Here are a few different types of content you could create:
- Long- and short-form blog posts
- Podcasts
- SlideShares
- eBooks/Guides
- Videos, including product demonstrations and Q&A sessions
- Short-form social media content such as status updates, quotes and images
- Infographics
- Interactive content (like quizzes)
- Results of email and online surveys, discussing the findings you’ve gathered
There are plenty of online tools and services that you can use to diversify your strategy. For example, you could use Canva to design infographics or Imgflip to generate funny memes.
Next Steps
New content marketing trends appear every day. So take these trends into consideration, but continue to be on the lookout for what’s happening in your niche.
In order to do that, you might want to connect with other companies and sites in your industry by following news websites and forums, as well as by subscribing to emails and newsletters of prolific online publishers in your line of work.
There is no right or wrong outlet to follow; the important thing is that you expand your reach and income of information as much as possible.
Last but certainly not least, be flexible. Don’t think of your content strategy as being set in stone. Rather, think of it as something that should be continuously adjusted as your customers’ preferences and industry trends change.
