Creating content for the web

Quality content brings many benefits for businesses with an online presence. It helps build an audience, attracts customers and creates evangelists who spread the message about the business by sharing via various channels. For this reason, it is important to plan the content, and have a good content marketing strategy in place.

With the proliferation of social media users, businesses have the opportunity to directly connect with their customers and prospects.  To build and grow this audience, businesses need a content strategy.

Quality content optimised for the search engines is an effective tool for a business to generate search traffic, besides being shareable via social media. When the content is focused on the customer or prospect, it helps convey the benefits to the buyer and encourages them to share it, while establishing the business as a credible and trustworthy source.

Creating the content strategy

Putting together a content strategy starts with understanding what the customer wants and then giving it to them. Knowing where these customers see your content determines where you must direct your efforts and budget so that you get the best ROI from it.

Briefly, your content strategy is a framework for your content about your brand and business, ensuring that it is perceived as an authority and gets the attention of the search engine and user. Naturally, the content strategy must be integrated into the marketing plan, monitored and tracked. The marketing manager must ensure that all aspects and elements are taken into account while designing the strategy. After implementation, a close eye must be kept on Analytics so that content with favorable ROI can receive more focus.

The content strategy will take on different approaches even if the final goal is the same, that of increasing sales and profits. For example, if the business sells different products and services, each of these may need a different approach. If the business sells directly as well as through distributors, it may need two different content strategies. If the goal is to increase brand awareness while increasing profits, this will need another approach.

What type of content?

The content will depend on your audience and their online behavior. They may be active on Twitter or LinkedIn, be your website visitors or prefer to hang out on Pinterest, Facebook and other social media sites. Your users’ online behavior will decide:

  • The type of content you create
  • The time and budget you must invest in it

If you have a wide customer profile, you may need to create content that caters to each customer group. Get an idea of how your business and its products/services are perceived online to know whether there are any negative comments. If there are people having conversations about your business, you can respond appropriately.

Measuring the effectiveness of your content strategy

To know how effective content is in helping you achieve your marketing goals, you must create benchmarks against which it can be measured and evaluated periodically. Here are some tools you can use to check the level of engagement of your audience with your brand, web properties and content:

  • Google Analytics to measure page visits, traffic volume and sources, time spent on the site to assess overall site engagement and social media success.
  • Social monitoring via brand, product and service mentions and reactions.
  • Social media platforms like Facebook likes and fans, Twitter followers and retweets, Google Plus circles and friends, YouTube subscriptions and so on.

In addition to the above, make sure you know which of your content is the most popular so that you can leverage it. Here are some ways to distribute your content and engage your market:

  • Interesting posts on your blog that invite interaction and create conversations with your market. Make the content shareable on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, StumbleUpon and other popular social media sites for maximum reach.
  • Feature the RSS feed prominently as those who stay updated via Google Reader can also share your links with their network.
  • Post engaging content on your Facebook fan page with your own commentary and generate discussions.
  • Share on LinkedIn. Ask questions and invite feedback from your groups.
  • Explore SlideShare for content marketing.
  • Leverage photo sharing sites like Flickr and Pinterest.
  • Convert your content into podcasts and videos and share on BlogTalk Radio and YouTube.

Almost all of the above can be integrated on your website and blog for your reader’s easy access. Today, content is no longer just the web pages of a business’ website. It can take many forms. Since the business’ goal is to expand its reach, drive sales and enhance its profits, it must leverage the content on its website, its social media presence, blog, and other articles across the web, to build its reputation and profits.

Marketing with Google

Most businesses sets up a website with specific goals in mind. The most common goals of a well-designed website with optimised content are to:

  • Generate targeted traffic, leads and sales, convert visitors into customers.
  • Build brand and business image.
  • Improve search engine ranking.
  • Attract relevant back links from related quality websites to increase its credibility.
  • Engage with the market and build relationships.
  • Establish the business as a thought leader.

A well optimised website is key and an integral part of the business’ web marketing strategy. This requires a focus on careful search engine optimisation (or SEO) through high quality content that adds value and helps the business achieve its goals.

Why SEO

With effective SEO, a website becomes more ‘crawlable’ by the search engines, making each page on the website easy to find and access. SEO is an effective marketing technique that uses relevant key-phrases and optimised quality content to make the site more engaging and attractive to search engines. This makes the website more visible, increasing its inbound links and traffic.

From the above, it is clear that SEO and high quality content must work together to make a website successfully achieve its goals.

Marketing with Google must focus on quality content oriented towards the reader. An optimised content strategy is not only important for organic search traffic, but also for social sharing, since businesses must also leverage social media marketing to be successful. Recently, Google posted about another step to reward high-quality sites endorsing this, implying that websites that cared about ranking in the search engine results must develop an optimised content marketing strategy.

Why optimised content?

By definition, optimised content marketing involves understanding what the business’ targeted traffic (visitors) are looking for and featuring optimised content with the keywords to drive organic search traffic that converts. It also means delivering this content in the proper format and socialising it across the business’ social networks so that visitors can share and link to it.

Content can take the form of web page content, blogs, news, press releases, tutorials, case studies, white papers, social media updates and event information. Optimised content is critical for marketing with Google for the following reasons:

  • Google factors social signals into its organic search algorithms. Social media and social networking promote relationships, which bring in relevance. Relevance is what organic search results are all about. This increases inbound links, which endorse the website’s credibility.  Businesses must focus on Twitter retweets and followers, Google +1s, friends and circles, Facebook fans, Likes and Shares, YouTube views and subscribers and LinkedIn shares and connections, all of which means engaging optimised content.
  • Over the last year or so, Google has steadily updated its algorithms to weed out sites that featured bad quality content, bogus sites, link farms, and sites using spammy methods to rank higher.  Google made it clear that sites producing relevant content and building back links naturally would be the ones who would survive and flourish.
  • Google introduced the +1 button just over a year ago to encourage users to recommend the site. This is perceived as a social signal that directly impacts organic search rankings. Users are more likely to endorse a site when the site is optimised for the keywords used by them.
  • In January 2012, Google announced the launch of Search Plus Your World where a business’ published content on Google+ can be found by others in its circles. This gives the business’ content a larger reach over a longer time.

Besides the above, content is measurable to gauge its impact on a business’ search engine ranking, visitors, conversions and social impact. Businesses can leverage content to gain competitive advantage.

Creating a content strategy

Mapping out a content strategy is an activity that is best done as part of a longer term plan, like a marketing plan. One way to create a content strategy is to take stock of various events expected throughout the year and marking the relevant dates on the calendar, so that content can be built around these. Create an editorial calendar for the business’ blog and post unique content that will keep the reader engaged.

It is also important to keep track of trending topics in the industry and write about these, with your own expert comments to establish the business as an industry leader. Links to the content must be rendered shareable on the business’ social media profiles to amplify the message.

The great thing about content marketing is it feeds social media, keeping your target audience engaged throughout the buying process, while supporting search optimisation.

There are various ways to focus content marketing with a view to achieving business goals.  Here are effective ways to distribute quality content:

  • Website – As the business’ online presence, this offers product and service information to visitors. This is a good way to offer visitors an online address as it will support sales that result from other content. Depending on the business, a mobile version of the website might be appropriate. Some businesses also build a microsite with specific content around a particular product to increase sales.
  • Blog – This promotes interaction with customers, visitors and prospects and can feature a variety of content while supporting SEO and sales. Blog posts can be featured in newsletters. The business can also guest blog in its niche for a wider reach.
  • Social media profiles – This allows the audience to interact with the content, comment on it, link to it, use videos, images and audio. Best of all, this is where the potential market spends time and can be engaged in conversation. Social media is an excellent way to cross promote various business events and run contests. Social media supports video, which can encourage action through visuals. Videos are powerful as they allow interviews, demonstrations and entertainment and can also be embedded in blog posts and shared on social media sites. Photos-sharing sites like Flickr are also effective as they can be incorporated on blogs and social media as well as print media. Podcasts are popular and easy to distribute.
  • Newsletters, white papers and eBooks – These can be used effectively to distribute news and information regularly, keeping the reader updated. An online version makes these easier to re-share. Many businesses offer white papers and eBooks as a free download when visitors sign up on their websites. This creates a prospect list for the business to converse with.
  • A business’ catalog, emails and other online events are also ways to promote content. Infographics and mobile apps are very popular as lead generation methods when shared on social media.

To maximise content marketing, it must synchronize with business goals and be conducive to social sharing. Do you have a content marketing strategy? How do you use content marketing for your business?

The importance of a content strategy

Content marketing is an effective way to attract potential customers for your business through useful information. Information drives the internet highway and using it to target a prospective market can pay off in a big way. Your marketing plan should include a content strategy since the goal of marketing is customer engagement, increasing brand visibility, driving targeted traffic and so forth so that together, they can maximise the return on marketing investment.

The reason why content marketing works for both B2C and B2B marketing is it attracts potential customers without being pushy unlike traditional marketing. Websites must feature high quality content in order to rank well on search engine result pages, which in turn, will bring back targeted traffic that is likely to convert into leads. Besides content on their websites, businesses must also leverage other ways such as blogs, social media marketing and marketing messages to distribute their content.

A content marketing strategy is critical to a business’ success. Here are some points to consider:

  • When content is shared, it increases brand awareness. Engaging content can prompt the reader to share it on their own social media profiles, via email or through word of mouth.
  • Content is great for SEO, as well as link building. Aptly, content is crowned King by the search engines as it is through this that organic traffic is generated.
  • Content is important for generating leads and sales as most buyers base their buying decisions on online research.
  • When content is syndicated across social networks, forums, discussion sites, blogs and other interactive social media, it can drive more purchases.
  • Content generated by users in the form of reviews and ratings on social media sites and blogs can increase sales.
  • Content can be featured on a variety of platforms, such as mobile devices, to make it even more effective as part of your marketing strategy.

There are many ways to publish content and share it. The process begins with relevant, quality, branded content creation that is published, promoted and invites interaction. It must be worth sharing and linking to.

Using LinkedIn and Quora for business to business marketing

Clearly, businesses need a strong social media presence. This holds true especially for business to business (or B2B) marketing where the focus is on lead generation and the return on investment must be generated within specific time frames.

Although there is an almost unlimited number of social sites today, including the major ones like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that promote interaction with businesses, customers and prospects, there are two social networks that are in the limelight today for B2B marketing. These are Quora and LinkedIn. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Quora for B2B marketing

Quora is a social Question & Answer platform. It has become very popular over the last couple of years with B2B marketers as it draws an elite audience of CEOs, entrepreneurs, top executives and high profile bloggers who participate in the Q&A. B2B marketers are using the site for crowd sourcing and research. Membership is free and the site currently has 1 400 000 registered members as of February 2011. Members can ask questions and follow topics of interest and Quora is a reliable resource for business owners who can ask questions and receive answers from the right people.

Some tips to use Quora for B2B marketing, besides helping with link building, SEO and connecting with customers are:

Market research

Quora’s top user profile spans industry leaders. For a business this includes its competitors who might be talking about their new projects and audience who is offering feedback on what it wants or what it does not like. By just staying tuned, businesses can get valuable information for building their own marketing strategy or new product development.

Building connections and partnerships

Quora offers a great opportunity for businesses to put conversations about their brand in the spotlight while getting their employees involved. Because of its high profile users, Quora helps connect with decision makers and this could create new business opportunities and partnerships.

Online reputation management tool

By running a quick search of their name, businesses can tune in to what is being said about their brands. Brands that receive a lot of mentions are likely to have their own Quora category which means more visibility to prospective clients.

Recognition as an expert

For new businesses, Quora is a great platform for getting established as a knowledgeable expert in the relevant niche by providing answers to questions and thereby building the brand and its following.

A knowledgebase for employee training

Quora is a mini-encyclopedia that contains answers to a plethora of questions on a variety of topics. This can be curated and used as a free training tool for employees to stay updated with the latest trends. This in turn helps in product development or expansion as it keeps the business abreast of what the market wants.

Using Quora involves a high level of engagement and initiative to attract business leads.

How to use LinkedIn for B2B marketing

LinkedIn is in a class apart for B2B marketing as it is focused on business professionals. There are currently 150 million members and every Fortune 500 business is represented on LinkedIn providing businesses with a captive audience full of decision makers who are approachable. LinkedIn can be used as an effective lead generation tool. Here are some tips for B2B marketers to take advantage of this professional networking site:

  • Well-designed profile page and company page that are continuously updated to stay current. This includes listing present employees, recommendations, awards, products and services with links that are clickable to the relevant pages of the business’ website.
  • Building meaningful relationships using LinkedIn’s Group Search feature and engaging with connections made, contributing to conversations in a meaningful way and helping to solve problems.
  • Like Quora, LinkedIn is also effective to establish oneself as an expert and a valuable, trustworthy resource that attracts customers.
  • Interacting with known people and expanding the business’ network and building useful contacts
  • Ensuring prospects can find the business’ website and other social media profiles easily by integrating them with the LinkedIn profile page so that it becomes easier to stay connected and discuss business across the World Wide Web.
  • Since LinkedIn is an information goldmine, this can be used to research and understand customers and the competition through their status updates and profile pages.
  • Amplify content by sharing it on LinkedIn through the status update. This can be a new blog post, a whitepaper or a thought leadership snippet while linking back to the business’ website.

A high level of engagement on Quora and LinkedIn can help B2B marketers to generate qualified leads and grow their business. As with all social media, the “soft sell” works best as a “hard sell” approach can scare contacts away.

Do you use Quora and LinkedIn as part of your B2B marketing strategy?

Writing a marketing plan

Designing and implementing a strong yet flexible marketing plan is the foundation of a successful business. A marketing plan must include a mix of different tactics based on an analysis of what has worked in the past and which activities did not yield the expected results.

A business usually defines its market as a particular group of buyers and before the marketing plan is conceived, the first step is to identify the target market, niches within the target market and understand its different needs for your product or service. This begins with market research to understand its expectations in order to devise strategies to meet them.  Although businesses set long term goals, detailed marketing plans are usually finalised for one year based on the year’s goals and budget.  A quarterly assessment shows any changes that must be made in the focus of the plan.

Here is a sequence of actions to write an effective marketing plan:

  • A mission statement stating the nature of the business, its services, its target markets.
  • A description of the target market, its size, its segments and user profile
  • A detailed description of products and services being offered
  • The budget required to reach the products and services to the market. This includes staff, services, logistics and other marketing and promotional costs
  • A break up of marketing and promotional tactics proposed to be used for different target market segments and the time frame for monitoring these activities. This includes keeping track of industry trends and forming strategic business alliances. Marketing strategies can include online and offline networking, direct marketing in the form of sales letters, email marketing, flyers, online advertising focused on specific target markets, campaigns to increase product awareness, online article marketing, direct sales, mobile marketing, social media marketing, brand building, trade shows, etc. Through constant monitoring and evaluation, tactics that work can be repeated while those that do not work must be dropped.
  • Competitor analysis. This is an on-going exercise and a part of the market plan in order to achieve the right positioning. This involves a SWOT analysis where you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats vis-à-vis the competition. In general, competition revolves around a combination of price, product and benefits. This will help create your own Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which is the message that will go out in your marketing communication.
  • Quantifiable marketing goals. This covers what you want to accomplish in twelve months, the markets you plan to reach and how you plan to cover them and your revenue goals.
  • Monitoring and tracking results to see which strategies generate leads and sales, the customers’ response to these strategies and what appeals to them.

While evaluating the marketing plan periodically, it must answer the following questions:

  • Were the goals reached?
  • Were the marketing campaigns successful?
  • Did it achieve the expected return on investment?
  • Did it result in conversions as expected?

In the course of the assessment, if new markets emerge, the planning team looks at ways to explore and reach these markets.

In summary, the marketing plan must set clear and realistic targets that are measurable, specify clear deadlines for meeting these targets, indicate the budget for each market activity and also allocate accountability to the people responsible for each aspect of the plan.

Growing your business’ customer base

The goal of most businesses is to maximise its return on marketing investment. Growing its customer base on an on-going basis forms the foundation of this goal. In general people purchase a business’ products or services for three reasons, namely to help them satisfy a need, as a solution to a problem or to make them feel good.  As a starting point, the business must decide which of these reasons it plans to target. There are chances that more than one of these reasons applies.

Based on this, the business must find the niche to focus on. Target marketing lets you direct your marketing efforts, rand and brand message towards the specific market that is more likely to buy your products.  It is the most effective way to reach your buyers and grow your customer base.

How to identify your target market

A target market can be defined as a group of prospective customers with similar needs, who are most profitable for your business. Your marketing efforts will focus on these specific needs so that the final product appeals to the target customer.  The product will finally reach the customer via short-term and long-term marketing strategies.

  • Start by looking at your current customer base – who they are, why they buy from you. Identify common characteristics and zero in on what brings in the most and best business.
  • Look at your competition’s market, their current customers and find a niche that is being overlooked by them.
  • Analyse your product or service, listing its features, advantages and benefits.
  • Decide which demographics to target based on factors such as age, location, gender, income, education, occupation etc.
  • Now look at the psychographics based on factors such as personality, attitude, values, hobbies, lifestyles, behavior and decide where your product or service will fit in their lifestyle, the media they frequent for information.

Based on the above information, decide whether you have an adequate market based on your criteria and whether they will benefit from your offering. Based on your findings, you can design your marketing approach and sales activities to meet the needs of your target market.

How you target your prospective customers will depend on your short term and long term marketing goals as this will have a critical impact on which strategy you choose.

While long-term marketing strategies focus on building brand awareness in the specific niche in your target market through a gradual increase in sales, short-term marketing focuses on generating immediate revenue.

  • Long-term strategies include branding activities that aim to build the business’ image and customer loyalty, relationship building strategies focused on the business’ associates, partners and market and research and development efforts to create the right products for future sales.
  • Short-term strategies are focused on creating sales from the word go and the results are measurable.  Short-term strategies include activities like cold calling and setting up appointments for sales calls, product demonstrations or negotiations.  Short term strategies also use price discounts for a spurt in sales, group deals to promote to new customers, and other advertising methods that can yield immediate results.

Together, short-term and long-term strategies help the business meet its revenue goals while creating on-going relationships with customers, building its reputation and growing a loyal customer base in its chosen niche.

The impact of mobile phone technology on your business

During the past year, a number of businesses have begun to embrace mobile technology and integrate some form of mobile marketing in their marketing plan. The reason for this is an increase in smartphone and handheld device usage, with people using their phones to access information on the go. Many businesses offer free apps to engage and connect with their market to build brand loyalty. Web-friendly mobile phones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and others make it even easier to communicate and facilitate quick buying decisions. People are depending on their mobile phones while out and about and spend less time on their computers. Thanks to various easy-to-download apps, users can quickly disseminate information and enjoy the process.

According to a recent survey on iPad usage by IDG Connect, “54% of global IT and business professionals say that their iPad has partly replaced their laptop, while a further 16% say it has completely replaced their laptop”. It follows from the results of the survey that mobile phones are poised to have a major impact on the way you do business in the coming years.

Why is mobile important?

Mobile technology has revolutionised the way people interact with a brand. Almost all business websites have a mobile-friendly version of their website. Creating a mobile version of your website is important as the regular features of your website, especially Flash and JavaScript do not appear on the mobile browser. Buyers reach for their mobile phones to do research on a product or service they want to buy and this naturally makes it critical for a business to be mobile-friendly . Mobile phones also help increase social media interaction between your business and audience as most users access their social media profiles via their phones.

With rapidly changing mobile technology, here are some questions to help you assess the degree of impact mobile can have on your business:

  • Can your customers order and pay for your products or services via their mobile phones?
  • Can mobile phone GPS technology increase the productivity of your field staff?
  • Can you increase the response rate to your special offers by sending them to your customers’ mobile phones?
  • Will your business benefit from using cloud computing technology, helping you access information on the go via a mobile phone?
  • Can your staff reach you instantly for quicker decisions via a handheld device or smartphone?
  • Will using mobile phones reduce your travel costs while increasing interaction with prospects via virtual sales, training and product demonstrations?
  • Can your business use Bluetooth technology or QR codes your logistics solutions?
  • Will QR codes attract more visitors to your business website and motivate them to engage with your products?
  • Is your business compatible for video marketing, which can be viewed by mobile phone users?

If you answered yes to some of all of the above, then it is time to adopt mobile technology and leverage it for your business.

Achieving your marketing goals in 2012

To achieve better marketing results in 2012, it is important to measure it before managing it. A business’ marketing plan usually includes a full SWOT analysis, situation analysis, pricing policy, statement of USP and sales strategy. But before you plan your marketing for the next 12 months, here are a few quick questions to get you started to evaluate your last year’s marketing efforts:

  • What worked last year and what is the proof?
  • What results were generated and how do they compared with the plan?
  • If a strategy was successful last year, chances are it will work this year as well. But do the costs justify the results?
  • What did not work?
  • What was the most successful marketing strategy that generated the maximum sales?
  • Which critical tasks have the potential to impact your future marketing activities?
  • How effective was your social media marketing?
  • Did your website convert as expected?

Begin your evaluation by reviewing your past marketing activities and the results. To identify what worked, look at the activities that brought in the most clients, sales and profits and impacted your business in a positive way. This will help you direct your efforts on the activities that were effective and steer clear of those that were not. It is important to have a tracking system in place so that you measure the return on investment on each marketing activity.

Based on the above, you must consider exploring new marketing channels or platforms frequented by your target market and design marketing materials that help you reach your target market quickly and effectively.

Some of your marketing tasks to achieve better results in 2012 may be:

  • Revamp your newsletter, make it more engaging and increase/decrease its frequency
  • Add new pages to your website focused on new keywords and key phrases
  • Explore new niches to market your products
  • Use customer feedback to improve your customer service and create new products
  • Add a new social media network to your social media marketing strategy to increase engagement
  • If your target market spends most of its time on Facebook, consider creating a custom Facebook Fan page to engage with them there
  • If your customers are receptive to mobile marketing, consider developing an app for mobile devices

While evaluation must be a periodic process, the year-end evaluation should scrutinise the following areas:

  • Your budget vs. actual expenditure
  • The various marketing channels used
  • Target audience reached
  • Results in relation to your marketing goals in terms of lead generation, sales and brand promotion
  • Product and service strategies

The new marketing plan must define your marketing goals and factor in the results of last year, the current business environment and competition activity.

It all begins with a solid marketing plan with effective marketing strategies, regardless of the size of your business as this will help you track results and manage your marketing budget. An evaluation of last year’s results will enable you to make the necessary changes and come up with new strategies and goals for the next year.

Take your business’ marketing to the next level

In an ever-changing and highly competitive market, business owners must always look for new and innovative ways to take their business’ marketing to the next level, so that they can increase their market share. While there are many strategies you can employ, you must focus on engaging your customers, adding value to your brand in a way that will build you a loyal customer base and get you the maximum return on your marketing Rand.

Here are three ways that can help you steer your business in the direction you are aiming for.

Exploring new ways to promote and sell your products or services

One effective way to diversify your brand and increase your customer base is to identify new sales channels and new markets for your product. For example, an offline business that sells solely through its brick and mortar store may decide to establish its website online and use digital marketing to explore new markets and gain more customers. It may look at new market segments to promote its products. A health and beauty business which sells through its retail stores may decide to expand its sales to salons, fitness centres and spas. A business that sells directly to the market may decide to switch to a distributor network to capture new markets and increase its sales.

Increase product range to add value to the customer

Creating new products or add-ons that complement or add value to an existing product is an effective way to engage customers and grow sales. A company that sells coffee-makers might decide to introduce its own flavoured blends and mixes to use with the equipment. Another example is the classic McDonald’s “would you like fries with that?” with their basic products. Each time a customer orders a food item, the sales rep automatically asks if they want fries with that. The customer says yes without thinking, usually. A company that manufactures shampoos may decide to expand its products to offer a complete range of hair care products to include conditioners, hair strengthening products, hair gels and more. Loyal customers are usually ready to try and recommend new products from a brand they trust.

Organise your business for success

To grow your brand, engage your customers and realise your marketing return on investment, it is important to ensure that your business structure and staff are organised for sales and customer service. Traditional methods do have a degree of success, but when you decide to explore new markets and expand your product line, you may need to revamp the way you operate. For example, if you have decided to sell through a distributor network, your focus shifts to logistics and product quality rather than hiring more sales people to cold-call and sell your products. You may want to now concentrate on building brand awareness using online marketing strategies and social media marketing to engage your customers and get to know them better.

Taking your business to the next level takes vision and planning, understanding your market and your customers, knowing what you want and implementing your plan successfully.