What is content marketing? (A brief refresher)

The classic definition of content marketing, according to the Content Marketing Institute, is:

“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

In other words, companies attract prospects and customers to their sites or social media pages and turn those eyeballs (and the people behind them) into sales. Successful content marketing companies have specific and data-driven strategies for delivering the right content to the right people at the right time. They nurture those relationships, feed prospects more relevant content, and ultimately convert them to buyers (or build loyalty with current customers/clients).

Content marketing:

• Is a timeless marketing technique. It has its roots in the 1880s. Sponsored content and direct mail-driven lead-generation streams have been around for decades.
• Changed dramatically as a result of automation. Technology became the jet fuel that enabled marketers to market with more precision, speed, personalization, and analytics.
• Continues to evolve due to AI, machine learning, and sophisticated SEO techniques. Today’s content marketer can assess who is consuming what types of content, which patterns of content (message, media, time of day, location, and device) perform best, and fine-tune their approach at the drop of a hat.

How has the pandemic changed content marketing?

Media consumption was undergoing a digital transformation well before the pandemic, with the growing popularity of online news sites, social media platforms, and streaming services. But once the pandemic hit, things accelerated. People started spending more time online and consuming even more digital content.

In fact, video content viewership increased by 60%, according to a Nielsen study.

Naturally, businesses had to adapt by building remote-first content marketing strategies. This spawned the rise of online events and immersive virtual experiences as well as multichannel content distribution.

New formats started gaining popularity, as voice and audio content bridged the “connection gap” and humanized digital interactions. Podcasts in particular exploded in popularity, with 55% of Americans over the age of 12 now being monthly podcast consumers.

Interestingly, these aren’t just fleeting content marketing trends that only lasted during the height of the pandemic. Many of these changes have become permanent fixtures in content marketing today. In other words, these COVID-19 digital content experiences are here to stay.

Meanwhile, as workers became more comfortable with remote work environments, the structure of content marketing teams also evolved. Gallup reports that six out of 10 employees with remote-capable jobs prefer a hybrid work arrangement, while around one-third prefer a fully remote setup.

As a result, many content teams have adopted hybrid structures to offer more flexibility. In the process, measurement and attribution for content performance metrics have also adapted to support these new team structures. Tools with automated data collection and real-time tracking capabilities now take center stage in content marketing analytics.

New Frontiers with AI Content Marketing

The pandemic isn’t the only thing that’s transformed the content marketing industry. With the growing adoption of generative AI, content marketing teams have to navigate a “new normal” dominated by AI-powered content strategies.

As generative AI tools, particularly ChatGPT, became more capable, businesses were able to speed up and scale their content production. Many embraced complete content automation, where AI generates entire articles, social media posts, or videos.

For businesses that still want to focus on human-led content creation, a hybrid marketing option can significantly improve efficiency. Using AI to streamline certain aspects of the production process, mainly content ideation and briefing, allows human teams to produce the actual content. A study by eMarketer even found that 55% of marketers use AI to ideate content.

Seven Rules of Content Marketing in The New Normal

Considering the changes discussed above, let’s check out some of the top rules to guide your content marketing strategy in the new normal.

1. Know your brand

Your content is a key part of your entire marketing platform. What do you want to be known for as a company? What’s your tone (formal, whimsical, entertaining)? How are you different from — and better than — everyone else in your product or service category?

2. Build a content calendar

Some of your content will be “evergreen” (or useful year-round) and some may specifically relate to a season. But every piece of content must have a purpose and somehow tie into your customer experience and sales process. Use a visual content calendar to plan out your content and make strategic publishing decisions.

3. Ensure you have the right tech stack

With the popularity of AI content marketing, the right tech stack is essential to keep up with the competition. Invest in the right AI-powered tools to support various aspects of your content marketing efforts. This may include ideation, briefing, content production, and content distribution.

4. Diversify your media types

Content isn’t just blog posts. From video to livestreams to podcasts, there’s a huge selection of content types you can experiment with. Diversify your digital marketing strategy to include these different media types so you can cater to a wider audience.

Incorporate unique imagery, videos, graphics, polls, and other creative approaches to attract viewers. Invest in podcasts, livestreams, and immersive digital experiences to connect with your audience.

Short-form video, in particular, is gaining traction across industries and social media platforms. Over 90% of Gen Z and Millennials watch short-form videos at least sometimes or frequently, with YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram being the most popular platforms.

Ramp up your video content marketing efforts with product demos, how-tos, and entertaining stories. You can even share compelling video customer stories to build trust.

Headlines must be powerful and pithy. Even for B2B content marketing, white papers and research reports need to be compelling to read. After all, professionals are consumers too.

5. Think YOU, not ME

No one wants to read a post or watch a video that’s all about you or your product. Consider what your audience wants, which formats they prefer, and which pain points to address. You can even segment your audience into different personas and develop more personalized content to address the specific needs of certain subgroups.

When you develop content that focuses on the audience, it’s likely to resonate with them, generating better engagement overall.

6. Track, measure, and fine-tune

Take advantage of the data that’s available to you, and don’t “spray and pray” with your content. Monitor your content performance metrics regularly to identify patterns and uncover insights about what your audience prefers. This will help you match your messages and cadence to better align with your audience’s behavior and preferences.

7. Seek help when you need it

Engage professionals who understand your industry and content marketing. Great writers can be useful, but true content marketers know how to turn those words or pictures into profits. Create a cross-generational, multi-skilled work team that has both business acumen and creative chops.

Some companies have had to trim their marketing and content staffs, but outsourcing to integrated groups of teamlancers is a viable option. Selecting the right partners can be more cost-effective than in-house solutions and can bring a whole new skill set and perspective to your business.

Don’t rule out managed content creation either. This marketing specialty lets you outsource the entire content management process to the right team of content producers.

Content Marketing Has Evolved

Just as technology and new media platforms changed the content marketing industry over the past decade, the COVID-19 pandemic left a lasting and profound impact. What we’ve learned:

• Giving people the information and insights they really need is paramount.
• Workgroups look different now, and content teams are more diverse than ever, located worldwide.
• Businesses are more mindful of how they spend every marketing dollar.
• AI and machine learning will continue to accelerate performance data reporting and guide decision-makers on how to respond.

However, one thing hasn’t changed since the 1880s. People still want to read, view, and engage with words and pictures that make them smarter, make them laugh or cry, give them insights into how to solve problems, and find where to go for the things they need.

Need help creating more impactful content to adapt to the new normal? ClearVoice can help. Our team of experts offers a range of content solutions to scale your marketing efforts. Get in touch with a content specialist today to get started.

The post How Digital Transformation Redefined the Content Marketing Industry appeared first on ClearVoice.

Then, you meet them and share information about yourselves. If you say the “right” things, these strangers grow to like and trust you. You say and do things that make you more appealing. And, if everything works out, you become fast friends. You meet their needs and vice versa.

The “customer journey” is a term that marketers often use to lead total strangers along the path to selling them a product or service.

A professional or consumer has a business need or problem. Or, they may not even yet know that they have a challenge. Your company has an opportunity to attract, engage, and delight them with customer journey content for each stage.

What are the stages of the buyer’s journey?

Several models for marketing funnels exist, and knowing them is crucial for creating customer journey content tailored to each stage.

The traditional roadmap breaks the stages down into:

• TOFU (top-of-funnel): The phase when someone is learning and exploring the category or perhaps finding out for the first time that they have a problem
• MOFU (middle-of-funnel): This is when you can give people more in-depth information about their needs and your solution
• BOFU (bottom-of-funnel): You’ve built trust and engagement and begin the process of closing the sale
• RETENTION: An often-overlooked stage in the journey has recently drawn more attention. Once you’ve built a relationship with a new customer, you need to prove that they made the right choice continually.

This all makes the steps of building a relationship straightforward and linear. Recently, more marketers have started talking about the engagement process as a flywheel rather than a funnel. The prospect sits in the middle, and the goal of the business is to attract, engage, and delight them.

But no matter what terminology and graphics you use to build your marketing and content plans, some basic principles hold about using storytelling and compelling content to develop and maintain a solid relationship with your target audience — leading to sales and growth.

Full-funnel content marketing is critical

What does that mean? In detail, you must map out how you plan to use customer journey content throughout the decision-making process. As in any relationship, your tone and information must evolve as you build trust and interaction, turning strangers into raving fans.

For this article, we’ll use four primary funnel segments (through the eyes of the target market) and match content types to each.

Content plans require a tight content strategy and the right resources to produce the various types of media you might need. Think too about the different levels of decision-making within a company. Some customer journey content may be geared to C-level executives, while other pieces are for the professionals handling day-to-day operations.

You want to be sure that everyone in an organization knows who your company is, trusts you, and includes you in evaluating products/services.

1. Awareness

Consumers and business decision-makers can be overwhelmed by messages in a world where content increases by the second.

Among the content types you can use to turn that stranger into an interested prospect are:

• Social media
• Blogs
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Podcasts
• Newsletters
• White papers
• Ads
• Public relations efforts
• Research

In short, any media that stands out in a sea of messaging will grab the reader’s or viewer’s attention. Frequency, consistency, and timeliness are critical at this stage. The more often you see messaging from a brand, the more likely you will pay attention to it.

Remember that people may not know or care about your product or even be aware that the category exists at this stage. For example, ClearVoice provides quality content to a wide range of businesses.

Marketing decision-makers may be using individual freelancers and in-house staff and don’t even know that they could save time or money by outsourcing content creation.

But rather than approaching prospects with a hard sell on our system, ClearVoice shares useful marketing information as part of the TOFU (awareness-building) stage.

For example, many people today are using QR codes in their marketing. By publishing an educational article about their value, we are not only solving a customer need, but we are establishing ourselves as a company that is on top of marketing trends.

The ideal customer takeaway should be, “Wow! This company knows its stuff. Let me learn more about what they do.”

Your TOFU strategy and customer journey content should be driven by what topics most interest your target market and what media they consume.

2. Evaluation

Let’s follow the example we gave above. ClearVoice already planted its brand in the prospect’s mind. They know that ClearVoice has expertise in content marketing and is an excellent source of trends. And now, perhaps they are open to considering engaging an external team to help with content creation.

The types of customer journey content that work best at this mid-funnel or MOFU stage are:

• Educational pieces
• Quizzes
• Discounts and offers
• e-mails
• Resource guides
• Webinars and events
• White papers (especially content that is gated and can help you gather more information about prospects)

Your company is no longer a total stranger to your prospects, and now you’ve been granted permission to share information, experiences, and deals that will solve their business problems.

Remember to be “you-centric.” In other words, your content should revolve around information that benefits your user or buyer. A new staff announcement or a new round of funding, for example, should be presented in terms of how it will ultimately help your prospect.

But those prospects may be comparing your company to other solutions at this stage. So, your content needs to reinforce your knowledge and brand personality.

3. Conversion

“I’m ready to invest in a solution, and which one do I buy?” the prospect is thinking. Now is the time to truly dazzle the potential buyer. They know your brand and may even look forward to consuming your varied, insightful, and frequent (but not annoying) content.

You’ve built a certain level of trust. So, now your customer journey content can become more salesy. For example:

• Product or service demos
• Customer stories and testimonials
• Staff, award, and funding announcements (but see #2)
• Specification sheets
• Webinars and events designed around case studies

Now is your time to shine and show the prospect that you can provide a much-needed solution to a problem they may not have realized they already have.

Be wary of pushing too hard at this stage. After all the effort you’ve put into wooing a prospect, you don’t want them to be turned off by aggressive and overly-frequent sales tactics.

But, as we noted above, the decision-making process in the customer journey is not necessarily a straight line. So, by having a consistent and powerful content flow, you’ll remain top-of-mind whenever the prospect is ready to decide.

4. Delight/retention

One might argue that this is where the arduous work begins. You’ve closed the deal, and that prospect is now a customer. But, if they are still being courted by your competitors or don’t know how to best use your product or service, you may quickly lose them.

Your competitors may still be pursuing your customers, so building loyalty is essential.

Churn can be costly. What types of information and services do your existing customers need? Your customer journey content at this stage should be:

• Ongoing educational and trend information
• Exclusive invitations to events and opportunities
• Announcements of product enhancements and company news
• Customer satisfaction surveys (and publishing of results)

Your content should all be geared toward making your customers think, “I made the right choice. This company values my business! I can’t imagine working with anyone else.”

How do you know that your content is working?

A whopping 65% of companies don’t have a system for evaluating the success of their content. Establishing metrics is critical.

One of the challenges in tracking the success of a digital marketing funnel is that you may not be able to pinpoint precisely which content element drove a prospect to finally commit to a purchase (known as attribution).

Although setting up unique tracking codes and time-mapping sales may give you insights, content marketing measurement is still not an exact science.

Be sure to schedule regular content reviews with your marketing and sales teams and learn from your successful programs and your failures. But remember to be patient.

Especially in complex sales or areas with lots of competition, the marketing and sales process takes time. You can’t expect to load TOFU content into your funnel today and have thousands of new customers tomorrow.

Above all, having the right team of professionals helping you craft your customer journey content for each stage of the funnel (or flywheel) can make a massive difference in results.

Even if you have content marketing experts in-house, augmenting your team with creators who are specialists in your industry or type of content can result in significant performance improvements and can bring you best practices from other businesses.

Outsourcing can also help you better manage a heavy volume of content creation at each funnel stage.

If you need help creating customer journey content tailored to each stage of the journey and your target audience, talk to a content specialist at ClearVoice today. Our expert strategists, writers, editors, and SEO professionals can create informative, compelling, and authority-building blog posts, articles, white papers, ebooks, email copy, social media content, and much more.

The post What Content Works Best at Each Stage of the Customer Journey? appeared first on ClearVoice.

But having a lot of content is not enough. Today, you must constantly “feed the machine” by refreshing your current content and repurposing it into new and relevant blogs, social posts, videos, and other forms of content. This will help your business and brand rank, generate awareness, and sell your products or services.

Benefits of refreshing your content

Reasons you must continually freshen up your content:

• Improved SEO rankings: It contributes to your search engine rankings, according to Search Engine Journal.
• Establishes authority: Whether it’s talking about the future of your industry or offering simple marketing tips, you want to establish yourself as an industry expert.
• Fosters loyalty: If you provide timely, relevant, and compelling content, your target audience will return to your site. Think about your own behavior. Would you keep going back to the same store if they never had anything new on their shelves?
• Enhances trustworthiness: By educating and entertaining your audience, your brand will be viewed as being more tuned in and committed to its industry or category. Today’s buyers are constantly looking for new solutions but will remain loyal to those brands that anticipate and meet their needs and help them navigate decision-making.

10 tips for refreshing your content

Keeping your content fresh doesn’t necessarily mean spending hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars and hours on new creative ideas and pages of brilliant prose. These steps can not only help you produce fresh content, but also develop content that improves ranking.

1. Invest in keyword research

By conducting keyword research, you will know exactly what people are looking for when they go online. Embed those words into your content, but be sure that what you’re writing or producing still makes sense to the reader or viewer. When you write up your briefs (see #2), educate your writers/producers about the importance of freshness.

2. Develop clear and specific content briefs when making assignments

The writer or producer should not only know the purpose of the piece but also the keywords that should be used and the types of sources you want to be included. The more recent the sources, the more credible the content.

3. Develop a tight content plan

A content plan will help guide you but remain open to swapping out topics based on what’s going on in the world or your industry.

4. Engage your team (both in-house and external) in regular brainstorming sessions

Look at what your competitors are doing, but don’t be a copycat.

5. Provide incentives for creative new ideas

Educate your content team on the factors that feed into freshness and, when you’re reviewing their work, make sure every piece meets the criteria.

6. Take inventory of what you’ve already created

You may already be sitting on content that can simply be updated or repurposed. Transform it into new media, formats, or graphic treatments.

7. Write powerful headlines and tags that signal freshness

For example, we published an article called The Complete List of Trending Keywords for Your 2022 Content Calendar that not only included 2022 in the headline but also listed upcoming seasonal keyword trends as a guide for content marketers. This approach alerts both the reader and Google that the content is up-to-the-minute (or at least up-to-the-year). Because the world is changing so rapidly, viewers are typically looking for sources from the past year or two.

8. Expand your talent base

You’ll need the capacity to create fresh content all year long. Outsourcing your content creation can be a great solution. You can maintain brand consistency while building a steady stream of new perspectives and even voices. Plus, you can engage professionals who specialize in certain types of media or industries. You’ll find it can be very affordable and you’ll augment your in-house team with best-in-class content experts.

9. Pay close attention to your metrics

Of course, you want to see that your content is ranking high in searches. But you also need to know that your prospects and clients are engaging with it — commenting, sharing, and linking to it. Make tracking and reporting a fun activity within your organization. Content production is both an art and a science and your team should include people who love words and images as well as those who get excited by metrics and SEO trends.

10. Stay abreast of the freshness factors in Google’s algorithm

We know that SEO is not an exact science, so only by following trends and relying on experts can you develop the best content that’s relevant to your viewers and easily (and frequently) found online.

The role of content freshness in SEO

How does Google measure content freshness? No one really knows exactly what’s in Google’s algorithm. But search experts all seem to agree that fresh content is good for SEO.

That includes:

• Posting date
• Content that’s been recently refreshed
• Frequency of content posting

Content decay is what occurs when a piece of content remains online for a while with no updates. And who wants their brilliant words and images to decay? You can take some simple and powerful steps to remain relevant to both your viewers and the search engines.

The four main factors that Google considers when evaluating freshness are:

• Publication date
• Indexing
• Last crawl
• Modification date

Reuse, repurpose, recycle

Once you’ve established a good system for tracking the engagement of your content, you’ll get a great sense of what topics and formats are most appealing to your audience. You can then take existing content and freshen it up to reach broader audiences. Not only will that expand your reach but it will also signal the search engines that something is new.

Among the creative ways, you can refresh existing content are to:

• Turn a blog post into an infographic
• Produce a video
• Encourage content and comments from guest contributors
• Search for new updated statistics and make significant updates to existing content.

Books and online courses are among the many other ways you can turn evergreen content into something new and engaging. That not only helps SEO but could also broaden your audience to different types of content consumers.

Even if you don’t plan to overhaul older content, review it periodically. Perhaps you’ve included links to sources that no longer exist. Or, something new has happened in your industry that requires a slightly different slant on your perspective.

Great high-performing content can be timeless. You just want to be sure you’re taking the steps that will keep it top of mind for both SEO and your viewers. Remember too that the opposite of fresh content is stale content. You don’t want your valuable customers to think that you’re out of touch with their needs and trends. And you certainly don’t want your competitors to be consistently ranking higher than you in searches.

ClearVoice can help you find fresh talent. Freshen up your content and make your readers, viewers, and bots happy in 2022 — and beyond! 

The post 10 Reasons Why Posting Fresh Content is Important to SEO appeared first on ClearVoice.

Digital media enables us to talk, see, and learn from others around the globe. And great content knows no geographic borders. In fact, consuming content from another perspective can help educate, inspire, or sell just as well as content that’s created in your own backyard (metaphorically).

Many companies today are location-agnostic. As a result of the pandemic, people work remotely, and you may not even know where the words you read or the pictures and videos you see are coming from. These basic principles, based on a global study, summarize the trends that content marketers worldwide have observed. “Humanized content” is  No. 1. In other words, develop content that resonates with your audience.

A Look at Content Marketing Around the World

That said, different parts of the world have different ways of communicating. We may all know, for example, that “s” takes the place of “z” in writing from the U.K., but cultural differences, privacy laws, and societal norms may all have an impact on the content you publish and consume.

Other continents and countries may be experimenting with creative approaches that you can apply to your own programs.

So, let’s take a trip around the world and give you a new perspective on global content.

Asia

Marketers in this continent spend roughly a quarter of their budgets on content marketing.

Some of the key trends around content in Asia include:

• The proliferation of apps
• An uptick in video usage, which seems to be true worldwide
• Time spent on mobile devices is on the rise. As in many markets, online shopping is driving growth.

Asia is a huge continent, comprised of many different countries with their own regulations. So, if you plan to create content specifically for the Asian market, know the rules.

For example, in China, you can’t use certain popular words in your copy: “national/state level,” “top class,” and “best” are all prohibited. India has specific laws related to influencer marketing and even dictates hashtags that advertisers must use, including #Ad, #Sponsored, #FreeGift, #Employee #Partnership, and others.

Although this report is a few years old, it is one of the most comprehensive guides to content marketing in Asia, and the trends it contains may be useful if you’re expanding into this market.

Europe

Like Asia, this continent is comprised of many different markets and languages. In addition, studies show that social media is consumed differently in the countries within Europe. For example, social media use in Malta among businesses is at the 80 percent level, whereas in France it is only 60 percent.

European lawmakers have long been concerned with privacy and transparency in content marketing and new legislation may have an impact on what marketers can say and who they can say it to.

South America

Latin America represents roughly 10 percent of the world’s population. Its rate of social media adoption exceeds that of the United States, according to this report from the Harvard Business Review. The report also points out that although marketing technology (Martech) does not yet have the same rate of adoption as it does in other markets, inbound marketing that is driven by content is a cornerstone in this region.

Video content is on the rise in this region, as in many other markets around the globe. A whopping 88 percent of people in the region consume streaming video content, making it a great place for marketers to reach their targets.

Africa

Storytelling has long played a role in African culture and history. So, content marketing is a natural extension of that.

Digital penetration in Africa has lagged behind other parts of the world, but it has begun to catch up. Areas like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are very sophisticated in terms of internet penetration and online marketing, so one strategy does not always fit all when you’re marketing in Africa. Examine the current state of each region’s social media evolution and customer needs.

As in other regions, marketers need to be familiar with the laws governing digital marketing. For example, multiple forms of legislation govern web-based marketing in South Africa.

Australia

This continent seems to be one of the content capitals of the globe, with 96 percent of marketers using some form of content marketing in their strategy.

As in much of the world, video is extremely popular. A comprehensive special report from We Are Social breaks down how and where our friends “down under” are spending their time online, which is helpful in crafting your content strategy in that market. Close to 90 percent of social media users watch online videos, and 64 percent stream music. When looking to reach your target market in Australia, pay close attention to the most popular platforms.

Last year, new legislation in Australia tightened policies surrounding digital marketing, particularly in relation to payments for content.

Antarctica

Here are the cold (literally) hard facts. Although Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, it is comprised mostly of ice. The population of 5,000 people is comprised mostly of research scientists.

Tourism to the area is on the rise, however. About 60,000 people visit the continent each year, and creative companies are offering some exotic luxury travel options. This is a great example of a marketing case where content within the geography may not be productive (unless you are selling to polar bears and penguins). Utilizing content marketing to raise awareness of vacation options and significant issues, such as global warming, can ultimately benefit a geographic area.

North America

Online behavior in the U.S. and Canada is constantly evolving. The most recent statistics and trends around digital media consumption indicate that Facebook usage has stagnated, but as in many other markets, user-generated video content is moving steadily upward.

Although Canada and the U.S. share a border, they are distinct markets, and even within each country, buying behaviors and language can vary significantly depending on the region. But content marketing is booming, and much of the global growth is expected to come from the United States.

The Competition Bureau in Canada makes the rules regarding advertising regulations, and the Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising claims in the United States. However, individual industries have their own guidelines, so be sure to study not only marketing legislation but also language specific to the population to which you’re marketing.

Going Global

If you’re considering expanding your marketing to regions outside the United States or your home country, be sure you:

• Work with agencies and companies that are familiar with the geography you’re targeting. They can help you avoid legal gaffes and ensure your communications style is appropriate for the market.
• Use social media platforms (such as LinkedIn) to establish your own community and an informal advisory board of professionals from outside your home continent. Take full advantage of the fact that business media today is without boundaries.
• If you’re expanding your marketing efforts in a specific region, consider joining the local organization. You’ll learn about trends as well as legislation and can float ideas past other professional content marketers in that geography.
• Follow marketing principles that transcend borders and cultures. In other words, ask yourself these basic marketing questions (and be sure you can answer them well):
  • Who is your target market?
  • Why would they be interested in your content?
  • What media is most appropriate for that target?
  • How will you measure success?
• Ensure that translations are thoroughly vetted for accuracy and tone. Among the most common gaffes that occur when you move from one tongue to another are:
  • Not allowing enough space for characters in a different alphabet
  • Misspellings of names
  • Incorrect punctuation

Although you may never be able to physically travel around the globe, this overview may at least give you a perspective on how approximately 5 billion people around the world consume digital content.

No matter what continent you live on and what language you speak, the basic principles of great content and marketing hold true. Keep the consumer at the center of your strategy, and you can never go wrong. Create strategies, brand messages, and unique and compelling content that will draw your reader/viewer in. Hire experienced professionals to develop content that aligns with your goals. Respect the laws around language and privacy.

Above all, remain curious and invest time every week in learning about trends and best practices from people worldwide. You never know where your next great marketing and sales idea will come from. Perhaps it will even emerge from Antarctica!

The post A Look at Content Marketing Around the World, From Asia to Africa appeared first on ClearVoice.

For example…

“We have ‘Willy WFH’ who is looking for ways to video chat with his team, and ‘Tanya Traveler” who works from the road. Plus, there’s ‘Henry Hybrid’ who likes both remote and in-person interaction,” a product manager or sales leader might declare.

But the problem with those descriptors is they are based simply on basic behaviors and suppositions. They don’t necessarily take into account the beliefs and desires of each market segment.

They may not reflect the insights that marketers can only glean through statistically significant and in-depth research.

That’s where persona research comes in.

Persona research is hardly new

Although business media first started writing about it in 2003, smart brand marketers have long believed investing in studies of human behaviors and attitudes leads to better, targeted marketing and messaging. Originally called “archetypes,” groupings of prospects are a fundamental part of sound marketing.

Before the internet and automated research, consumer packaged goods companies spent hours and dollars trying to understand shoppers’ belief systems and motivations. Marketers and research companies used focus groups and phone surveys to grasp why certain groups of people shopped the way they did and how they evaluated certain products.

Now, we have big data (and highly-specific data) at our fingertips 24/7. How it’s used can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, how companies spend their media dollars, and ultimately how the consumer or business buyer perceives an offer or a brand.

How to get started with creating personas

The first thing any great marketer needs to do is remember the people who are making decisions are flesh-and-blood human beings.

Tony Coretto, Managing Partner of PNT Marketing Services, says, “I’ve always thought of a ‘persona’ as the pretty face of rigorous research into a company’s ideal customer. Keep in mind customers, and prospective customers are fellow humans and not just “targets” for sales efforts. Marketers should always be thinking about how their research will create better customer experiences and outcomes.”

Use all the persona research data you have at your disposal. Talk to your salespeople about the basic types of prospects they talk to during their sales calls. Create some general hypotheses about the types of people who are engaging with your company. Then, work with professionals to turn that data into groups of people.

Mike Noble, Chief of Research and Managing Partner at OH Predictive Insights, adds, “Start with the information in your current database, segment by key verticals, and extend with secondary research.”

The types of data you should review are:

• Behavioral data: The places, times, and ways your customers shop
• Digital data: Part of behavioral data, knowing how your customers are engaging with your website and social media properties can be insightful. Google Analytics can be a potent tool.
• Attitudinal data: This can be very helpful in helping you imagine the types of people you’re targeting and can feed into crafting messaging and content. This type of information is best gleaned from surveys, focus groups, and other tools that enable deeper probing into opinions and tastes.
• Demographic data: Age, ethnicity, geography, and other specific facts about audiences. If you don’t have demographic data about your current customers, consider appending it to your database. Like attitudinal data, it can also be collected via survey tools. 

One research company breaks down persona research into three main categories. Which type you use is dependent on your budget, timeframe, and business size/stage. Lightweight, qualitative, and statistical are the three general categories, according to the Nielsen Norman Group.

Identify motivations and pain points

The holy grail of effective marketing is knowing the “why” of a purchase. Not every prospect has the same motivation for trying or buying a product or service.

Let’s use this article as an example. Some financially oriented readers may want to know about persona research to spend their marketing dollars more efficiently. A content strategist or writer might be reading it to learn how to produce better and more focused media for specific audiences. They are both taking the same action (reading the article) but for different reasons.

Similarly, if you are marketing a cloud-based SaaS product, some of your buyers may be interested primarily in saving time. In contrast, others are more concerned with the types of data they’ll be able to gather via your solution.

Israel Gaudette, Founder of Link Tracker Pro, sums up the value of these types of insights simply. “When you buy a gift for someone without a single bit of information about their preferences, you’ll get them something that they don’t want. The same thing goes in business.”

Visualize…visualize…visualize

Put a stake in the ground based on all the data you have, and create a small group of names and descriptions of the types of people you see emerging from your data analysis. For example, the content on this blog may be read by:

• CMO Mary: Busy, visionary, and results-oriented, she reads 50 marketing media a week, goes to conferences, and is primarily concerned with overall business success, providing the sales team with tools they can use, and presenting great results each month to her investors and board. Because she is time-pressed, she wants facts and figures, not fluff. Between 35 and 65, Mary is hard to fool because she’s a savvy business pro.
• Marketing Mark: 7-10 years out of college, he is always looking for ways to streamline his job and wow CMO Mary. He is digitally savvy but is deluged with information about products, services, and new technologies.
• SEO Sally: She has a precise role in the marketing infrastructure. Identifying and leveraging those terms that will build traffic and engagement. She spends a minimum of 6 hours a day online.

In addition to describing the work roles of these groups, you’ll also want to dig into where they live, what types of marketing media they currently consume, and how they make buying decisions.

“Keep it simple,” advises Coretto. “A persona should be carefully drawn and accurate, but not so complex that it can’t inspire marketers to clear relevant action.”

Beware of letting your biases get in the way of the facts. Balance profiling your current buyers/consumers with other groups that might be good prospects for your product or service.

Validate and quantify

Never let your preconceptions of customers and prospects get in the way of what the data shows. Only through quantitative research and analysis can you say with a fair degree of certainty the personas you created really exist, and those segments can be clearly defined.

Among today’s many research tools are:

• Surveys: Quick, economical, and flexible, you can gather information from a wide range of prospects on a wide range of topics. But keep your surveys short and offer incentives for completion.
• Focus groups: Once conducted in person, this form of interactive research has moved online. They can be run in different ways but add a dimension to research. The actual words of consumers or business decision-makers can hold tremendous insights into motivations.
• AI-powered tools like Delvve.ai and Pulsar. Rather than relying on human researchers to collect, cross-tabulate, and present data, these new systems will gather information from various sources, including real-time online customer behaviors. This accuracy and speed will allow marketers to do great things with messaging, targeting, and personalized communications.

Budget permitting, engage a research company or freelancer to help you with persona development. Professional researchers will speed up gathering data, ensure questionnaires are being properly constructed, and add an important level of objective reporting to your efforts.

Professionals will also be able to recommend the size of the samples you’re studying. Drawing conclusions based just on anecdotal evidence or a small group of people can be dangerous and lead to mistargeting your messages, media, and spending.

Create common language and goals within your organization

Research need not be dull. In fact, persona research creates a great opportunity for organizations to come together around common definitions of the prospects they are serving.

Once you’ve created and validated your personas, present them to your internal teams. Make it fun.

Sales and marketing efforts become more human because professionals can envision the people with whom they are interacting.

Says Andrey Doichev, Founder of Incandgo, “The more specific you get, the more refined the persona, and ultimately this means more specific targeted content.” Writers and other content producers have an easier time developing campaigns and matching media types to demographics.

Persona research, if done well, can lead to greater focus, more efficient spending, and a common language around sales and marketing that ultimately leads to better campaign results and more engaged buyers. Especially in our era of content glut, prospects appreciate companies that understand their pain points and engage with them as humans rather than names on a list.

In short, persona research can humanize your marketing efforts and build your business. Because behind every persona is a flesh-and-blood person who might buy from your company.

Get content developed specifically for your target audience by talking to a content specialist at ClearVoice today.

The post Persona Research: How to REALLY Get Into Prospects’ Hearts and Minds appeared first on ClearVoice.

What is public relations? Public relations (PR) is the practice of creating a positive public image for a company or person through conventional and digital media. Unlike marketing, it is called unpaid media, although companies and professionals sometimes hire professionals to help them secure media exposure.

Public relations differs from media relations in that the ultimate target for messaging is the public (i.e., consumers and business decision-makers).

Public relations builds awareness and positive impressions.

Public relations can influence consumers, shift opinions, inspire action, and even change policies. It is an essential part of a fully-integrated marketing plan and includes:

• Laying out brand positioning and USP, and identifying a target audience and what media they consume
• Honing in on relevant stories that generate interest and elicit action
• Maintaining a comprehensive and up-to-date list of key media outlets, industry influencers, and editors/journalists/reporters
• Crafting pitches and press releases. Pitches are short, compelling messages (usually via e-mail) to specific journalists. Press releases are longer-form communications that follow a set format and can be posted online
• Confidently pitching media and sharing high-quality content across multiple platforms
• Being prepared to respond to crises: product fails, ethics issues, unfortunate events, and employee controversies

Journalists are deluged with pitches every day, so reaching them at the right time with the right story angles is essential.

4 ways PR benefits an organization or person

Unpaid communication is often perceived as more authentic and trustworthy than paid advertising campaigns. Press mentions are viewed as news and not self-promotion. They can also build public trust that you are knowledgeable leaders in your field. The right publicity can:

1. Build (and maintain) your brand image

For example, when brands take a stand on social issues, they are perceived as thinking about broader issues than product sales. The Dove campaign, encouraging body positivity, is a solid example of this.

2. Establish you and/or your company as experts

When key media outlets quote or interview you, you establish yourself as an expert or subject authority in a field. PR companies can also help you source and secure industry-specific awards. Announcing these achievements gives you an edge over the competition, helping you stand out to potential customers.

3. Generate awareness of products or services

The right article about a new product, service, or company can catapult a brand from the unknown to an industry leader, and at a minimum, is the first step in generating traction for sales.  After all, if consumers do not know your product or service exists, they may take their business elsewhere — or not even know they need what you are selling. New products are often launched at industry events, attended by members of the media.

4. Facilitate talent acquisition and retention

Being mentioned in the news builds pride among employees, prospective hires, and partners.

Public relations combines creative storytelling and analytics.

PR pros may be generalists or specialize in areas like crisis response and resolution, reputation management, community relations, social media, events, internal/external communication, and many forms of writing, including press releases, speeches, and feature articles.  They ensure all messaging is credible, relevant, and unique.

Cultivating, building, and maintaining relationships are also crucial. Very often, PR pros have seasoned relationships with specific editors/writers that serve as their “go-to’s” for specific coverage. PR firms often subscribe to databases of media contacts to continually grow their network.

PR is typically measured through the number and quality of media mentions generated. Not an exact science, it provides “air cover” for other marketing efforts. Its role is to build awareness and credibility, setting the stage for marketing and sales to close deals.

As media becomes more diverse, new channels for reaching the reader/viewer emerge. Matching the media to your target audience ensures that your story ends up in the right places.

From press releases to blog posts, boost your brand’s image, awareness, and conversions with high-quality content from ClearVoice. Talk to a content specialist to get started.

The post Public Relations (PR) appeared first on ClearVoice.

Media relations is a form of public relations. The goal of media relations is to educate the media to report on a company’s objectives, accomplishments, and management accomplishments.

Although media relations and public relations are sometimes used interchangeably, they are distinctly different. Public relations (or PR) entails communication to multiple channels and, ultimately, consumer and business targets.

Media relations is specifically about building relationships between company representatives and the media.

Specialists in media relations develop strong relationships with publications (conventional and digital) that cover news related to a brand’s category and leverage those relationships to build brand awareness and credibility.

Unlike advertising, media relations does not involve paying for exposure. When the media writes about a company or reports about it on-air, readers and viewers generally see it as news rather than self-promotion.

Media relations is more than just “pitching a story.”

Once a company has developed its unique selling proposition (or USP), media exposure can be a powerful way of reinforcing the brand, its values, and its accomplishments.

Successful media planners know how to tell stories about their companies that will appeal to journalists. They think creatively and expansively about angles that are credible, relevant, and unique.

A media strategy is an important component of a fully integrated marketing strategy. To develop a solid media plan, one must:

• Know who your target audience is and what publications (conventional and digital) they consume
• Create a current and specific list of those media
• Develop story angles that journalists will find newsworthy and compelling
• Utilize a combination of self-generated content (bylined or contributed articles) and “pitches” to media. The latter will be written or reported by professional staff reporters, writers, or producers

Although companies use proactive and positive media relations tactics to generate coverage, they must sometimes also respond to crises like product failures, ethics issues, or other unfortunate events.

Crisis management is a unique type of media relations management and often involves professionals who have extensive experience in communicating during difficult situations.

Working with journalists requires a knowledge of the types of stories they cover (called their “beats”) and respecting the rules of engagement. Seasoned media relations professionals build relationships with reporters and are sometimes even sought out when those journalists are working on stories.

5 Big Benefits of Media Exposure

Here are the top benefits that come with being mentioned in media outlets:

1. Credibility

Third-party coverage is usually seen as more objective than messages that a company disseminates through paid advertising.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

When a company’s story is told by a journalist, those mentions often appear online. So, when prospects search for your company, they’ll see what the media has said about you.

3. Thought leadership

When senior executives publish articles in major media, they have an opportunity to make their knowledge and perspective visible to decision-makers like investors, business clients, and other key influencers. That, in turn, helps establish their thought leadership. These types of articles can boost engagement by as much as 55 percent.

4. Awareness of new products, services, and innovations

The media will often cover stories about unique ideas. Although that will not directly lead to sales, it creates awareness. When multiple products (sometimes from different companies) are covered in a story, that coverage is called a “round-up.”

5. Talent attraction and retention

Current employees may feel a sense of pride when their employer is mentioned in the news. Prospective employees and vendors want to work with companies that exhibit strength, credibility, and other important qualities in public media.

Media Relations Requires a Special Skillset

Media relations is both an art and a science. It requires an ability to identify strong journalistic angles, familiarity with the right media for a particular company’s agenda, a strong knowledge of how to use media databases, and the ability to “break through the clutter” and compel a writer or producer to cover a story.

If you need help with your media relations, ClearVoice has your back. Talk to a specialist to see how we can increase your brand awareness and visibility.

The post Media Relations appeared first on ClearVoice.

What is geotargeting? Geotargeting, which came about as a result of smartphone and GPS technology, is a way to reach and communicate with consumers or businesses based on their zip code, city, IP address, or other location factors.

Geofencing is a type of geotargeting, whereby marketers can establish a “fence” around a specific location and then send targeted messages to those people who enter the area.

These forms of marketing fall under the larger umbrella of location-based marketing. As convenience and proximity become more important to today’s consumers, reaching shoppers, diners, and service-seekers where they are is essential to building your brand and business.

People use local search to find businesses near them, but geotargeting enables those businesses to proactively appeal to people with messages, offers, and other communications that may impact their purchase decisions.

Knowing where your prospects are at any point in time is invaluable in marketing to them.

These great brands use geotargeting in creative ways

Knowing where your prospects are is just part of the geotargeting equation. Brands that have run successful geotargeting campaigns combined their location knowledge with the demographics and needs of potential buyers.

• Pizza is a category where consumers have multiple choices. Smart geotargeting can help store owners get a larger slice of the sales pie. Using digital and social ads (Google, Facebook, Twitter) can be a cost-effective way to attract new customers, especially during sports seasons, when customers may be looking for nearby alternatives.
• BMW, Chevrolet, and other car brands have incorporated geotargeting and geofencing into their marketing strategies. Realizing that people in certain neighborhoods liked a particular car model, Chevy heavied-up on their ad buy in a specific region, boosting sales dramatically. In fact, the results were more than 200 percent better than in areas where geotargeting was not used.

Getting started with geotargeting

As with all forms of tech-powered precision marketing today, you must have a clear idea of who is currently buying your product or service, where they live, and how large the market in that geography is so that you can calibrate your spending to your opportunity.

Start with a concentrated area or radius so you can test and fine-tune your approach before investing in a larger area. Work with experts who have broad and deep experience with targeted programs.

Make sure you’re matching the right advertising media and creative to the demographic. For example, if you are targeting college students, you might want to use a platform like TikTok. As with all digital advertising, you want to be sure that your platform is consistent with the social media behaviors of the audience you’re targeting.

In addition to powerful social media or other digital creative, you will need area-specific landing pages, so that the entire end-to-end buyer experience feels personalized and relevant.

Welcome to the future of location-based advertising and geotargeting

Smart marketers are using geotargeting to reach consumers in the places and at the times they are ready to buy using previous search and purchase behavior to hone in on opportunities. The proliferation of 5G and the continued adoption of smartphones will make location-based marketing easier and faster.

On the flip side, privacy legislation presents an ongoing challenge. but as long as you’re staying on the right side of content personalization versus surveillance, you’ll find that geotargeting can be a cost-effective way to reach your market.

Get personalized content to complement and enhance your geotargeting campaigns. ClearVoice’s talented pool of writers, editors, and strategists is here to help — talk to a content specialist today to get started.

The post What Is Geotargeting? appeared first on ClearVoice.

The post What Is Gated Content? appeared first on ClearVoice.

What is a unique selling proposition (USP)? A unique selling proposition is simply the business version of an elevator speech.  A USP is sometimes also called a unique value statement. 

Simply selling without offering value to your buyer never works, and a powerful USP will immediately signal to your prospects how you are different from and better than other options.

Great brands have distilled their product or service description down to a one-liner that establishes the company or offering as a “must buy” option.

The best USPs follow these simple guidelines:

• Unique: The statement must clearly distinguish what you’re selling from everything else that falls into the category. If you took your brand’s name out of that statement and substituted your competitor’s would it still hold true?
• Selling: You must convey WHY someone needs what you’re offering. What is the benefit (short- or long-term) that they’ll get from your product or service?
• Proposition: The dictionary definition of this word is a “declarative statement.” Great USPs should not be tentative or filled with lots of jargon. Claiming superiority, in a way that’s meaningful to your customer, is at the core of a great USP.

Once you’ve created a powerful USP, it should be the guiding principle behind your marketing messaging. It should be confident, assertive, short, and credible.

5 great unique selling propositions (and why)

More than a tagline or advertising slogan, these unique selling propositions have come to be closely associated with the brands that created them.

Whether you’re a large global brand or a start-up SMB, being able to articulate what makes your company (or yourself) unique is critical.

1. “A diamond is forever.” De Beers developed its USP in 1948, and it clearly establishes its brand as timeless.
2. “We have the right fit.” Women have virtually unlimited options for buying undergarments but often grapple with sizing. This declarative and credible statement from Third Love simply confirms why the search for the perfect bra should start at their company.
3. “The easiest way to make a podcast.” Technology companies often grapple with creating their USPs, focusing on features and functionality rather than customer value. This simple, declarative, and powerful statement from Anchor removes whatever barriers the shopper might have.
4. “Love your beverage or let us know. We’ll always make it right.” Service delivery has become an increasingly important aspect of how brands work, especially in a category that’s becoming more cluttered. Although many companies can serve coffee and tea, only Starbucks declares that they will deliver exactly what the consumer wants, every time.
5. “We give a new pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair you purchase.” This USP from TOMs differs from many others in that the focus is not just on the product itself but on the soul (or is that sole?) of the brand. They have clearly established themselves as a company that cares about underserved markets and uses its charitable culture as the distinguishing factor.

Start building your own USP

As with all great marketing strategies, you need to start with who your target customer is, what they value, and how you can deliver something that your competitors cannot.

Above all, you need to be sure that what you’re promising is credible and that everyone in your organization is committed to living up to that promise.

As you go through the process, choose every word carefully. Look at examples like the ones above. Engage your team in its creation. Fine-tune, edit, and then fine-tune again. Sometimes the shortest statements can be the hardest ones to create. But the best ones are timeless!

Writing your own unique selling proposition can be tough, but that’s where ClearVoice comes in. Our talented team of writers will craft an expert USP for you that will set you apart from the competition. Talk to a content specialist today to get started.

The post What Is a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? appeared first on ClearVoice.