Content marketing teams say they’re prioritizing audience engagement and conversational copywriting in their strategies, but the numbers don’t add up. If brands are truly engaging their audiences like they say they are, generating sales would naturally fall into place.

Marketing has evolved into a two-way conversation between brand publishers and prospective customers. Traditional practices of amplifying promotional messages to the masses in hopes of drawing in wider audiences no longer work in today’s digital age, leaving creative teams to come up with new strategies for lead generation and conversion. While web marketing may promise significant bottom-line benefits, arbitrary analytics tracking and inconsistent strategic visions threaten to derail top-tier
organizations.

68 percent of respondents indicated that improved engagement metrics have become the top priority of their content and conversational copywriting programs. It’s important to reach and appeal to the right customers, but what constitutes quality interaction? Too many marketers depend on social shares and clicks as indicators of high-level engagement, when other insights may tell a more comprehensive story. It all comes back to having the right content analytics solutions, and knowing where to look for telltale signs of a job well down in original content creation.

Strategic Challenges in Conversational Copywriting

Conversational copywriting has come a long way in earning respect from brands across industries. 46 percent of companies now have content strategies in place, although 37 percent admit their programs are under developed. Even though 48 percent of respondents say they have dedicated content managers or full teams in place, 25 percent aren’t sure who manages their blogs or content creation efforts in house. This shows a lack of structure among organizations with active conversational copywriting strategies.

Brands may see the value of developing a constant stream of web articles, blog posts, long-form fliers, and visual media, but an equal percentage fail to connect the strategic dots. Engagement remains a top priority, but other factors that directly impact the level of interaction developed between publishers and their customers often go overlooked.

For example, goals like educating the market (32 percent of respondents), improving customer loyalty (29 percent), providing thought leadership (23 percent), and increasing web traffic (22 percent) were all behind results such as acquiring leads (38 percent) and driving sales (35 percent). Marketers may say their top goal is increased engagement, but they’re not focusing on the parts that work to achieve this gain—they’re eyeing their bottom lines. This misstep creates gaps in their content strategies, preventing their efforts from ever aligning and being effective. Conversational copywriting may result in new leads and additional sales, but brands that put those metrics above educating the market and improving brand affinity create shallow content that reads more like a disguised sales pitch than an informational piece of writing.

Marketers Struggle With Definition of Conversational Copywriting

Today’s always-on consumer expects more from brands. Buyers want to be engaged without the pressures of converting on the spot. When corporations humanize their digital marketing efforts to relate to their prospects, they often find their content takes on a different tone of voice. Through the measurement and evaluation of blog articles, combined with effective social listening strategies, marketers can begin to understand their
audiences’ pain points and obstacles. This will allow conversational copywriters to craft articles and thought-leadership media that speak to broader points, instead of focusing solely on product benefits.

The state of content marketing continues to change, but brands still have a lot to learn. Many survey respondents still hold increased sales above other crucial aspects of content marketing, neglecting the steps that lead to stronger engagement on the web.

Conversational Content Generates Leads

61 percent of marketers say generating high-quality leads is by far their biggest challenge. Forty-three percent say another top challenge is converting these high-quality leads to customers. According to this data, the most effective lead-generation tactic used by B2Bs is their company website. However, the greatest barrier to lead generation success is lack of resources—a scarcity that possibly contributes to chronically low conversion rates highlighted in the report. As the study noted, respondents said only 5 to 10 percent of leads were likely to convert.

Conversational content helps brands overcome these challenges by providing site visitors with a source of information and entertainment. Brands that produce short-form, snackable content based on audience analysis are more likely to see their audience fall in love with their campaigns, thus improving lead conversion metrics. Because of the low percentage of converted leads, 50 percent of B2B marketers say they are increasing their lead generation budgets.

This will create a greater opportunity to build out content strategies and map that content to the buyer’s journey. B2Bs are also having trouble measuring content ROI. The truth is, proving sales ROI doesn’t have to be challenging, it just needs consistent structure. The three most common metrics B2B marketers use to measure their sales ROI are cost per lead, lead
volume, and revenue. The next step is determining how conversational content contributes to each one of those metrics.

When companies increase the number of landing pages on their websites from 10 pages to 15 pages, they see a 55 percent increase in leads. Companies need to stop thinking of content as simple blog articles that live on some subdomain or hidden areas of their sites. Landing pages are essential, not only for increased visibility in search, but also for converting leads once they are on a brand’s website. These pages can be optimized for search, and they can include calls to action that prompt readers to download resources. They also acquire valuable lead information for outreach, and eventually they help close the sales cycle process.

Traffic is often used to help determine content’s ROI. HubSpot’s report found that companies that blog more than 15 times a month receive five times the amount of traffic to their sites. B2B companies that blog a few times a month generate 70 percent more leads than those that don’t. When B2Bs boost their blog posts to up to eight a month, they double their leads. These statistics show that finding a return on your conversational content is measurable and contributes to lead generation, as long as you provide clear conversion points on each page to track which one has contributed what.

What B2B Marketers Say about Conversational Content ROI

Additional research found that twice as many marketers say inbound marketing—such as content creation—delivers below-average costs per lead versus outbound strategies. Thirty-four percent of all leads generated in 2013 came from inbound marketing sources, data from the report showed, with inbound delivering 54 percent more leads into the marketing
funnel than outbound leads. Forty-one percent of marketers confirm inbound produces measurable sales ROI, while 82 percent of marketers who blog report positive content ROI.

Overall, these reports suggest content not only generates high quality leads to satisfy the main challenge of B2B marketers but also attracts leads that convert into customers. It is also possible to calculate the success of your content marketing strategy and how it contributes to your company’s revenue stream.

We have seen business video usage grow tremendously over the last ten years; however, we still see organizations shy away from using video to its full potential. In part because video has traditionally required a specialized and technical team and in part because until recently, it’s been nearly impossible to measure the impact of video on business goals such as lead generation and employee performance.

This guide is a comprehensive, yet easy-to-read, resource that breaks down how modern organizations create effective video experiences that generate opportunities, drive results and improve communication.

Raising Awareness

To expand your reach and attract new audiences, use short videos distributed as widely as possible. The goal is to drive traffic back to your own website where you can continue to educate your leads or promote your products. Content should entertain or entice your viewers to want to learn more with a focus on benefits and pain-points. This is your first impression moment so you’ll want to be strategic about how you deliver these videos and focus on making them attention-grabbing.

Generate Sales and Nurture Leads

Video is a proven high quality lead source and effective component of lead nurturing campaigns. Many organizations have the perfect video content for lead generation, but often these videos are not configured to capture leads. In-depth product tours, recorded webinars and thought-leadership interviews with your employees are excellent videos to gate with a lead form or incorporate into email nurturing. Sophisticated video marketing programs will integrate video technology with marketing automation for seamless lead management.

Accelerate and Support Sales

Video speeds up the buying cycle by answering common questions quickly and making it easier to show your buyers exactly what they are getting from you. The principles are similar for ecommerce and sales-driven organizations. Video, more than any other format, connects you with your buyer and demonstrates your value. Set up your sales videos to either lead straight to a purchase screen or make it easy for your sales team to send the videos they need to prospects.

Onboard Customers Quickly

Video shortens the learning curve. By incorporating video into your customer onboarding process you’ll get your users to achieve early wins and become proficient quickly. Your content should focus on explaining and motivating customers and the video experience should be built so that viewers can get help where they need it. Sometimes your customer training videos turn out to be great marketing material. Look for opportunities to cross-pollinate programs.

Drive Usage

Once customers are onboarded, video becomes a tool for expanding usage through advanced tutorials and continuing education. Forward-thinking organizations use video to provide continuing education, even career development resources via video academies which result in customers becoming power users and upgrading to premium features sets.

Training Customers

Build expertise and create advocates by providing a video certification program for your customers. These types of programs are typically revenue-generating for your organization. Subscriptions can be managed within your video platform or externally. Get started by organizing your video training into courses with built-in quizzes. Individual viewer reporting is key for auditing purposes and providing certification upon successful completion of course material.

Recruiting

To attract top talent to your organization, use video to share your company culture with a wide audience. The goal is to inspire people to want to work with you by showing them what it’s like to be a part of your culture so employee-generated content works well. Host this video content on your own site with sharing enabled. You’ll want videos to have their own playback page on your domain to bring interested candidates back to your site.

Employee Onboarding

Bring new employees and partners up to speed quickly. Video training is a great medium for transmitting process and safety information effectively. Built-in quizzes and contact tracking enable you to create an audit trail for accountability and records keeping. With on-demand video training academies, organizations are onboarding new staff members in flexible ways including on-the-go mobile training for employees across locations. Keep employees engaged with short, action-oriented videos organized in simple, easy-to-search video academy.

Knowledge Sharing

Keep everyone on the same page and accelerate communication across your organization with video updates. There is a lot of information created every day by employees. The more you can share this information widely, the faster your organization can learn and grow. For example, customer feedback from your support department is crucial feedback for your product team. Internal video creation and sharing is an effective way to circulate knowledge and ideas. Now with mobile video capture this is easier than ever.

Skill Development

Support your employees and develop their strengths with continuing education. By providing internal universities, you keep employees at the top of their game with the latest best practices. Education also empowers employees, creating a sense of appreciation and personal fulfillment. As opposed to heavy learning management systems, light-weight video academies provide a flexible platform for constantly evolving content and exceptional user experiences to increase usage.

A topic cluster is where a single “pillar” page becomes the core element of a group of content for a large topic. In other words, a pillar page is an agnostic overview of a highly-specific topic. You can consider it as an extensive summary and can be around 2,000 to 5,000 words in length. Linked to it and to each other are numerous pages of content that are related to the topic. These pages of content are known as a ‘content cluster’.

The idea behind this approach is that you build a central page that provides an in-depth overview of a specific topic, and then write a series of in-depth subtopics related to the main topic, covering different aspects, and link them back to the pillar page.

If you provide accounting software for small businesses, your pillar page could be something along the lines of: ‘Accounting Software for Small Businesses’ and your cluster content – the pages linked to the pillar page – could be blog topics around ‘Choosing the right accounting software’, ‘Benefits of accounting software for small businesses’, and ‘How to get the most out of your accounting software’ as they are all aspects that fall under the accounting software spectrum.

Take this scenario for example: A potential prospect executes a search for ‘Accounting software for small businesses’, they are then presented with a list of results and click on your pillar page for ‘Accounting software for Small Businesses’. Your pillar page provides them with a comprehensive overview of accounting software and includes cluster content that provide detailed breakdowns of each element involved. Your prospect leaves your website informed and educated – and you have positioned your business as an authority on that topic.

As more and more people find your pillar page, its ranking on SERPs increases and more organic traffic comes to your website.

Topic clusters are an excellent way to demonstrate your business’ knowledge of a specific subject. It not only helps your customers to understand and find solutions to their problems, but also improves your ranking on Google over time. It’s a powerful content strategy that can really deliver results.

It’s important to remember the fact that when we search, there are a number of variables involved. For example, typing into Google: ‘Burger joints in London’ is not the same as ‘Best burger joints in London’. In the first instance, one is vague and not concerned with the quality of those burger joints, whereas the second is. A slight variance in the search – though similar – should deliver different results. And so, by using topics clusters, we change our approach to creating content to ensure it delivers the right content based on what prospects are looking for. Another example would be ‘How to create a Twitter page’ – similar results could be:

• Twitter page design
• How to design a Twitter page
• Twitter page design templates

All the searches are incredibly similar, but each search has different context and intent. That said, someone searching for ‘How to create a Twitter page’ will most likely be interested in finding out more about designing Twitter pages and Twitter page design templates.

So, if someone’s looking for ‘How to create a Twitter page’ the surrounding articles could easily be those mentioned above! Topic clusters are an opportunity to engage with prospects who have more questions around a specific topic – and they allow you to nurture leads from an initial top of the funnel enquiry that might be “What is HubSpot?”, for example, through to “How much does HubSpot cost” – purely with content! It’s a cost-effective way to generate quality leads.

Improved SEO

By using a topic cluster setup – you signal to search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex that there is a semantic relationship between your pillar page and the content that it links to. Bots crawling the page will be able to quickly map out what your topic cluster is about, what the main page is, and how your information can help searchers. As your content is clearly laid out and easily understood, search engines will identify your pillar as valuable, and the quality inbound links to and from the pillar page, via the subtopic content, will increase the pillar page’s value and rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) over time. And, when one piece of interlinked content does well – so too do the other pages. As you continue to build out your topic cluster, the page’s authority will increase and you will generate more organic traffic to your website. It’s a more structured approach to content creation that not only improve your SEO but also helps to inform your content creation.

Website authority

Using topic clusters is an easy way to build website authority with a B2B copywriter. If you have in-depth content on your website addressing a specific topic, and subtopic content answering questions related to that topic – all of which is interlinked – Google will look at your web page as an authority on that subject matter. Remember, search engines use links as a signal of authority, so by linking subtopic content to your pillar page and your pillar page to subtopic content, you enhance the value of all your pages, and make it easier for website visitors to find what they are looking for.

Content organisation

Topic clusters puts strategy back into your content creation. Rather than creating one off pieces based on keywords, you look at the bigger picture and start to create content that will not only improve your pillar page’s authority in the eyes of Google, but also answer the questions your prospects have. Topic clusters simplify your content hierarchy, making it easier for interested parties to navigate their way through your website and for you to move them further into the buyer’s journey.

Greater lead generation

Topic clusters provide the perfect opportunity for you to create top, middle and bottom of the funnel content and have it all under one umbrella, allowing you to move website visitors from simple visitors to leads all through content. For example, let’s say you provide Inbound Marketing consultancy and someone has questions around Inbound, what it is and how it can benefit their business. They investigate your website and find your topic cluster on Inbound Marketing and read an article entitled “What is Inbound Marketing”. Having found out more about Inbound, they want to know how it can benefit their business, so they look through your topic cluster and find an article on “The Business Benefits of Inbound Marketing”. Now convinced and educated on the benefits of Inbound, they want to know how your business can help – so they read another piece of cluster content, this time a case study, and decide that they are ready to engage with your business. Suddenly, from that initial website visit, you have generated a lead – all through content.

How to create topic clusters

As topic clusters are comprised of a pillar page and cluster content (clusters), you need to come up with a central topic and surround that central topic with relevant, in-depth articles (cluster content).

First, construct a plan with a B2B copywriter that covers the cluster content you will create to surround your pillar page with – make sure the cluster content relates to the pillar page and answers the questions your prospects have (buyer personas will help in the process). You should keep adding more cluster content to your pillar page over time, as this will help to improve the value of the pillar page (and the cluster content) in the eyes of Google.

A topic cluster should have at least ten subtopics that address specific questions, problems or pains your customers may be exploring related to the core topic of your pillar page. There isn’t a definitive number to how many blogs you should add to your pillar page, it completely depends on how many topics you think you can cover.

Build out subtopics

Having built your central pillar page, you need to create specific and detailed subtopics. As mentioned previously, how you come up with these topics will be based on your buyer personas and the questions they might be asking. Chances are, you are probably blogging anyway – and if you are not, you should be. This strategy is not a complete overhaul of your content marketing efforts, but more a process of realigning your strategy to ensure its focusing on current SEO best practice, and that you are not blogging for the sake of blogging.

In terms of format, these subtopics could be blogs, articles, eBooks, whitepapers, case studies or otherwise – but what’s important is that they answer the question(s) your prospects have in detail and link back to the pillar page. If you are struggling to come up with ideas, think about related concepts rather than exact topic matches; look at other popular content pieces relevant to your industry; use Google; use Google’s ‘People Also Ask’ box; or use Content Marketing Artificial Intelligence platforms such as Concured.

Regardless of format, make sure your subtopics answer the questions your prospects have in depth. Keywords can still play an important role in your strategy, but it’s more important to think about related questions to your topic that prospects might be having.

Finally, hyperlink text in your core topic to your subtopics were relevant – and link your subtopics back to the pillar page. This is the most important step when it comes to creating topic clusters. The internal linking between your topic and subtopic pages demonstrates to search engines that the content across your pages have a semantic relationship.

When we’re talking about the advantages of content marketing as opposed to traditional marketing there are several most important ones:

Content marketing offers some value to the customer

While the traditional ads tend to irritate and obstruct the target audience to that measure that they want to run away from it, content marketing is adjusting the content delivered to the user, drawing his attention and making him interested. Good content is useful and educating so the user will have no problem spending his or her time on learning a bit more about a brand. By doing this, the user will create a certain opinion about it and develop a relationship with a brand, even before he or she buys that brands product. 90% of buyers think of content as useful, and 78% of them think that organizations who are creating content have a bigger desire for developing a relationship with their customers.

Content marketing makes the buying decision easier

People often aren’t buying a product because they don’t understand the value it provides for them. Let’s imagine that content marketing existed when a prototype of a product like personal computer came out. When it first came out, people used to think that it’s obsolete and that its use won’t ever become a common tool for everyday work and entertainment. And why was that the case? When the first advertisement for the computer was published it said things like: “It’s available for use in your home” or “It’s finally affordable for everyone”.

Imagine how the use of the computer would have rocketed if it was advertised through the process of educating people not “What can they do with the computer” but rather “How can they do it”. The tools of content marketing such as blogs or videos can educate potential customers so that they would understand why do they need the product that’s being advertised. As high as 60% of product buying decisions are brought before coming to a store.

Content marketing builds relationships

When you’re providing a free and quality content to your customer, as is the case with content marketing, they will come back to the source of information, because he or she is learning and developing through it. This way, the customer is starting to perceive you as an expert in that area. The book written by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderquist called “The Netocrats” somewhat talks about exactly that. Money is no longer the main value
in the world. Information is.

Content marketing attracts customers organically

Rather than paying for the ads designed to attract the visitors on your page, with good content, they could be attracted organically. If you develop your content strategy well, the content you’re creating will last through your businesses entire lifetime and attract users through that entire time. The created content is exceptionally important because 42% of buyers read an article or a blog in order to find a recommendation for a product.

Content marketing helps with SEO

Each written blog is a new page indexed by Google. What does that mean? More blogs equal more indexed pages and with it, the possibility of showing the potential buyer your page rises. Companies that write blogs have 55% more visits on their websites from those who don’t.

Content marketing enables easier targeting

Content is primarily created for the targeted audience by a B2B copywriter. That way, the content is delivered to a more suitable audience who can become the buyers (and even promoters) of a product much easier. Also, when you compare the invested with returned, the average expense of inbound marketing in creating leads (users interested in product/service)
costs half as much than traditional outbound marketing.

The creation of content is not nearly as simple as it looks. Another thing that very much changed with the emersion of modern marketing is that you constantly have to come up with something new. The Internet doesn’t approve of the television way of advertising where you can see an ad on TV and learn it by heart because you’ve seen it dozens of time. On the Internet, that’s called a re-post, and it’s considered a sort of infringement in the online world.

That’s why it’s crucial to invest a lot of time and effort in coming up with content and on its creation. Implementing a Harry Potter-inspired vocabulary, it’s important to be aware that content marketing is no magic wand giving instant results. It’s closer to that Grand Staircase that’s constantly changing, meaning that content marketing demands time and effort for its potential to be fully and rightly exploited. The strategy for content creation consists of several important steps as follows:

Defining the target audience

Who are designated products or services intended for? Who is the content created for? The more details you have about your targeted audience, the easier the content creation for them will be. And it will also be more attractive and concrete for them.

Selecting the topic

If you’re creating content such as a blog, you can write about whatever you want to. Because, well, the author has that privilege. But, does that really make any sense? Is that really so if you have goals to achieve? You have to take time and think about the potential subjects, constantly having the target audience on your mind. You also have to create a calendar and write down the topics you’re about to work on in the following period. It’s a good idea to use Google Keyword Planner for the selection of the right topics. By using that tool, Google proposes a few related topics for a term you punch in.

Writing the content

Each time, writing is a new challenge. You can make your life easier by spending 1/3 of your time planning, thinking about topics, searching literature and sources. After you’ve done that, all you have to do is summarize everything into a whole. Writing should be simple, understandable and interesting while not forgetting to use the facts along the way. It’s important to create a remarkable content, the one that will gladly be shared on social media. The amount of words is secondary. The message you successfully transfer with those words is the most important. The writing, by itself, is not easy. That’s why it’s a good piece of advice to write the first version and allow yourself some mistakes. Go through your text a couple of times and correct the obvious mistakes. After a few readings and changes, you’ll reach the final version of your text. If you’re not sure, share it with your colleagues and friends. They might see some things you probably haven’t. Or hire a B2B copywriter.

Distributing the content

When you’re finally satisfied with the things you’ve written, it’s important that the targeted audience see it. Share it on social media, through the newsletter and other promotional channels. Don’t forget to answer all the inquiries about your content. Always be open to all questions and comments, even the negative ones

7 Types of Web Content You Need

• Blogs

Blogs are the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about content marketing. In this day and age, it is extremely important to inform your customers and clients about your products and services. Every customer that visits your blog will have the opportunity to inform himself about your expertise and thus you will really be able to convince them that you’re really a ‘master craftsman.’

Blog posts are usually the foundation upon which many B2B organizations build their content strategy — they’re relatively easy to produce and publish, and yield excellent SEO benefits. Plus, organizations who blog are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive ROI. A company’s “blog” is often the center of their content strategy, and it’s usually managed through a CMS.

• Infographics

One of the best examples of visual content is infographics. Just as its name says, infographics are graphic pieces of content containing the different information shown with the help of pictograms, graphics, and other similar auxiliary graphic materials. The advantage of an infographic is that it is much more interesting and easier to read as opposed to plain text. Also, the users like to share this kind of content.

• eBooks

Ebook ( electronic book) is a shape of content marketing written by a B2B copywriter which is an excellent choice if you need to transfer a more complex message or content but still in readable and simple form.

78% of marketers produce white papers for lead generation, which makes sense considering that 83% of B2B buyers use white papers to inform a purchase decision. PDFs are usually the preferred content format for white papers, eBooks, and similar long-form content. They often exist separately from an organization’s main blog or resource center, and are usually accessible via a landing page.

• Case studies

A case study is a useful form of content marketing which gives you an opportunity to show your knowledge and the value of your service or product. Through a case study, you’re showing a specific problem you or your company handled for a certain client. That way, you’re building the image of an expert in a certain area in the eyes of everyone who are reading your case study.

• Videos

Videos can take on a number of roles at B2B organizations, providing tutorials, product information, or webinar recordings, for instance. Video is a huge opportunity for content marketers — online video accounts for 50% of all mobile traffic, and 75% of business executives watch work-related videos at least weekly. Although videos can usually be embedded in blog posts, they often live on a separate public channel, such as YouTube or Vimeo, or a private video hosting channel like Wistia or Vidyard.

The video is a great way to offer your users an in-depth view of the new product, service, offer or to simply represent yourself, your team or the things you do. When you’re creating a video, it doesn’t mean you have to make a 120 minute-long movie.

Let’s quickly establish the basics — providing a diverse content mix is important because it makes your key messaging more accessible and allows organizations to build a more relevant engagement path.

Simply having a diverse mix of content isn’t enough, however. Your organization needs to be able to strategically manage this mix in order to yield results from your content. Consider this: the average blog post costs $900 to produce, and premium content assets cost even more. Mismanagement of your organization’s content won’t just cost you in traffic or results — it will cost you financially, too.

To the seasoned content marketer or B2B copywriter, the types of content listed on the next few sections aren’t anything new; however, in order to learn how to effectively manage your content assets, it’s important to consider the opportunities and challenges presented by each type of content, as well as the channels on which they live.

• Interactive content

Interactive content is all the rage these days, and rightfully so — the average quiz is shared 1,900 times. Beyond quizzes, interactive content can include polls, surveys, interactive infographics, calculators, contests, and even interactive videos. Interactive content is usually embeddable within a blog post.

• Landing pages

When it comes to lead generation, landing pages are usually the way to go since they allow for one page to be optimized for one goal; however, getting landing pages built and tested is one of the top five challenges faced by B2B marketers. Otherwise, the lead generation flow using landing pages can be convoluted since you’re forced to remove the end-user from your content experience.

The creation of content is not nearly as simple as it looks. Another thing that very much changed with the emersion of modern marketing is that you constantly have to come up with something new. The Internet doesn’t approve of the television way of advertising where you can see an ad on TV and learn it by heart because you’ve seen it dozens of time. On the Internet, that’s called a re-post, and it’s considered a sort of infringement in the online world.

That’s why it’s crucial to invest a lot of time and effort in coming up with content and on its creation. Implementing a Harry Potter-inspired vocabulary, it’s important to be aware that content marketing is no magic wand giving instant results. It’s closer to that Grand Staircase that’s constantly changing, meaning that content marketing demands time and effort for its potential to be fully and rightly exploited. The strategy for content creation consists of several important steps as follows:

Defining the target audience

Who are designated products or services intended for? Who is the content created for? The more details you have about your targeted audience, the easier the content creation for them will be. And it will also be more attractive and concrete for them.

Selecting the topic

If you’re creating content such as a blog, you can write about whatever you want to. Because, well, the author has that privilege. But, does that really make any sense? Is that really so if you have goals to achieve? You have to take time and think about the potential subjects, constantly having the target audience on your mind. You also have to create a calendar and write down the topics you’re about to work on in the following period. It’s a good idea to use Google Keyword Planner for the selection of the right topics. By using that tool, Google proposes a few related topics for a term you punch in.

Writing the content

Each time, writing is a new challenge. You can make your life easier by spending 1/3 of your time planning, thinking about topics, searching literature and sources. After you’ve done that, all you have to do is summarize everything into a whole. Writing should be simple, understandable and interesting while not forgetting to use the facts along the way. It’s important to create a remarkable content, the one that will gladly be shared on social media. The amount of words is secondary. The message you successfully transfer with those words is the most important. The writing, by itself, is not easy. That’s why it’s a good piece of advice to write the first version and allow yourself some mistakes. Go through your text a couple of times and correct the obvious mistakes. After a few readings and changes, you’ll reach the final version of your text. If you’re not sure, share it with your colleagues and friends. They might see some things you probably haven’t. Or hire a B2B copywriter.

Distributing the content

When you’re finally satisfied with the things you’ve written, it’s important that the targeted audience see it. Share it on social media, through the newsletter and other promotional channels. Don’t forget to answer all the inquiries about your content. Always be open to all questions and comments, even the negative ones

Here are the three most common options available for content fulfilment:

Get an In-House Team

This option usually gives companies the highest level of control, but it also tends to be the most expensive. The greatest advantage of hiring an in-house writing team is that the writers become familiar with your brand and company culture in a way freelancers may not be able to, and that can be more easily implemented into the writing.

It’s generally easier and faster to communicate directly with an in-house team as well, thus allowing you to have more control over the turnaround and quality of the content.

Once the writers are trained, you can rest a little easier knowing your team has inside knowledge and experience. Hiring writers in-house also comes with some major costs. You are looking at a full salary, increased overhead, plus any offered benefits for every writer you hire, which might not make as much sense for short-term or one-time SEO and blogging projects.

In addition, there is a limit to what can be produced by a single writer. If your content project requires a lot of content, you will need to ensure you hire enough writers to produce the amount of content you are looking to publish, which can increase the cost exponentially.

Ultimately, building an in-house team may be beneficial for companies that require greater control at the expense of being able to scale quickly. This option is likely to work better for businesses working with a large budget.

Hire Freelance Writers

It can be difficult to determine the exact cost of hiring freelancers as they tend to negotiate their own rates for each project; however, companies that use independent contractors are likely to save a lot of money over hiring an in-house team.

On the other hand, you may need to hire more freelancers if you require a lot of content. In order to do this, you need to have the experience of contracting, training and managing writing and editing teams.

It’s important to spend time ensuring the writers you have under contract understand your business enough to blog with some level of expertise. You’ll also need a system of quality monitoring and management on your end to ensure content is completed on time and at the quality level desired.

Extra management translates into increased time on your end, so you’ll want to factor that into overall costs. In addition, the skill level of a freelance writer varies. More experienced freelancers are likely to charge more for their services, meaning the total savings could be less than you initially anticipated.

The bottom line is that directly contracting freelance writers can be a great option for businesses on a lower budget if you have the time and expertise to manage, train and monitor the quality of the work.

Contract a Content Agency

Hiring a writing agency can provide a balance between working with freelance writers and hiring an in-house team. A good B2B copywriter agency works with businesses to become familiar with their brand voices and blogging strategy, and they may also have managers who work directly with a dedicated team of writers to complete content specifically for your business. Two distinct advantages of using an agency are scalability and convenience.

An agency is more likely to be able to get more writers working on a bigger project quickly, meaning you do not have to worry as much about finding, training and paying the right talent yourself. This also means you can order only what you need when you need it.

Agencies also tend to take on the responsibility of vetting, training and managing ongoing teams of writers, allowing for some time savings on your end. However, it is also important to keep in mind that, even when working with a managed agency, you will have less direct control over the content creation process. This is where a feedback loop with your agency contact becomes key.

A writing agency may be the ideal option for businesses that do not have the budget, skills or time to manage an in-house team but still want managed, quality writers. This option is also great if you plan on creating a lot of content in a short amount of time. An agency will likely be more expensive than contracting freelance writers directly but is a great option if you don’t have the time, bandwidth or structure to manage them on your own.

Content key performance indicators (KPIs): they will make or break your content marketing efforts. Why? Because when you do not consider the content KPIs that will go into your ongoing reporting – and ultimately your overall content strategy – you can make errors in judgment that ultimately will doom your content marketing efforts and those of your B2B copywriter. 

When you consider or communicate incorrect key performance indicators, you also run into making decisions based on a result that may or may not be true. When these results are reported, uncertainties can creep into your content strategy, and can ultimately derail your success. Let’s take a look at the most common content KPIs and what they can do to help you become a more successful online marketer. 

KPI Bucket 1: SEO Metrics 

An SEO typically uses these metrics to report on increases in performance in the search results, usually reporting these to their client, shareholders of their company, or their boss. 

These KPIs are valuable because they can track things like how a site is performing in the search results, its organic reach (or how much of a market share it is gaining in terms of keyword phrases), how many people are viewing the site, how much time people are spending on the site, and other useful metrics. 

When these metrics are reported incorrectly, the result can be bad judgment calls and lousy strategic decisions. This is not good for the SEO implementation as a whole. 

Say that you found a user spent so much time on the site because they were looking at certain content one month, but then the next month, they were not. While many things can cause this issue, it is important to rule out technical errors and related specific issues that can cause it. 

This is because a situation like this can also be seasonal, depending on the type of website we’re dealing with. If you make a change based on one month’s worth of metrics without considering the entire 12 months (or even a few years’ worth of data) you could make a judgment call that does not consider the seasonal aspect, and this can be bad for the future. 

KPI Bucket 2: Business & Conversion Metrics 

These types of metrics are extremely useful for calculating the business side of things. They help ensure that website metrics are translating to the most important business metric that determines whether a company keeps running: ROI, or return on investment.

Let’s not kid ourselves. SEO, content marketing, or social media marketing, while creative endeavors, are also business endeavors. These efforts need to be reported on accurately, succinctly, and in such a way that communicates the proper ROI to those in the know and in charge. This will allow a business to keep its doors open, so that it can continue running for the foreseeable future. 

The key is to always make sure that you can track the performance of these keyword phrases in some way. If there is no search volume, but there are other metrics associated with positive increases in performance (such as CPC – Cost Per Click on the PPC side – or market competition), this could be an indicator that the keyword phrase is competitive enough that it has some viability as an SEO keyword. 

Another business conversion metric to keep an eye on includes conversion rates. Conversion rates tell you the other side of how your content is really performing for you. If you have content on your site that has low conversion rates, and people barely sign up for your services, it may be time to consider A/B testing to identify where improvements can be made to ensure that the content improves in a positive direction. 

Yet one more important metric to keep reporting tabs on includes reviews. This is an important reputation management tactic that can make or break your website’s performance. Reviews form a perception of your business to potential clients. This perception can make clients want to do business with you, or drive you away. 

KPI Bucket 3: Social Engagement Metrics

When we think of social engagement metrics, we usually think about metrics involved with social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. And the former are correct in terms of how to think about these metrics. But did you know that social engagement metrics can also make or break an online marketing strategy? 

Think about it: social engagement is a major method of increasing a brand’s reach towards real consumers online for a reason: because this is where real people go online to hang out, chat, and get involved with their favorite brands, celebrities, friends, and discussions. 

It’s more than just a social platform – it’s a conversational social outreach explosion. Making sure that you tally the right social engagement metrics is an important part in the reporting of the effectiveness of your content KPI wins. 

KPI Bucket 4: User Engagement Metrics 

These metrics are important to a website’s performance KPIs because they tell us how effective content is and how effectively it is gathering traffic and drawing people to your website. Things like conversion rates, time on page, bounce rate, and page views can all be skewed or otherwise erroneously reported on, leading to errors in judgment about where to go next in the overall website content strategy. 

This is where errors in judgment and furthering your content strategy can be tricky, because if you don’t take into account that additional dimension, you could potentially see that 2,500 sales of a service were completed, but not that they were completed by one person. This is where things like goals in Google Analytics or UTM parameters can come into play. 

By tying social conversion metrics into the goal completions in Google Analytics, you can drill down more effectively into how someone ultimately completed the sale of those services through user engagement metrics. User engagement metrics are also useful for finding out what people are physically doing on your site. 

 

There are some major challenges that stand between your marketing content and real marketing ROI. Here are three of the biggest ones and how to overcome them.

Not setting the right goals

Setting goals and understanding why you want to use content marketing to grow your business is crucial to your success. Without a ‘why,’ your content marketing strategy is doomed to fail before it even gets off the ground.
Just like you created a business plan and a mission statement when you started your business, you should do the same for your marketing. Write a brief statement that focusing on what’s most important to your business – and what’s not.

This statement will not only come in handy when you start creating content, but it will also be a game-changer when it comes to building an audience. Your content marketing mission statement should include:

• A description of your target audience
• What content you will use to reach them
• The benefit they will receive

A model mission statement would go something like this: We help [target audience] with [business or personal goals] by providing [content type].

Now that you understand the importance of a content marketing mission statement and how to create one, it’s time to focus on goals. Typical goals include:

• Boosting website traffic and growing your brand
• Increasing sales by driving more leads via content
• Influencing potential customers with thought leadership
• Growing social media engagement with effective content
• Streamlining marketing efforts to become more effective
• Building an audience

While content marketing strategies can include more than one goal, it might be worthwhile to develop separate strategies depending on how unconnected the goals are. For example, one of our clients has a content marketing strategy for sending new leads to its sales team and an entirely different content marketing strategy designed specifically for recruiting and retaining employees.

Not selecting the right KPIs

Most of us know if we want to achieve our goals, we have to understand exactly what success looks like, and that means those goals need to be specific and measurable. That’s where key performance indicators (KPIs) come in. The right KPIs will help you understand if your content marketing plan is on track and help you identify what’s working and what is not. For example, if your goal is to increase leads, by how many and in what time frame.

If you want to generate 10 qualified leads per month for your sales team with a 50 percent conversion rate, it’s important to set the proper milestones (i.e., 100 raw leads per month). Your KPIs should include revenue and traffic targets as well since not all leads are created equal. You will also want to attach specific numbers to these KPIs. Here are a few KPI examples:

• Monthly, quarterly or yearly revenue target
• Number of qualified leads
• Number of email signups for nurture campaigns
• Measurable increase in site traffic (unique visitors, return visitors, etc.)
• Move to Page 1 of Google
• Receive a certain number of social media mentions or shares

The money you spend on creating and promoting content should also be included in your KPIs, broken down by campaign or asset, in order to keep tabs on your customer acquisition costs.

Not understanding your audience

With the fear of sounding like a broken record here, we need to stress the importance of audience building. Investing in building the right audience in integral to weeding out unqualified buyers and increasing conversion rates. Knowing your audience will also help you decide on the right content types.

For example, if your target audience spends a lot of time commuting in a car or on public transportation, a podcast may be far more effective at reaching them than an ebook or whitepaper. Building an audience requires three simple steps:

• Assembling demographic information
• Compiling customer feedback
• Developing buyer personas

Collecting demographic information is the first step to building a high-converting audience. You’ll want to gather as much information as possible on your customers, email subscribers, and social media fans. If your business is conducted primarily online, tools, such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, can help with this tremendously. You can easily see your customer’s breakdown by age, gender, education and even income. Google Analytics will even provide insights into interest and search activity, to help you better segment your audience into categories (information seeker, just browsing, ready to buy, etc).

As a marketer or B2B copywriter, you know the importance of setting a goal for each piece of content you create. It could be industry or product education, or you could be pushing traffic to a landing page to increase sales. However, you need more than that goal to be successful. Establishing a clear audience for the piece is just as critical. Writing for everyone is writing for no one!

But what happens when there are multiple potential audiences for your products and services? No, the answer isnʼt to stress. The better approach is to create multiple personas, so you can strengthen the focus of your marketing messaging.

When creating content for different personas, you will leverage the needs, desires, budget, pain points, and other details from your persona in an effort to personalize your message and make it relevant.

While multiple personas arenʼt required for all companies, they are highly beneficial. For companies with multiple products, targeting different market segments and use cases, multiple personas are essential.

Another reason multiple personas is valuable is if you are looking to expand into a new market segment. While the customer in this new market segment might be purchasing the same product the perceived value proposition, use case, motivation to purchase may be unique to the new market segment.

This implies your content must be tailored to the new market segmentʼs particular customer persona in order for it to perform. In order to make these personas actually work, though, you need to establish pain points for each persona. Even if you have one core product with more than one use case, multiple personas will help you target the right people with the right message at the right time based on the particular use case of interest.

Taking this information, letʼs consider your target audience. Can they be clearly narrowed down into one audience, or are they spread across two or three market segments? Itʼs better to have additional personas that helps you narrow down into specific verticals or preferences rather than one ill fit persona that tries to match too many distinct characteristics.

How Can You Use Personas?

As a business owner, you can use buyer personas in just about every element of your marketing strategy. In fact, personas may even be used to create a new strategy or update your current one. While the uses for buyer personas are nearly limitless, there are some key areas you can focus on:

• Content Creation, Marketing, and Strategy

Here’s the thing– you really can’t or shouldn’t write anything if you don’t know who you’re writing to. Developing content without a target audience runs too high of a risk of attracting the wrong readers or even no readers at all. When you know your audience, you can create content that’s interesting, and most importantly, valuable to them. As you use your buyer personas to create a content strategy, be sure to include the buyer’s journey in the development process. Picture it this way– your buyer persona, Recruiter Robert, is in the awareness stage of the journey. He knows he needs help managing talent acquisition and has heard of your company. However, Robert’s not reading to commit to any solution just yet. What type of content would suit his stage at this moment? A short how-to guide full of tips on attracting top talent would be much more appropriate and valuable than a full demo video on your solution.

• Product Development and Enhancement

With buyer personas, you have invaluable insight into the kind of solutions your leads need. Let this information guide your product or service development and enhancement. Create new offerings and update your current services based on those buyer personas.

• Sales and Communications

Knowing where your personas are in the buyer’s journey allows you to connect real leads with the right salesperson at the right time. Take the compiled information and analyze it carefully. What does it tell you about the lead’s communication style? Are you prepared to answer any potential questions or objections they may raise? Do you know when and how to follow up?

• Personalized Marketing Efforts

There’s so much content on the internet that the one-size-fits-all approach is becoming all but obsolete. Leads are wise to, and frankly, irritated by ubiquitous messages. Instead of developing the same general message for each lead, personalize your content with buyer personas. Develop unique emails, blog posts, and opt-in landing pages appropriate to the persona and their place in the buyer’s journey. This technique ensures that your message is well-received and welcome.