Email Marketing continues to deliver the highest return on investment within the digital marketing space. This is an edited transcript of a 30 min webinar, Finding Your Content Niche.
“Is the content you are creating and distributing for your customers any different than anything else out there?”
Joe Pulizzi
What is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is a well-known and often mis-understood term. What it is, is creating the minimum amount of content with the maximum amount of behaviour change in our customers. What you are creating has to be valuable, useful, compelling and different. If your content is too broad, it won’t hit the mark. Ensuring your content is tailored made for your audience is paramount.
How To Conduct A Content Audit
One of the best places to start when you’re looking at your content niche is to start with an audit of the type of content that you already have a lot of. People find it difficult to identify what content to create but if they have an audit, identifying the gaps, it makes it much easier.
This wonderful resource from Smart Insights, highlights the difference between content at a rational level up to an emotional level, which is used to educate and entertain audiences across the top. We also have awareness through to purchase, and that’s where we might find content that can inspire and convince customers to engage with you. At the more rational end of the scale, content needs to education and convince a customer to satisfy their thinking before they can move into a more emotional quadrant.
Content In The Marketing Funnel
Content also needs to serve a specific purpose for a customer, depending on where they’re at in their journey with you. This is where we look at a traditional marketing funnel, and at the top of that funnel we say, “I need to be aware of you” before I can research you and throughout my research, I will “consider” you before I move into conversion. After I’ve purchased from you. Your job through content is to retain me as a customer, and then look at cross selling different products and services to me based on triggers and engagement with you.
This image actually shows you the different type of content that’s required at each of these stages (a CTA is a call to action). People need to understand what you’re asking them to do.
An LTV is the lifetime value of a customer, and a UGC is user generated content.
Storytelling With Content
If content is to be compelling, you need to find the story in your content. There are three types of storytelling approaches for your content. Not all approaches will suit all audiences, and once you’ve identified your content gaps through your audit, you can find the right approach to fill that gap using the options below.
One concern I often hear is the struggle to think of content beyond a written blog or a video. There are endless options to consider, and consumer behaviour and customer journeys play a role in determining the right content format for you.
Content Segments
There are four key segments of content can fall into the categories that you see here; foundation, news or topical, minor activations and then campaign based. The descriptions are self-explanatory.
Foundation content is actually a path to purchase content type; it’s the basis of everything that you’re offering, and convincing or influencing the user through a path to purchase
News and topical content is more casual and conversation, and actually allows for you to be more spontaneous based on what’s happening right at that moment.
Minor activation is the category for promotion-based opportunities.
A campaign is very specific and informed by a media neutral participation for a campaign.
Evergreen vs Time-Sensitive Content
You may have heard the terms evergreen vs time sensitive content. This simply means that evergreen content doesn’t expire versus time sensitive content, which does. The example here is from Tiffany’s, and this is all about diamonds. Diamonds are evergreen content. Their size, cut, clarity and colour doesn’t change over time. On the other hand, time sensitive content would be event-based content, such as Christmas, Easter, or Valentine’s Day.
Content Generation Tools
The best part about content creation, is that we have a lot of tools available.
I’m giving you three tools here.
Firstly, the Content Idea generator. This tool automatically generates hundreds of ideas for blog posts & just about any kind of content once you provide a few keywords. Perhaps one idea can spark a new idea for you.
Secondly, a blog headline generator. This is quite a fun tool, as the headlines generated bring in pop culture and you can turn one set of keywords into so many options for your blog. One of my favourites!
Lastly, is the Hemingway app. The Hemingway app is a really simple online tool that simplifies your content and language. Writers tend to write for higher grades of education than what most people read. This wonderful free tool allows you to shorten sentences and highlights difficult words to read for users.
Best Practice For Content Marketing
To follow best practice when it comes to content
- Identify the gaps in your content library by conducting your content audit, using the Smart Insights framework;
- Apply content formats to fill the gaps in your audit, thinking of the different channels and different parts of the marketing funnel;
- Reconsider your evergreen and time sensitive content;
- Apply the Hemmingway app to simplify how your content is being digested by your audience.
Before You Start
If you haven’t ready, you can check out the first two Email Marketing blogs in this series, which covers:
Series 1: First Impressions With Subject Lines
Series 2: Designing Emails That Convert
I hope you found this blog useful for when you’re creating your content for your niche audiences. Need some help? We’re ready for your call.
