To measure the success of your content marketing campaign, you look at such engagement metrics as session duration and conversion rate.

Since only 11% of businesses evaluate their content marketing strategies as excellent, there’s quite a large margin for further improvement. Given that you’re reading this article, I bet you’re looking for actionable content marketing tips to fill in these gaps.

Well, if you’re not satisfied with your current content marketing ROI, and you strive to increase the time users spend on your blog and social media pages, I have something to offer. In this article, I compile nine extremely effective tips on how to create content marketing that boosts sales, improves brand awareness, and engages customers. 

9 Content Marketing Tips and Best Practices That Your Users Will Love

Content Marketing Tip #1 – Don’t write for everyone. Focus on your buyer personas.

You’ve heard this content marketing advice plenty of times, but let me emphasize the importance of defining your buyer personas before you start to write one more piece. 

In 2021, content relevance and personalization are becoming more essential, and the only way to create appealing content is to know who you’re creating it for. You should clearly understand your target customer’s core problems and their expectations from your product, service, and brand interaction experience. 

How to define and create your buyer persona? The answer is to research your current and potential customers, analyzing their demographics, pain points, values, solvency, expectations, the devices and platforms they use, etc. 

Pro tip! To come up with the most accurate customer portrait characteristics, you may also interview your loyal clients, or use social media analytics and competitors’ research. Then, use this brilliant service from Hubspot to depict your buyer personas.

Content Marketing Tip #2 – Create content clusters according to sales funnel stages

Creating content clusters and matching them with your sales funnel stages is one more strategic content marketing tip. Content clusters are sets of materials that are logically linked to a certain topic and a certain user’s problem. 

Each content cluster should also be fitted into a certain stage of the sales funnel (awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase).

Let’s revise one example showing how content clusters may work at the first stage of the sales funnel. 

Assume you provide video creation services. What concerns do your potential customers have at the awareness stage? Their main concern is probably about the efficiency of video marketing. So, at this stage, you might offer them educational types of content logically connected in a cluster:

• Video marketing statistics research. This set of materials may also be divided into several useful articles, like “10 Facts and Stats Proving that YouTube Video Marketing Works,” “Vertical Video Facts and Statistics for 2021,” “Mobile Video Consumption Trends,” “20 Statistics on Video Marketing ROI,” and so on. 
• Case studies. This is another type of content that works well at the awareness and consideration stages. In this case, you’d tell a real story about one of your previous customers, showcase the video you created for them, and share their results to prove that video marketing, when done right, works well. 

You’ll need to research your users’ concerns and questions, match them with the sales funnel stage, and create relevant materials that deal with their issues, seamlessly inviting them to move further towards the sales funnel bottom. 

Pro tip! After you’ve got your cluster ready, come up with a pillar page that will serve as an ultimate long-read guide. Use it to summarize the points covered by each of the articles in the content cluster. 

Pillar pages are great for SEO and for the users who prefer to scroll and stop on the section that matters most to them. Don’t forget to interlink your pillar page with each article from the cluster to allow users to switch between them, improving session duration and other behavioral factors on your website. 

Here’s a good pillar page example to learn from.

Content Marketing Tip #3  – Create with search engine optimization in mind

This content marketing tip is easier said than done. Successful content marketing is impossible without SEO since it allows your target audience to find your company on the web. 

SEO-based content creation is tricky, as it requires the skill of finding the relevant, quick-win, trending, and industry-specific keywords. Why is keyword research and insertion essential? First, keywords will point to user concerns you may not have thought about; second, they can reveal user behavior insights; and finally, they’re necessary to help Google connect you with your users.

After selecting a set of keywords, you should incorporate them into your text organically, keeping a balance between the number of keywords and the overall meaning. Make sure to use your main keyword in the title, meta description, intro, H2, and conclusion. Disperse the other keywords evenly throughout your text. We suggest using one keyword per 200 words of the article text. 

Content Marketing Tip #4  – Mix content creation with content curation

High-quality content creation takes a lot of time and effort. Let me suggest some time and money-saving content marketing advice: Mix your content creation with content curation practices. 

Content curation is sharing materials that were created by someone else (preferably, not your competitors), but are still relevant to your target audience. Retweeting or using someone else’s Instagram photo is the simplest content curation tactic. You may also come up with a curated newsletter—one where you’ll share a group of materials that will be interesting to your users. 

For example, here’s how PNAS scientific media shares the most globally popular articles of 2020 on their website.

Content curation is one of the simplest ways to engage your users, so make sure to include this technique in your list of content marketing best practices. 

Content Marketing Tip #5 – Tell the word about your company with outreach marketing

Outreach marketing is the science of distributing content and spreading the word about your company, and it deserves a separate guide. Basically, outreach marketing serves to improve your brand recognition and awareness, by getting in touch with potentially interested people and businesses. 

In 2021, using outreach marketing will become even more crucial due to the key role of backlinks in a company’s SEO results. Here are some actionable tactics for you:

• Take a bet on guest blogging. This is not only a way to get do-follow backlinks, but also a chance to get in touch with new target audiences. As for the guest blogging tips, you can use automated solutions like Adsy or Scoop.it to streamline the process.
• Get started with influencer marketing. People believe people, and this is the best reason to incorporate influencer outreach in your content marketing strategy. Try to find influencers who promote the same values your target users share. Use tools such as BuzzSumo or Upfluence to connect with influencers from your niche. 

Content Marketing Tip #6 – Leverage user-generated content

User-generated content is another powerful content marketing strategy, in which your service or product is promoted by your regular customers. 

Here are some examples of how it may work:

• Clothes retailers encourage buyers to take a photo in a new outfit and share an Instagram Story with a branded hashtag mention.
• Many companies take advantage of user testimonials on Google My Business, TrustPilot, or even from private correspondence in social media.
• Establishments encourage user check-ins, location mentions, and taking photos shared under the branded hashtag or with a mention of a venture.
• Companies also use some photos created by their users, visitors, and guests on their website and social media profiles.

Below is a brilliant example of user-generated content. A café shared a photo created by one of their visitors with a reference to the photo owner: 

User-generated content is one more opportunity for you to get high-quality content for free, and to promote your products or services, reinforced with strong social proof. 

Content Marketing Tip #7 – Reuse your best headlines in SEM marketing

Analyze your best-performing articles and pay attention to their headlines. Chances are that those phrases appealed to your readers a lot. 

Here’s one not-so-obvious content marketing trick for you: Use these headlines in your advertising campaign to ensure a high click-through rate. An attractive problem-stating headline, containing a quick-win keyword, is the primary factor in profitable SEM campaigns. 

Here’s an example of a vivid headline for PPC that was probably used in one of the company’s best blog posts or landing pages.

Content Marketing Tip #8 – Align your content with your brand style

Making a holistic visual impression is important for brand recognition and awareness, which contribute to your content marketing campaign’s success. Be guided by your brand style guide when creating your materials. Don’t have an official style guide? Jump over to our brand style creation guide first. The main idea is to follow your visual style and tone of voice in every content marketing channel. In fact, this one of the visual content marketing best practices. 

As for a good example of aligning content with visual brand style, mood, and target users’ expectations, take a look at Under Armour’s approach to content production. Visit their website and Instagram page, and you’ll see how accurately they stick to a single style.

One more valuable observation: They’re highly focused on people so that each of their current and potential customers can easily recognize themselves and feel some kind of connection to the brand. 

Content Marketing Tip #9 – Embed FAQ section where appropriate

Most websites have a FAQ page as a part of their website menus. However, few of them list questions and answers in other places. Frequently Asked Questions is a perfect way to reveal users’ concerns and provide them with competent support in response to their requests. 

Think about implementing the next content marketing tip. End each of your articles with a meaningful FAQ section, addressing the questions your users may have. It’s a good SEO practice since you can insert keywords into your questions and answers, and even reach Google Snippet (zero search result position shown in response to the question-based request). 

The FAQ section is also good for user experience. Initially, users may have some concerns even after reading the whole article, but with the help of FAQs, they’ll get the answers to their questions. 

Pro-tip! Be logical and strategic with the questions you decide to place in the after-article FAQ section. Make sure they directly relate to the topic of the article, and most importantly, answer the real concerns of the users. To research the latter, use a social listening tool, like Answer the Public. 

Conclusion

The discussion of how to do content marketing may go on and on as you’ll surely come up with a lot of creative strategies and campaigns. However, the most important thing is to tailor them to the specifics of your business and the expectations of your users, and as the result, improve your session duration and boost conversions. This is when getting professional support could be the right decision! 

The creative ReVerb’s content team will help you plan and launch successful content marketing campaigns with high ROIs and great engagement metrics. Contact us and take advantage of our marketing expertise today!