Content Marketing for staying relevant

Content that relates to your needs, goals and desires is what is most relevant to you. Relevance is usually what catches your eye like specific trends, stories and updates.

Relevant content is personalized content that feels conversational and speaks to your audience’s needs, pains, goals, and desires. To simplify this concept, your business should think of relevant content for your buyers, as individuals, based on what they do, continuously over time, directed toward an outcome, and everywhere they are (the ABCDs of Relevant Content). Buyer’s expectations of your business are rapidly changing. They expect you to know who they are, know what they like, and have personalized conversations on every channel they are on. Because of this, it is essential to make sure that everything you put out there speaks to your individual buyers.

• Keep Your Competitors Close

Every industry has its key players, so every little thing matters. Tracking similar and competing brands positions you to make proactive competitive changes. Keeping up-to-date on industry newsletters, scanning press releases for competing products and practicing social media listening can help a brand anticipate the various ‘threats’ from competitor activity.

• Analyse market trends

As trends change, marketers need to reinvent their strategies to generate content that engages their customers.

Take, for instance, the video marketing trend that picked up pace in 2017; HubSpot reported that 48% of marketers planned to add YouTube videos to their marketing plan in 2018.

Another recent trend has been to address the needs of the consumer not to the end of making an immediate sale but to ease their customer journey. This is why there’s been a sudden decline in sponsored posts, branded email, and even traditional ads all of which are no longer as effective as they were earlier.

A case-specific example of a brand having adapted its marketing strategy and content would be Warner Brothers Studio.

To prepare for an upcoming movie, it decided to base its media planning on insights gathered from big data. It considered the behaviour and engagement patterns of the target audience. By personalising its approach and tailoring content to the chosen platforms, WB Studio registered a 26% increase in ROI.

This goes to show that analysing marketing trends like these can give you a competitive edge and help your team create customer-relevant content pieces.

• Understand who you’re creating content for

Imagine you’re going for a job interview. How would you prepare for it? You would understand what the company does, where its interests lie, the gaps in its industry presence that you can help fill, and so on.

What you wouldn’t do is walk into the interview without any background research and offer answers based solely on your assumptions and beliefs.

Creating relevant content for your target audience is exactly like that. You need to know the context they function in, what they already have access to, and what they need. So, define demographics, the context of content, pain points, and so on of your average buyer before creating content.

Consider the phone-case brand Peel. It has managed to stand out in an industry where phone cases are bought and sold in bulk, by creating covers that are thin and functional, yet attractive.

The brand has utilised Facebook ads to help differentiate their product from those of their competitors. And Instagram has been used for a dual purpose: first, as a platform to establish brand presence and product identity through an aesthetically appealing feed, and second, as a means to respond to customer feedback.

• Use an apt medium

You can do everything possible to generate and post premium quality content. But if your target audience does not find it, does it even exist?

The truth is that effective content can only have a chance at being path-breaking when an effective distribution strategy is also at work.

Start by finding out how your audience consumes content. Using the right medium to start conversations, speaking in a language they are comfortable with, and using audience targeting options will help you build a better relationship with them.

Lead with Your Purpose

Audiences usually discern what you do fairly easily, but what sets your brand apart is why you do it. At CB&A for example, we’re driven by a passion to increase awareness of education initiatives that deliver equitable learning opportunities for schools and students. This mission influences everything about our brand marketing philosophy. It keeps us motivated, but our mission also drives our engagement in the education community and attracts clients to us in the first place.

Create niche relevant content

As has been discussed by Joe Pulizzi in this blog, creating generic content will lower your chances of breaking through the clutter on the internet, making it difficult for consumers to differentiate you from your competitors. You need to set your brand apart.

But before beginning to create a new area of specialisation, identify your potential competitors. Study their content approach, writing style, popular posts, and specific jargon used to target niche areas. Then build trust and influence by creating a niche content that’s relevant to your audience.