Well, it’s that time of year again. It’s time to look back on our marketing efforts from the past year and decide what worked and what didn’t. Moreover, it’s time to assess what we should be doing to ensure a profitable year ahead.
I find that many marketers get stuck in a rut with their efforts, so much so, in fact, that they often don’t see the breakthrough strategy that is just waiting to be implemented. I started thinking about this a few days ago and did some brainstorming. Then, as a responsible writer and marketer whose number 1 priority is to build trust with his audience, I did some digging. I wanted to find some relevant sources and see if what I was thinking might be on the minds of a few experts, thought leaders, and, yes, even a few competing copy agencies.
My research confirmed what I already knew: There are plenty of solid strategies that many marketers — many of our own clients — aren’t tapping. I thought I’d bring a few of them to your attention today and, hopefully, make this year even more profitable for you than the last. Here’s what I came up with …
1. Create More Targeted Landing Pages per Campaign
We get orders all the time for landing pages, but more often than not, the client only wants one page. One. Now, the client is always right, so, obviously, we deliver what we’re asked, but sometimes doing so can be stressful. I’ve known for a while (and experience has confirmed) that there is no better way to learn how people perceive your brand than by observing how they engage with your content.
2. Commit to Split Testing Everything
If you’re only presenting one landing page when people click through to view it, you aren’t getting a reasonable gauge of who your audience is or how they perceive your brand. By presenting just one ad for your blog posts, you’re wasting more money than you would by creating three, four, or five and isolating the one or two that work the best. Split testing matters, and it works, but most marketers don’t adequately utilize it or make use of the tools to do it right.
3. Clearly Define Your Pain Points Before You Start Writing
Brainstorm all the major pain points that your brand addresses and develop a variety of landing pages around them. You can expand even further by approaching a single pain point from different angles in email sequences, blog posts, and ads.
4. Actually Use Your Buyer Persona
Way too often, marketers invest the time, effort, and money to develop an ideal avatar or buyer persona only to completely ignore it in most marketing efforts. It’s time to start steering your brand messaging in the direction of what’s important to your optimal customer or client. It will take time and effort, but eventually, you will be able to zero in on the type of messaging that best appeals to your audience. From that point, content creation gets much easier (and cheaper).
5. Segment Your Email List Correctly and Effectively
Another effective way to target your messaging is to break up your list into logical segments. Many autoresponder apps will do this for you based on the gathered metrics from past campaigns. That segues well into my next suggestion …
6. Analyze Your Metrics Intuitively
Algorithms understand numbers; you understand people, and it’s people who spend dollars. Crunch all relevant numbers and gauge them against criteria like the number of conversions, repeat business, and, if possible, social media engagement. All these things will help zero in on the short list of strategies that will work best with most of your audience on a given network or platform.
7. Diversify Your Content Offerings
You need unique content for every list segment and social audience. People who engage with your brand on different platforms respond to messaging and calls to action in different ways. Likewise, the messaging and expectation of action need to be different across list segments, social networks, and all other avenues of content delivery. Don’t produce just one email sequence, for example. Produce a unique sequence for each list segment based on what kinds of messaging they respond to most readily.
8. Target Younger Markets
Whether they realize it (and they usually don’t), most marketers fall into the trap of creating content for people within their own peer groups even if that isn’t their target demo. It is important to form relationships with buyers who are young and more plugged into technology, especially social media.
What this accomplishes is twofold. First, you can build an audience and a customer base that will be around for years. Also, you’ll get tons of free advertising from enthusiastic users who engage with and share your content.
9. Invest in Relevant Training Programs
A top 10 list like this one can suggest what you need to do to boost the effectiveness of your marketing. Training and education show you how. Even in a long-form blog post, it is next to impossible to effectively teach you how to manage content marketing. Tap into the insights and experiences of successful marketers and thought leaders. It’s a small investment that could net much better returns on your content marketing investments.
10. Adhere to Your Own Core Values
In all your marketing efforts, continuously ask yourself if you would feel comfortable doing business with your brand if you were on the receiving end of your marketing efforts. Maintain high levels of integrity, and be sure that the content you generate adequately and accurately identifies your brand as one that is authoritative, trustworthy, and personable.
The reset button has been pressed. It’s a new year with brand new opportunities. As a successful copywriting company, BeezContent is here to help you with all your content marketing needs. We can help ensure that all your content adheres to those core values and also implements the valuable advice presented in this piece. Feel free to contact us today to discover how to make this year your most profitable ever.
