5 Content Marketing Hacks That Never Fail

Marketing has been around for a long time, especially as a tactic to drive customer attention toward a brand. However, the focus of marketing has shifted significantly over the last few years. Now, marketing content focuses on engaging the audience and building a lasting relationship. It also goes beyond the brand and talks about other things of relevance to impart knowledge, establish thought leadership, and position you as a credible source of information. 

Take Canva’s Design School for an example.

Source: Canva

By promoting such a course, Canva is promoting itself as a design leader and engaging its users to interact and learn. 

This is just one of the many ways to use content marketing as an instrument for connecting with your audience. Having said that, it’s easier said than done. Because merely creating content and posting it online won’t seal the deal.

If you want to learn how to leverage your content to maximize its potential, follow through the blog. We have compiled a list of some unique hacks that all (successful) content marketing agencies follow.

Why Do You Need Content Marketing

As an online business among hundreds of thousands of others, you must do everything to make people aware of your brand, revisit it, and stay connected. And content marketing is an excellent way to achieve all that. Let’s see why.

Build Brand Awareness

More than 83% of B2B marketers believe that a well-thought content marketing strategy can help build awareness around your brand. Individuals who view your content will begin to form opinions about your company. Publishing insightful, thoroughly researched content will make your company appear reliable and knowledgeable. Your audience is likelier to engage with you if they find your info credible.

LinkedIn’s consistent blog posts are the biggest testament to marketing content and building awareness around the platform. 

Source: LinkedIn Blog

Nurture Leads, Subscribers, and Audience

You’d be happily surprised to know that 66% (per a CMI report – B2B Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks, and Trends 2023) of B2B content marketers agree that proper content marketing can nurture leads, increase subscribers, and broaden your audience.  While there’s no magic formula to convert your leads into customers, coordination among your content, marketing, and sales efforts can definitely get you there. 

Positions You as a Thought Leader with Thoughtful Content Marketing

Well-curated content can help you position your authority and establish credibility. When you offer plausible solutions and post consistently, people consider your content as a go-to source. Further, if your clients see you as an authority in their business category, they are more likely to trust you. But for it to happen, your content should show off your subject-matter expertise and offer insightful responses to queries from your readers. 

More Backlinks, Media Mentions, and Higher SERPs

Per Orbit Media’s New Blogging Statistics, brands with consistent original and primarily researched content are 41% more likely to receive higher backlinking (links from other web pages that lead to your website) and search result rankings. 

Content Marketing Hacks That Never Fail

Every other piece on content marketing hacks begins by weighing on understanding your target audience. However, it has become so intuitive that it’s no longer a peripheral to the process. It comes naturally the moment you decide to compose something for your customers. 

This is why we’ve compiled a list of some hacks unheard of. 

Build on Top of Your Content with Unparalleled Backlinking using the Skyscraper Technique.

Instead of starting from scratch for every content piece, build on top of some existing content. Be it just for inspiration, reference, or an interest. Find one that aligns with your ideas, is relevant to your audience, and intrigues you to put more light on. This way, when you build on something already good enough, you soar higher for the best— just like the tallest skyscraper (per Dean’s analogy). 

Backlinko’s Brian Dean devised an excellent technique called the Skyscraper technique to build more and better on top of your existing content. It’s similar to creating 10x content (content that should rank 10 times better than the highest-ranking ones). 

Source: ahrefs

As per this method, find link-worthy content, create something better, and share what you’ve written. And do this till you reach the best version of your piece. When Dean first executed the approach, Backlinko’s search traffic doubled in under 14 days. 

Here’s a quick summary of how to use this technique:

• Find what’s being shared among people. You can do this by working on tools like Hootsuite, BuzzSumo, Semrush, etc.
• Do thorough competitor analysis. This can be done using Ahrefs to see how keywords currently rank in organic search results. 
• Once you know what you’re against, choose a few keywords, start working on long-form content, and go above and beyond with your words.
• Lastly, feel free to backlink any previous work!

Develop an Omnichannel Approach

Interacting with your customers/audience via disparate channels— over your website, via email, on social media, or at your brick-and-mortar store, that’s an omnichannel approach. Etymologically, “omni” means all. So, if you’re utilizing all channels of preferred communication, it’s an omnichannel approach to content marketing.

Why should you be omnipresent? Nearly 89% of customers are known to side with omnichannel communication because of the seamless communication experience. 

Moreover, more than half of B2C clients engage with 3-5 channels before sealing the deal or resolving their request. These clients may become disinterested in your products or services if your information on different channels contradicts what they seek. 

This marketing approach acknowledges that people do not expect the same outcomes from each channel and every customer is different. Some may expect 24/7 support, while others may not.

Start With Conclusions

You’d be surprised to know that a myriad of novelists recommend working on a story’s ending (or conclusion) before anything else. As posited in How to Write Essays and Assignments, a guide by Kathleen McMillan and Jonathan Weyers, paying adequate attention to the conclusion helps you link back to your subject. Take it as finding or suggesting a solution and then wrapping different scenarios around it. 

At the same time, getting started is one of the most challenging parts, as you need to dig deeper to come up with a compelling beginning and hook your readers. 

The same can be said for creating content, whether it’s for your website or blog. Especially when working on long-form content, drafting a conclusion before the main body often simplifies the writing process and helps you focus on your offered solution/product.

Optimize for Content marketing Discoverability

With seemingly endless websites and brands on the Internet, the chances of your brand being found by the target audience might not be very promising. But if you have clarity on optimizing your content for findability and discoverability, site visitors will not have a hard time finding you. 

Discoverability is the degree to which any given item—whether it’s products, services, or content—can be found or accessible. It’s about eliminating challenges for visitors when locating what they’re looking for or learning how to utilize a service or product.

How to achieve that?

• Boost your SEO. SEO is the best way to optimize on-page, making it easier for people to find what they seek. Dig deeper into the technical aspect of SEO— use XML sitemaps, canonical tags, and schema markup. They help search engines to rank and index your web content more efficiently.

• Use multilingual content. Implement smart language selection to localize content and provide region-specific times and facts, site structures, etc., in different regions. 

• Enable multifaceted searches. Allowing autocomplete recommendations, synonyms, typo-tolerance, and filtering and sorting of search results based on several parameters like date, relevance, category, etc., also helps increase the findability of your content.

And why to do all this again? Search users who actually find what they’re seeking contribute to doubling the conversion rates.

Excel at Creating Headlines and Above-the-Fold Content

Think as a user/reader when you sit to write. You’ll realize that readers/users visit a webpage based on its catchy headline, relevance, and the first few lines. This is intuitive, especially with an average attention span of 8.25 seconds for an adult. In such a brief duration, one cannot analyze the quality of your writing but can get an idea by skimming through the headlines and above-the-fold content. When a page loads fully, the region displayed without scrolling is known as the “above the fold” section of the website. 

This content decides whether a prospective reader will stay or leave your website even before the entire page is loaded. So, how should you work on retaining your readership and ensure more first-time visitors stick around?

Optimize. Most search engines have set guidelines about the headlines and descriptions that web users can see before they enter a website. These guidelines include recommendations on character counts, keywords, etc. Your headlines don’t have to be too dramatic; they should grab readers’ attention and entice them to read on. You can also focus on captivating text layout, photos, videos, and other navigational elements.

Also Read: How to Write 4U Headlines

Address the Right Audience on the Right Platform while Marketing Content

This content marketing hack ensures you’re targeting the right audience on the right platform. There are more than 4.8 billion social media accounts across Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. 

Each of these platforms has its own strengths (and weaknesses) and handles content differently. Some are more complex than others. On top of that, audience demographics are significantly peculiar to each. 

Now, we’re not saying that you should stick to just one platform, but then focus on each based on its functionality and your purpose. After some trial and error, you’ll start targeting the demographic correctly and eventually reach your content marketing goals. 

Work on Your Calls-to-Action

A website prompt that requests visitors to take a particular action, such as downloading a demo, purchasing a product, or subscribing to a newsletter, is known as a call to action (CTA). Do you know a customized CTA can convert 42% more visitors? Well, now that you do, make sure you come up with excellent calls-to-action for all kinds of content you create— blogs, web content, social media, etc.

Repurpose Your Content

However relevant your content is, you’d not be surprised to find that it won’t rank forever. This is because, with time, a lot of factors— search engine algorithms, customer preferences, relevance, etc., are bound to change. Moreover, with more than 2 billion websites/blogs available on the internet today, there’s an overwhelming amount of content online. 

What makes your content stand out and stay pertinent? Repurposing your content. Update your existing content, blog posts, etc. Check whether all links are still functioning and update those older than 2 years. You can also refresh certain sections (for example, case studies, product reviews, and client testimonials) and add new ones. Ensure you also update any facts or statistics based on the most recent sources.

Top 5 Hacks to Drive Your Content Marketing Strategy with Technology

Today, running an online business entails more than just building a website, designing a logo, and posting your products/services based on traditional SEO. It’s about creating awareness, increasing recognition, and instilling trust by embracing the latest trends and technologies. Below are some of the most promising ways of leveraging the latest tech, like AI and ML, in your content marketing strategy. 

AI-based Keyword Targeting 

With AI’s capabilities, you can identify the most commonly used keywords and phrases. Today, these systems can infer the context behind misspoken or misspelled words using sub-technologies like natural language processing.

It doesn’t end here. With AI, you can tweak these keywords for variations and construct more specific, longtail keywords. These phrases contain 3-6 words containing your core focus area. Per research, over 56% of searchers often use phrases and not single words. Moreover, you can generate semantically related keywords with AI tools like Rytr, Bramework, etc. These keywords do not have similar words but imply the same meaning. For instance, environmentally safe and eco-friendly are two different keywords but may refer to the exact meaning.

Experiment with Immersive and Interactive Content to Engage More People

DemandGen’s 2023 Content Preferences Survey Report shows that over 54% of the surveyees reported being overwhelmed with the online content. And sadly, most of it often lacks the hook and quality. So, what can you do to stand out from the crowd?

One of the best and sure-shot ways of making people remember your brand is to make your content immersive and interactive. Immersive and interactive experiences work better because visual information is processed over 400x faster compared to other static forms.

If you’ve ever shopped from Lenskart, you must have tried a few frames while at home. That’s a great example of interacting with your customers and providing them with an immersive experience while they explore your brand. 

Try AI-personalized Content Marketing for Better Outcomes

If you want it to work, your content must have two aspects: quality and relevance. In other words, you need to have a unique tone, assure quality, and make it exciting for the target audience to acknowledge your brand’s message. 

To achieve this, marketers are foraying into AI-based content personalization. Over 58% of marketers believe that using generative AI for personalization impacts content creation positively, per a report by Kelsey Voss, a famous B2B marketing analyst. 

Why?

It is because AI personalization enables you to

• Automate and customize promotional emails and messages,
• Get tailored recommendations on content,
• Offer products based on consumers’ past interactions, just as Netflix recommends your next binge.
• Build dynamic websites based on behavioral signals and feedback, etc.

Further, with each advancement, these technologies are becoming more and more adept at observing human behavior via interactions. They can now identify customer sentiment through language and analysis and help marketers gauge better, more personalized content. For instance, Jasper, a generative AI tool, helps you create highly tailored content, including blogs, social media posts, emails, etc. 

Leverage Neuromarketing to Better Understand SEO 

Wondered why people click on some links and not others? What exactly kicks off in their minds to make this choice? Well, this is what neuromarketing unveils. The field studies the human brain to understand how they think and act. Based on this understanding, strategies are devised to work around consumer behavior and make better decisions.

How does it work? It goes beyond keywords and algos and dives deeper into psychology. This is done by tracking brain activity and eye movements and using biometric measurements. As per the Triune Brain Model, purchasing decisions are made by 3 major brain regions: neocortex (reasoning and evaluation), limic (emotion and connection), and reptilian (safety and survival).

Neuromarketing aims to solve the puzzle of consumer behavior by focusing on these three essential aspects: MAKE, FEEL, and THINK. For example, Spotify amplifies the neuromarketing strategy’s “FEEL” component. By appealing to users’ emotions and senses, it fosters a profound and meaningful connection that goes beyond music. 

Text-to-Video Content Marketing

Video content marketing is where the hype is. 92% of marketers report that video content has always resulted in a significantly positive ROI. What if we tell you that gone are the days when you went through the entire process of conceptualizing a video— from planning to shooting and posting? Now, you can simply type what you want, maybe a few words or a paragraph from your content. And AI tools like InVideo can automatically come up with a video, animations, and content.

Source: Press Release

Final Thoughts

Leveraging content marketing to generate leads and conversion is not a one-time thing; it’s a strategic process that takes time. But the result at the end of the road totally makes it worth the time and effort. Your online presence improves, and you get more leads, retain more customers, and build a trustworthy relationship with them. Even if you lack the time to dedicate solely to your content marketing efforts, you can opt for services from a content marketing agency. Until then, the hacks mentioned above are more than sufficient to get you started on the road ahead.