06 May
Creating content is important, but without knowing your team’s content marketing goals, your write-ups could be useless. Before you even draft your articles, posts, and captions, it is a must that your team has already established what you want to achieve. That way, you can fine-tune your words and approach to make your content compelling.
So, let’s have the top 10 content marketing goals that you and your team need to define before your writers start typing.
1. Boost Brand Awareness
It’s logical to place brand awareness at the top of our list because new businesses and even well-known companies could benefit from this objective.
When we talk about brand awareness, you provide the most essential information about your company. This is where you highlight your mission and vision. Having said that, an editorial style guide should be put in place. Your team needs to understand which words they need to use throughout your content and which words they need to avoid. The tone and approach should be included as well. An editorial style guide is ideal if you have multiple writers or if you are going to outsource the writing services from a different company.
This creates consistency, and people will take notice of it eventually. Content for brand awareness is often seen in advertisements, brochures, and billboards.
2. Establish Authority
Another content marketing goal that your team could work on is to establish authority. This is important as most people only transact with credible and well-knowledgeable companies. And if you position yourself as a brand with first-hand information about industry news, you can gain traction.
The question is, how can you do that?
Many smaller brands and influencers use forums and social media to discuss relevant issues about the industry. Instead of just sharing the news, they comprehensively provide their own insights, which give value to the market. By also sharing a different take on issues, you show your followers courage.
If this is your objective, we encourage that you remove your personal biases and back up your content with data and facts. This could strengthen your point of view, and it will sit well with your audience.
3. Increase Traffic
Let’s say that your website still does not have enough traction. Using the goal to increase traffic can help you build the right content.
This is where keyword research plays a huge role. You get to see which topics or keywords most people in your niche look for. And from there, you try to strategize the content that your team needs to run.
Keyword research and analytics aren’t for newbies. You might want to work with an expert to identify the right words where you can potentially rank.
4. Generate Quality Leads
High traffic is good, but if you can’t get leads, your business might dry up soon. In that case, you need to create content targeted to getting leads.
Having lead magnets could help you reach your goal. One of the most effective tools is to provide eBooks. If you are to write a free eBook in exchange for email and other contact details, extensive research is necessary. You do not just compile information from Google and present it to your market. If you do that, it could backfire, and people will perceive your company negatively.
But before you can even attract readers to click your landing page, your social media ads must be positioned properly. The right caption is needed as well.
Some companies overpromise in their caption, but readers know better. Just be straight to the point and tell them what they could get from your eBook. If your message is compelling enough, you can get what you want from them.
5. Encourage Actual Sales
Now that you have their information and brought them further down the sales funnel, it’s time to convert them to actual customers.
This is where you send them newsletters about your promotion and offers. Plus, your eCommerce website should be engaging enough, not just with images but also with words. The product description should be clear, and the call-to-action must be persuasive.
6. Clarify Brand Issues and Roadblocks
When running a business, it’s natural to stumble upon issues and customer concerns. As for your content team, you need to come up with the right responses for your customers. You have to address their issues in the most professional way possible. In most cases, acknowledge and thank them for pointing out the shortcomings.
For controversies and scandals that a brand might face, a well-written press release is necessary. This has to be furnished down to the littlest details because all eyes are on your brand.
7. Educate the Market
As a company, you also have the responsibility to educate your audience. This is where your blog page could help.
Unfortunately, we notice that many companies use their blog pages to improve their search engine ranking. That alone isn’t bad. However, what’s sad is that they write for search engines and not for humans in the attempt to get the highest spot. You would see a lot of articles poorly-written and stuffed with keywords, even if it doesn’t make sense anymore.
If you genuinely want to educate the market, place your keywords as your least priority. Finish the entire article and find ways on how you can seamlessly add these words. But do not compromise the quality of your educational material in exchange for a high spot in search engines. Eventually, you will get a high bounce rate, and all your efforts will be useless.
8. Recruit Talent
This might come as a surprise, but one of your content marketing goals should include recruiting the best talents.
If you want to attract the best applicants or potential employees, you must create content that shows how fun and light your company environment is. You can provide testimonials from your current employees or even write a case study on your company’s professional growth.
9. Improve Customer Service
Your content could also improve your overall customer service. Instead of waiting for your customers to send their questions, you can already have an FAQ available on your website.
Collate all the common questions you receive and provide an answer which they could understand. This means you have to remove all technical terms and jargon. Just by having an FAQ page, you can already save a lot of time.
10. Encourage Investors or Business Partners
Lastly, your company might need to expand, and this is where you need to tap investors and potential business partners. Your content marketing materials for end-users should be different from this.
You have to provide the data, analysis, and even highlight the benefits of partnering with you. This information could be seen in your presentation and business proposals. And if you present them with less impressive marketing materials, you cannot expect them to trust you. This should be taken seriously, and an expert writer must be delegated to do this task.
Conclusion
There are many topics to write about. But if you want to reach your business objectives, knowing the right content marketing goals should be your first step. Otherwise, it will just be a hit-or-miss, and it would be nearly impossible to gauge the success rate of your content marketing.
