Anyone in online marketing knows the phrase, "content is king." In fact, the Content Marketing Institute found that 73 percent of B2B marketers and 70 percent of B2C marketers use content marketing as a part of their overall marketing strategy. Content is an opportunity to tell the world about your company and product. When done well, you can easily get your message out to people who are looking for the exact solutions you can provide, which will have a big impact on your bottom line. However, the essentials of content marketing are also important for establishing authority and brand recognition, educating your audience, and carving a path for overall marketing strategies.
As an MSP, if looking to reach your audience and craft a tailored message, it's important to know the essentials of content marketing. Let’s delve into it below:
Understanding Your Audience
Understanding your core audience is one of the essentials of content marketing. It is the key to creating lean, compelling content that makes a real impact. Responding to your customers' needs and questions is a great way to attract them to your business. It also avoids attracting bad leads or people who don't ultimately need your product.
To understand your audience, investigate their age, location, values, interests, needs, pain points, purchasing habits, and the industries they work in. Then, you can make a buyer persona, an imagined representative of your ideal buyer.
Crafting Your Message
Once you have identified your audience and created a buyer persona, you can begin crafting your messaging. When you create content, speak directly to your buyer persona and think about what you want them to know. It might be helpful to talk to people in your sales or customer service departments to learn more about customers' questions and their pain points.
Try to boil your core message down to a single sentence, similar to a mission statement. It can be challenging to simplify what you offer into something so short, but the simpler it is to you, the easier it will be to explain to your customers.
Creating Targeted Content
Targeted content is one of the essentials of content marketing, and it can mean the difference between good leads, bad leads, and no leads. It refers to content that is created specifically for a niche audience to drive a desired response from that group. It's personalized, relevant, and designed to meet the intended audience's needs at each step of their customer journey. Instead of creating content aimlessly, targeted content should be strategies with your buyer's needs in mind. Content can include blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, and more, but whatever you choose to put out should have a clear purpose.
Consider these tactics when creating targeted content:
- Market Research: Understand your audience by gathering data to inform relevant content creation.
- Draft Your Content: Plan the purpose and message of your content first to streamline the creation process.
- Use Evidence: Ensure accuracy and credibility in your content by using and crediting high-quality sources. This also shows readers and search engines you are a more reliable source.
- Mix Content: Regularly post a mix of timely and evergreen content to maintain audience engagement. Timely content is topical but short-lived, and evergreen refers to always relevant content.
- Be Highly Visual: Enhance content appeal with appropriate images, videos, and other visuals. This can also help with communicating more clearly.
These steps can help make content creation a less stressful and more effective process.
Measuring Success
Looking at data is one of the essentials of content marketing. Track content performance with analytics tools to understand audience interests and refine future content. By checking analytics, you can fine-tune your approach over time. Trial and error is key in optimizing your ability to reach the right people with the right message.
Start Strategizing Today
Learning the essentials of content marketing and creating compelling content is a vital component of any MSP's marketing strategy. By following the essentials of content creation, experimenting with different approaches, and finding what works best, MSPs can captivate their audiences and build a strong online presence. The power of content is undeniable, and with the right approach, you can make it work for you.
If you need any assistance or guidance in creating content, feel free to reach out to GreenStar Marketing anytime. We are always here to help. So go ahead and get started on your content creation journey today.
