Any digital marketer should be cognizant of the importance of content creation and how it will impact the business trends in 2018 and beyond. Marketers face growing challenges in creating content that not only depicts about their brand but also resonate with their target audience.
According to a recent study by Demand Metric, 90 percent of the companies have been reported to use content for marketing even when not all of them have a formal content marketing strategy.
Whether it is a cupcake maker explaining the exclusivity of the recipe to the high-tech firm in Silicon Valley, every industry can put content marketing to work. Understanding how it helps in the real time ROI development is thus gaining more popularity.
Why it’s worth writing for a niche target audience
Some information is worth repeating and rehashing because it’s important. But most of the time it is just the same couple of basic points that are re-released and remixed into the fray only to be gulped by the crowd.
The organizations that target niche markets have some unique set of challenges as those markets inherently have smaller number of customers and fewer opportunities.
The basic tenet of any good writing is to tell the tales not told. It probably not always means to find an entirely new topic but saying it in a new and original angle. The first thing you need to outline is how your brand can help solve the problems your target audience is currently experiencing. It might need a certain amount of time to improve on what is already out there or how the brand can either fill in any gaps.
Developing a niche content marketing strategy
Define your audience
Depending on if you are targeting one or several niche segments, develop the buyer personas which will make it easier to describe and understand audience’s interests, expectations, and online behavior. Qualitative studies, surveys and interviews can be utilized if you don’t have any client portfolio. Generally, it should include the following information:
- Demographic data
- Professional data
- The goals and challenges the buyer could experience
- Online behavior like purchasing habit
Research content and keywords
Keyword research is crucial to make the content stand out in the crowd. Identifying the potential content gaps and then developing the content plan will not only increase the chances of ideal customer finding but also benefit search engine optimization efforts.
Develop a content calendar
Consistency is one of the crux factors that help any brand succeed at content marketing. Only experts of content creation knows exactly when to map out exactly you will be posting content and how the marketing team can prepare the strategy to make it further effective.
Distribute your content
That you have done your share of brainstorming to make the creative ideas engaging and visually appealing to your readers, you next need to share the content online.
It should be understood how you distribute the content is just as important as the type of content you’re creating. This is particularly important in niche B2B marketing as 47% of buyers consume an average of 3 to 5 pieces of content before getting into the conclusion. Owner, purchased and earned media channels are the three different routes how you can distribute the content.
Measurable results
Last, but not the least, keep a close eye on your content marketing results and stats which can be refined to get improved ROI.
It is essential to have Plan B
Sometimes, even the best laid-out plan in content marketing won’t always yield the expected results. The only key to overcoming this type of certain uncertainty is to have a plan ahead of what to do when you have less than ideal content performance. As content strategist, it is important to keep in mind that you need to give your content assets time to mature. This means, if there are no overnight results, it is wrong to assume the content failed. That being said, it shouldn’t mean you cannot develop a plan for improving content results in the meantime.