Your guide to - fig.agency › wp-content › uploads › 2019 › 08 › FIG... · content marketing As content marketing is always evolving, it is important to review your strategy

Content Marketing

Your guide to...

www.fig.agency

B2B Marketing & Communications

Introduction ................................................................................................... 3

The benefits of content marketing .............................................................. 4

Top tips for successful content marketing ................................................. 5

The future of content marketing ................................................................. 6

Inside this guide:


2

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Content Marketing Institute

In this guide, discover the benefits of content marketing, gain insights into how to use it successfully and find out what the future holds for content marketing in the manufacturing industry.

Content marketing is rapidly evolving. Producing generic content and just sending it out is no longer a marketing strategy for any manufacturing company that hopes to stay competitive.


3


More on-site contentThis may seem obvious, but more time spent on content marketing means more

content for your website. This means your customers will have more reasons to

stay on your website, more opportunities to become familiar with your products

and will invest more trust in you, leading to higher conversion rates.

Higher visibility in search enginesEvery new post you add to your website is another page Google is going to

index. More pages doesn’t necessarily mean more search traffic, but having more

quality pages indexed can grant you more opportunities to rank for more search

queries. If you target the topics that your customers frequently search for then

you should have no problem appearing for those searches.

Higher domain authorityWriting a lot of high quality content will increase the perceived expertise,

authority, relevance, and trust of your site. If that content earns more inbound

links from external sources, your website’s domain authority will increase even

further. A higher domain authority is strongly linked with higher search rankings,

so the more quality content you produce, the more organic search visibility you’ll

stand to gain in all areas of your site.

Improved reputationWhen people read your content, they’ll be building an impression of your

company. If they find what they read helpful, informative, or enlightening, they’ll

think more highly of you. Furthermore, if they see your content published on

external sources and on their social newsfeeds, they’ll perceive you as a more

trustworthy, established thought leader in the manufacturing industry.

The benefits of content marketing

MANUFACTURING CONTENT TACTICS

SOCIAL MEDIA

CASE STUDIES

BLOGS

E-NEWSLETTERS

EVENTS

VIDEOS

INFOGRAPHICS

WHITEPAPERS

HOW TO GUIDES

WEBINARS

ONLINE PRESENTATIONS


4

Top tips for successful content marketingAs content marketing is always evolving, it is important to review your strategy and content to make sure it is the best it can be.

Examples of using infographics to portray key data within an article.

Creating multiple forms of visual content

gives your customers the option to consume

the content in the format they prefer. It

also gives you the ability to share it on more

platforms. Users can share the other forms

of visual content via social media, which can

potentially increase reach and engagement.

Combine the written word with visual content

Traditionally, content marketing has focused on written pieces only. This is because it is very easy to create and share this type of content; it can be used on a website, emailed directly to customers or downloaded as a PDF.

However, manufacturing businesses will need to be more

creative in the way they present content to make it stand

out. That means combining text content with video, audio,

interactive components and visuals.

Some of the ways you can use visualisation to make your content marketing succeed include:

• Infographics that highlight key statistics mentioned in the

article

• Short introductory videos that explain more about your

products

• Full-length videos that showcase your company or how to

use your products

• Interactive elements, such as maps and graphs, that allow

users to explore the information discussed in the article

• Interactive slideshows to browse the key points in your

article


5

Make content that is highly targetedAs you might have noticed, there is a huge amount of content available online. There are billions of blog posts and articles covering nearly every topic known to man. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly important to avoid writing about generalised topics. Chances are

there is already an article or blog post out there which tackles the same topic in great detail.

Instead, look for topics that are specialised to your manufacturing industry or related to issues your

customers might have. Always carefully tailor your content to match the background and knowledge

that your audience already has. If you focus on creating highly targeted content that your audience

can’t get elsewhere, it will be considered highly valuable.

An example of how Creative Bloq integrates its most popular content into its blogs and articles. This box appears at the right-hand side of the content.

Focus on reader retention

If you have built an audience that reads your emails or visits your website regularly, it is crucial that you spend some time thinking about reader retention.

Some of the best audience retention techniques include:

• Provide a regular stream of quality, useful and relevant content

• Engage in a dialogue with your readers via the comments section or on

social media; this will help you build a relationship with your audience

• Make it easy for your readers to obtain and subscribe to your content

• Create a seamless experience for readers to find your top content and

related posts

• Offer incentives for readers to keep coming back, including competitions,

giveaways, discounts on products, or access to special content

• Use email marketing to reach your users directly. Contact FIG if you

would like help creating and sending out eshots.


6

EMBRACE USER-GENERATED CONTENT

Take advantage of user-generated content by

encouraging your audience to engage with your work.

Ask for feedback via Twitter, encourage comments

on your blog, ask people to share your post via social

media and so on.

Making fantastic content is a waste of time if it can’t be found. In

addition to promoting your content through email marketing, social

media and press releases — consider using paid promotion such

as Google Adwords and Facebook Ads. This will help increase your

visibility and drive more traffic to your website.

Content marketing development should be more

than developing content for just the sake of it. Each

piece of content produced should be tied to your

goals (organic traffic, conversions, lead generation,

brand awareness, etc).

PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT

WHAT MANUFACTURERS WANT TO ACHIEVE WITH CONTENT MARKETING IN 2017

Content Marketing Institute

Brand awarenessLead generationEngagementSalesLead nurturingCustomer retention

82%71%70%62%58%53%


7

Before you begin your content development plan, you’ve got to have an idea of what you’re working with already. In other words, you need to know how your existing content is performing in order to identify any gaps or areas of opportunity.

Traffic: How has the content performed over a

set time period? What have been the peak traffic

periods and what may have accounted for them?

Organic search visibility: What keywords rank

for the content? What are the broad keyword

categories/subject areas?

Top landing pages: Which posts in particular drive

the highest traffic? What categories do they relate

to?

Top-converting posts: Which posts are driving the

highest conversions?

Post frequency: How often do you post content

and how does this compare to competitors?

Topic analysis: What topics/categories tend to drive the

most visits? The most social shares? How can you use these

insights to help guide future posts?

Content length: What is the average length of the posts?

Which content has received the most social shares?

Top linked content: Which posts are currently driving links?

What are the topics/categories that drive the most links?

Top posts driving internal traffic: Which posts are driving

the most internal traffic? What categories do they relate to?

Top conversion paths: Which posts are driving

conversions?

ANALYSIS PHASE

A critical part of the planning and scheduling

phase is making sure you’re targeting the right

keywords in your content. In other words, you

need to regularly revisit your keyword strategy

– instead of simply relying on the keyword set

you’d identified when first starting out with your

content program.

PLANNING AND SCHEDULING PHASE


8

THE FUTURE OF CONTENT MARKETING

With so many exciting digital developments in content marketing, here are some to consider when creating your digital content strategy...

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

AI has the potential to change the content marketing

landscape. It can be used to better understand keywords,

enabling you to develop content that resonates with your

audience. AI can also be used to help format content for

SEO, discover relevant content for curation, and automate

content distribution.

INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) AND NEW DEVICES

Users are no longer restricted to their PCs, laptops,

and smartphones as far as interacting with content is

concerned. The challenge for content creators will be

developing content that will be able to respond to each of

the various devices within the IoT space.

This way, content marketers will be able to provide

customized content based on location, monitoring data,

and real-time alerts straight to the device. Marketers will

even be able to send content based on proximity data,

for instance, clothing retailers sending messages about

dressing for warmth during the winter period.

AI can be used to help format content for SEO.

IoT content can be based on location, monitoring data, and real-time alerts and more.


9

VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) AND AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)

VR will likely ease its way into content marketing to fulfil the

growing need for visual content. Content marketers will get

the exciting opportunity to push content optimized for VR,

which is largely unchartered land.

These semi-immersive activities support brand storytelling,

and offer customers new reasons to interact with brands

- the perfect way to bridge the gap between accessible

content, and full-on virtual reality campaigns.

LIVE STREAMING

Live streaming offers content developers and marketers the

platform to come up with more in-demand and live content,

which still remains a vastly unexplored area.

Plus, with Facebook jumping into the live streaming arena,

more users are likely to appreciate content that is modelled

around live experiences. Live broadcasts provide an unedited

look at brands due to their raw, spontaneous nature.

Whether it’s through sharing behind-the-scenes footage

in your factory, live events, or hosting a Q&A, live video is

integral to establishing a true connection with an audience.

Content marketers will get the exciting opportunity to push content

optimised for VR.

Live broadcasts provide an unedited look at brands due to their raw, spontaneous nature.

Example of live streaming used in content marketing

In July 2016, GE used the livestreaming app,

Periscope, to launch a week-long campaign

entitled #DRONEWEEK. It allowed viewers

to have a drone’s eye view of some of the

company’s least accessible facilities where

jet engines, locomotives, wind turbines and

industrial machinery are made.

A still from the GE live video stream


10

IMPROVED SEARCH ENGINE ALGORITHMS

Search engine algorithms are finally becoming fully

automated as far as updates are concerned. Most

content marketers design their online marketing

campaigns around manual search algorithms. These

are often updated manually and such updates are

communicated promptly to the online community.

However, self-updating algorithms will make it harder

to predict what the rules are for maintaining organic

visibility. For example, RankBrain, a machine learning

algorithm, scours the internet and fine-tunes search

results, making it harder for content marketers to

“cheat” their way to organic results.

E-COMMERCE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

On their own, e-commerce and social media marketing

have been explored by content managers for years.

But the real game-changer is going to be social

purchasing as more social media sites begin integrating

aspects of e-commerce. Social media is currently one

of the leading platforms that content creators use to

distribute content and build audiences. With such sites

becoming more focused on revenues, their focus will

shift from content consumption platforms to becoming

e-commerce hybrid sites.

As such, content marketers

will need to find alternative

platforms for interacting

with their audiences since

opportunities for organic

visibility will have diminished

considerably.

EXTENDING BRAND REACH THROUGH MICRO INFLUENCERS

Part of a successful digital content strategy involves

nurturing a growing community of followers - something

that can be facilitated through partnerships with brand

advocates - or micro influencers. Existing customers with

anywhere from 500 to 10,000 followers on social networks,

micro influencers have significant influence, and an

authenticity that can be tricky to harness with more well-

known personalities. Encouraging and leveraging content

from micro influencers shows the community that they’re

valued, as well as increasing brand reach and, in turn,

increasing the likelihood of conversions.

PROGRAMMATIC SOCIAL ADS

Publishing on certain social channels without using

paid promotion is a disservice to good quality content.

Programmatic ads offer the chance to really personalise

content, tailoring it to an individual’s experience and

increasing the chance of conversion. This practice is

supported by new functionalities from social platforms,

such as Facebook’s ability to retarget users based on the

percentage of a video watched.


11

01457 857111 • [email protected] High Street West, Glossop, Derbyshire SK13 8ER

www.fig.agency

Documents

Your guide to - fig.agency › wp-content › uploads › 2019 › 08 › FIG... · content marketing As content marketing is always evolving, it is important to review your strategy