The Covid-19 pandemic has had many effects on the way people shop. At this point, even those who previously weren’t used to shopping online have had to learn how to. As a result, it’s become important for businesses to adapt to this new reality. Building an effective marketing strategy is essential in order to achieve your business goals in a post-Covid world, and develop new skills.
It is important to learn how to make sure that your online content allows your company to thrive. In order to help you achieve that, here are some tips to start building your content marketing competency.
1. Define your business’ goals
Something you should never forget along your journey is the goals you’ve set for your business. Although things around us always change, nothing should make you forget your overarching vision. This is exactly why it is important to define your business’ goals and be able to re-adjust them whenever needed.
The first step to achieving this is to determine exactly what you want to accomplish. These goals need to be as specific as possible so they are easily measurable.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself in order to create your goals:
- Are the goals well-thought-out?
- Is there a specific time frame within which I want to accomplish the goal?
- What do I expect my business to gain through this goal?
- Which steps do I need to follow in order to achieve these goals?
The questions above will help you set deadlines, start visualizing your business’ future, and come up with great solutions to any issues you might encounter in the future. You and your employees will become a lot more committed to turning your goals into reality once they are clearly determined and mapped out.
2. Plan individual strategies
After the first step, you will need to start putting together strategies that will help achieve your goals. While you might have an outline of your overall marketing strategy in mind, no two marketing campaigns will be the same: your brand is sure to grow if you are able to evolve and learn new things as you go, so planning individual strategies is a must.
Coming up with a marketing strategy for each and every new campaign requires the following series of steps:
- Identify what you want to achieve
- Research your market and define your target audience
- Profile your potential customers
- Observe the actions of your competitors
- Try out your ideas
These simple steps are pretty self-explanatory and will help you get a better understanding of how to approach every situation. Planning individual strategies for every project might be time-consuming, but it’s also more likely to lead to success!
3. Use SEO to your advantage
It’s absolutely essential the content you share online is well-optimized. Search engine optimization, SEO for short, will help your content become more easily discovered by your target audience. The results pages of various search engines can help you reach out to more people, so optimizing your content accordingly is crucial.
The easiest way to include SEO in your practices is through using the right keywords and phrases. These are specifically picked to help your content rank higher in the results pages of various search engines. Using tools such as the KeywordTool and Google AdWords can help you find the right keywords easily, and this will be a very effective way to drive more customers in after the pandemic has passed.
4. Update your website and services
Although keeping your website and social media platforms up to date is always important, it’s even more essential during these uncertain times. For example, if you have a physical store, you need to be able to easily communicate with your customers when you are open, and how you can be accessed (i.e. only 2 customers are allowed in the store at the same time, masks must be worn, etc). If you are having issues with shipping due to the pandemic, you need to be able to inform customers who are waiting for their orders on time.
These pieces of information will help you build a good relationship with your audience. When a potential customer sees that you care about updating your customers on time, they will know they are dealing with a legitimate company. This will motivate them to try out your products and continue to support you for a long time.
5. Create more audiovisual content
The content you create needs to be able to captivate your audience’s attention and make a memorable impression. In most cases, a simple image or a video without sound won’t help your audience stay focused and interested: audiovisual content is the best choice if you wish to achieve just that. The place to start is by putting together a video script, as this will help you decide which ideas you should include.
To increase engagement on your social media posts, you should consider how to combine different attractive elements in your content to really hook your viewers in. For example, you can make use of available royalty-free music and take great videos of your products in order to share them on your page. These are low-cost and effective ways to make your audiovisual content more interesting.
6. Analyze your customers’ behavior
Have you ever wondered why many people add things to their carts but never complete their orders? Understanding the pattern of drop offs in your customer journey is something you can work on before the pandemic is over.
Taking a look at your website and social media analytics can help you get a better picture of your customers’ behavior. By gathering data from their previous shopping experiences, as well as their actions on your website, you will be able to learn a fair amount about what they do and don’t want. Most importantly, this valuable information can be used in the future to build more effective marketing campaigns.
7. Build a relationship with your audience
When you run a business, you need to make sure that you have a good relationship with your customers; the people that follow you on social media and purchase your products are your supporters. These people should be treated with respect, and you should do everything you can to make sure they are satisfied.
The easiest way to build a relationship with your audience online is to involve them in your social media content and actively engage with them. Sharing their pictures or videos where they show themselves using your products is a good place to start. In addition, you should always make sure to respond to customer emails and questions on time. This will clearly exhibit your responsibility, likeability, and trustworthiness.
8. Use social media platforms wisely
Social media platforms can be very powerful tools that you can use to share anything you want about your brand. During these difficult times, showing compassion and sharing your thoughts with your audience is important. You need to be able to create content that will be relevant to the current situation the world is experiencing.
This will help your audience connect your business with positive emotions and will motivate them to look for your content even after the pandemic. Posting frequently and making sure to create quality content are also essential aspects of this.
9. Introduce your team to the world
A great way to earn customers’ trust and make your brand increasingly human is to introduce your employees to them. Using your website or social media to share information about your employees shows that there are actual people behind your brand, a detail which can make you even more attractive to your audience and potential customers. This is a tactic that plays an important role in building trust with your customer base, and it can help you organically grow your platforms.
Something that many people want to see is how your team is coping with work during the pandemic, either in video or picture form. Such content will provide a personal touch to your social media content and will help your company stay relatable even after the pandemic.
10. Focus on your company’s transparency
Last but not least, it is important for your business to be as transparent as possible. This will help your audience trust and stay loyal to your brand. This process does not happen overnight, so you will need to start working on it as soon as possible in order to see some measurable growth.
Since many people are still working from home, the exposure your company will get before the pandemic is finished is important. A great way to work on this is to include more positive reviews and relatable content about your brand in your social media posts. This will make your content more enjoyable, and it will demonstrate your professionalism and honesty to your audience.
Preparing your business for the new times to come
Building a successful online marketing strategy requires a certain level of competency which these tips can help you reach. It is important to remember that not every step will work for every company, but trying new strategies and constantly innovating will help you achieve your company’s goals.
The exact same things apply to marketing. The more you try to adapt to new situations, the easier it will be for your company to survive in the post-Covid era.
Which of these tips do you believe will help you reach your goals and help your company survive this new reality successfully?
