To get ahead in today’s competitive market, you need to get as much mileage out of your content marketing as you possibly can. Content promotion and distribution, a.k.a. content amplification, can help you do just that.
Like a singer’s voice, your content communicates only as far as it can travel. The farther you want it to reach, the more you need to amplify it. Here are four content promotion techniques to maximize your content’s reach.
1. Find Where Your Target Customers Are Online
To discover the best ways to amplify your content, first you need to learn where your target customers prefer to find content. With today’s social media and search analytics, you can see when and where your typical customers hang out online.
Learning about your customers’ preferences and online behavior can ensure that your paid search, display ads, and boosted social media posts appear at the right time and place. The more you learn about your customers, the better your chances to reach them.
As the Content Marketing Institute’s Arnie Kuenn advises, a mixture of owned, paid, and earned media works best to promote your existing content. We would add that your owned content — your website and blog — should be the hub around which the rest of your content revolves. That way, you’re not at the mercy of the social and paid media companies’ whims or failures. You don’t want to be the one who puts all your content eggs in the next MySpace’s basket.
2. Choose Your Best-Performing Content to Promote
Unless you have unlimited time and funds, you need to amplify only your best pieces of content, as Danka Jankovic points out. Look over your content analytics to find which pieces do best overall (traffic, engagement and conversions) and which ones perform best with specific customer segments.
3. Amplify Specific Types of Content at Each Part of the Customer Journey
Also, look at which pieces of content work best at which points along the customer journey. For example, at the beginning of a person’s customer journey, an information-rich resource will likely perform better than a product-forward one. As they get closer to buying, a brand story that positions your customer as the hero, using your product to conquer a challenge, might perform better.
For the Research Phase
For example, during the first phase of the customer journey, your target customers are doing research and looking for answers via online searches. Of course, the best content strategy is to get your content to Position Zero for questions involving your keywords. However, that’s not always possible.
Placing ads on search pages, though, can put your content on top of searches. Just make sure that the content you amplify at this level provides the information searchers are looking for. Don’t make the mistake of linking to promotional pieces at this stage. Provide resources that are well worth your customers’ time and effort. When you do, your promotions will pay off.
Similarly, native ads that link to your high-value content can also amplify its reach to customers who are searching for answers to their questions. These ads look like links to related content.
They appear when your customers are on another site while they’re researching the topic. If your content answers their questions better than the article they’re already on, you’ve established yourself as a valuable source of information.
If you don’t have money in your budget for paid ads at this point, use your customers’ social network of choice to promote your piece of content. Link to your content from there. For example, if you’re a craft supply company, and you’ve created a how-to guide, link to your resource on Pinterest or Instagram. If, on the other hand, you’re an IT company, create a well-thought-out infographic that shows how to save money with a more efficient IT system and get it up on LinkedIn.
Using email, too, to amplify your reach without breaking your budget can help. Provide opportunities for your social media followers to sign up for your email newsletter list. Make sure it’s worth their while by providing them with usable content — content they can’t get elsewhere.
For the Comparison Phase
Once a potential customer has you on their shortlist, they’re more likely to need to see what you’ve done for others. Consider boosting social media posts whose comments include testimonials or reviews about how your products and services have helped them solve problems like theirs.
For B2B companies, account-based marketing (ABM) pieces can be well worth the time it takes to create them during this phase. In ABM, each decision-maker receives informative content that speaks to their specific interests.
The chief of engineering, for instance, might receive a well-researched paper that shows how your product can solve a problem that they are working on. The chief accounting officer can receive a detailed breakdown about how your service can save money. In contrast, the chief marketing officer could receive a tool that he or she can use to show how your service has taken their company’s offerings to a whole new level.
Both B2B and B2C companies can leverage the classic hero’s journey through case studies and other pieces that frame the customer as the hero. Your product becomes the “sword” they use to attack the challenges they meet along the way.
For the Decision Phase
At this point, you need to über-personalize content for potential customers. Here are some suggestions:
- Monitor the messaging platforms on your customers’ social network of choice and respond to their questions.
- Provide detailed proposals via email or in-person meetings.
- Provide fully supported free trials.
- Use white papers or eBooks to show all the ways they can use your product or service.
- Use webinars and videos to answer all the objections that keep potential customers from becoming paying ones.
Here’s where it pays to collaborate with your other teams to produce content that takes advantage of their expertise. Subject matter experts can answer all these questions through content that can extend your reach beyond the marketing silo. Their expertise can help you overcome more technical objections.
Using this employee-generated content can amplify your trust factor well beyond anything your content team can do on their own. Statistics show that employee-generated content engenders more trust, driving more conversions than official marketing content.
For the Loyalty and Advocacy Phase
Smart content marketers don’t stop when the customer signs the papers. They deliver content that helps the customers put your services and products to better use. When they receive maximum value for their money, they’re more likely to tell their peers and colleagues about their experience.
Content that answers customer questions and feedback, too, can help endear customers to your company. The better your reputation across the customer experience, the more likely that a customer will recommend you.
4. Organize Your Content Promotion on a Single System
To organize all these techniques at each phase of the customer journey, you need a comprehensive system where everything you need is at your fingertips. A content marketing platform allows you to have all the following in one place:
- Target customer data
- Content planning and collaboration notes
- Your content calendar
- Editor access
- Content automation software
- Content analytics
- And more!
Having a one-stop shop for everything you need streamlines the content promotion process for everyone on your team.
That’s not a pipe dream. With DivvyHQ, you can amplify your content without burning the midnight oil. Even better, you can try it for free for 14 days, with no obligation. Amplify your brand voice. Get in touch to schedule a personal tour today!