Your inbound content marketing strategy allows you to build and maintain close relationships with your clients as they move through every phase of the buyer’s journey. But it can only achieve great results when fully optimized to meet the needs of your target audience.
Luckily, each year provides 12 full months of customer data you can use to dial in your content marketing strategy and provide your clients with the support they need to stay engaged with your brand. Here’s how to review this data and optimize your strategy for improved inbound marketing performance in the coming year.
1. Use Analytics Data to See Where You Can Improve
Your inbound marketing analytics data weaves a powerful tale of what your customers need and want from your company. It also reveals just how well your current content marketing strategy is working to meet your customers’ expectations.
User behavior, in particular, highlights how your clients prefer to interact with the brand and the content that drives them to engage. To see where you can improve, take a close look at:
- Time on page
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate
- Conversion rate
Explore these metrics across your entire website to determine where your customers are spending their time and why. Once you answer those questions, you can work toward optimizing your strategy to best suit your customers’ needs.
2. Determine Where to Add More Quality Content
As you explore your website’s performance metrics, you can see the types of content that your customers prefer and where to fill in the gaps. You can then focus your attention on updating content on the pages that are not performing as well as you might like.
You should also look at how to build around well-performing content you already have. If you feel your customers could benefit from additional information on a particular subject, you can expand on your content to create downloadable eBooks. Alternatively, you can create long-form pillar pages, and then branch out with cluster content on those topics.
As you have skilled writers create your content, always step back into your clients’ shoes and see the final copy from their perspective. Verify that the content answers all their questions about the topic at hand and leads to other pages on your site that go into even more detail.
3. Add More Marketing Channels to Your Lineup
Your website cannot get all the love or you could miss out on key opportunities to reach and engage with your target customers. You must also deliver relevant content through email, social media, and other important marketing channels. But it is important to know which channels need attention the most before you get started.
Thankfully, it only takes a quick look at your analytics data to tell just where your target audience spends their time in the digital space. You will need to browse through the traffic section to see which channels consistently bring visitors to your website.
If you have a diverse marketing mix, you should see traffic coming in from:
- Organic search
- Social media
- Referral links
- Paid search
- Direct visits
If any of these areas seem lacking, you can focus your attention on boosting traffic through those channels.
Once you have an idea on where to start, you can use your buyer personas’ to further determine which channels will pay off most. If you are looking to break into the social media space, for example, see which platforms your target audience prefers most and create your official account on the most popular one.
As you operate within additional marketing channels, you should see a boost to your website visitor numbers plus improved brand engagement across the board.
4. Create a Schedule That Balances Quality and Frequency
Not just your content needs a second look — your marketing schedule can likely stand to improve as well. Since there’s no magic formula on how often to connect with your customers to achieve the best results, you must simply aim to balance frequency and quality.
While it is vital to frequently engage with your target audience, once your content quality declines, readers will quickly turn their attention elsewhere. So, whether you are sending out emails or adding new content to your site, you must make quality your number one priority. Then, aim to maximize frequency as much as possible without compromising on quality in any way.
Use this approach across all marketing channels to create an ongoing dialogue with your customers. As you connect with your target audience by email, on social media, and through your website, you will keep your brand on their mind as they work toward finding solutions to their most pressing issues.
By addressing all these key areas on a yearly basis, you can make sure that your content marketing plan will achieve great results. Always aim to optimize to stay ahead of the competition and your company will undoubtedly rise to the top. It is also important to know when to bring in help. If you need a hand with optimizing your content marketing strategy, reach out to our talented team at WriterAccess today.
Marie A. is a talented copywriter and content strategist who can help you achieve great success with all your digital marketing campaigns. She can write up all the web content you need to promote your company and build a loyal following. She also provides content strategy services to help you establish and follow an effective inbound marketing plan. She writes shareable copy with a clear call to action that inspires your readers to move forward in their purchase journey. Her content will always reflects your company voice and mission while adhering to your preferred style guide
