Content Marketing is an efficient method to achieve this goal. This process can attract and engage your target audience with a low-cost investment.

Content marketing enables the creation of an engaging environment for potential customers to explore how your product or service can address their problems or fulfill their desires. By implementing this approach, you can effectively guide customers toward purchasing decisions.

This post will guide you through the Content Marketing strategy planning process and teach you how to create the most effective content to engage your target audience.

Here you will find:

Continue this reading and find out how to increase your sales!

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is a way to engage your audience and raise your number of clients based on relevant and valuable content creation.

This strategy can attract, involve, and create value for a brand’s audience. This method builds a positive perception of your brand and generates more business for your enterprise.

It is no longer a market trend but a strategic investment to achieve business success. With Content Marketing, a brand can gain more relevance and visibility online and grow recognized by its customers.

In short: a business can stand out in people’s memory and avoid being swallowed up by the competition.

Today, more than being on the internet is needed. The issue, now, is how to be online, be seen, and be relevant to the audience. And this is a Content Marketing mission.

Why use Content Marketing?

It is true that there are other ways to be online beyond Content Marketing. So, why should you pick this option for your business?

The answer is simple, Content Marketing is a foundation and complements other Digital Marketing strategies.

You will need relevant content if you choose to work with social media marketing. The same happens when you pick email marketing or corporate blogs: you will always need the content.

The most prominent specialists in the world agree that content is king. By using it, you may achieve a few different objectives types in many ways, like teach to people how to use your product or service to solve their problems.

You have to remember that today people have the power to choose which content they will consume. They are immersed in a sea of information, and you should give them the best options if you want them to pick your brand.

What Is the Purpose of Content Marketing?

Content marketing is more than getting your SERP rankings, attracting more customers, and boosting your conversion rates. It’s also about building a lasting relationship with the people who consume and look forward to your content.

Regularly published content consistent regarding quality, helpfulness, and entertainment value turns curious visitors into readers and customers. And it raises the likelihood that customers eventually become repeat customers as well.

Content marketing accomplishes this by:

• Educating your audience about your products and their benefits
• Showing people how and why your brand is the answer to their problems
• Building a community that revolves around your brand identity and the things it sells
• Nurturing lasting relationships with both existing and potential customers

What are the benefits of Content Marketing?

We have already mentioned some Content Marketing benefits and affirm that this method may bring growth to your business. Now we will enlarge the explanation about each point mentioned to show you how they work.

Attracts visitors and grows your site traffic

Helping people find your company among a giant quantity of online information is a big challenge, but the content makes you findable, especially for search engines like Google.

In the same way, relevant content attracts attention in social media or email marketing campaigns, making more people access your site.

Creates value for your audience

The content you create and offer to your customers is not just helpful; it gives a necessary message to the right people at the correct time they need. It will exceed expectations and turn you into an authority on that subject, generating value for you and your audience.

Engages your audience

When you give your audience relevant and valuable content, they will consider it so incredible that they will share it with their friends and followers. And that’s not all: people will interact with your content in another way, like leaving comments and reactions.

Generates a positive brand perception

Beyond all you read, Content Marketing helps your audience in a moment that it needs, and people tend to make business with brands that they already know instead of unknown companies.

Educates the market about your products and services

Most people don’t even know their problem and that your product or service may solve it. Content Marketing can teach the audience that your solution exists and how it works.

Drives sales to the next level

Sales are the principal goal, even when there is another secondary. Content Marketing may be present in all stages of the buying process, driving your audience until the final decision.

Without the content, a salesman made this driving individually, for example. That’s why a smaller number of people were reached.

When you adopt Content Marketing, you win more extensive coverage, reaching more and more consumers but targeting them most effectively.

As we’ve said before, you can teach your audience why they need your products and services, and that way, you’ll sell more efficiently and on a larger scale.

Generates more leads

The most crucial site or blog goal is lead generation. It is part of the strategy to drive sales once each lead is a potential client.

A lead is a visitor of your blog or another content channel that converts in a form, leaving some information about him.

With more information, it’s easier to know whether the lead will be qualified.

Even if your site already has visitors, when you invest in Content Marketing, you can convert them into leads, offering attractive that stimulate them to leave useful information to close a deal.

And the more you generate leads, the better the chances to sell.

Reduces Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a metric that indicates the cost invested in the marketing and sales areas to acquire each new client.

Content Marketing can have a lower CAC because one piece of content can reach many people.

Besides that, most content produced is evergreen, which means its informational content will generate results for a long time. And this also makes the content a company asset and increases its value.

So, beyond reducing CAC, content brings more value to your business and contributes to helping your clients without the need for your sales team’s efforts, making it free to focus on a more personalized and assertive approach.

Increases the client’s lifetime value

The lifetime value is the total value the clients spend on your business. It means that the more they buy or stay as your clients, the more prominent their lifetime value will be.

If you offer relevant and usable content to your clients, you’ll keep them for more time on your base.

They will feel important when perceiving that your brand keeps thinking about how to help them solve their problems, even after they close the deal.

B2B Content Marketing Statistics

Although B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to customer) marketing have a lot in common, there are specific differences a marketing professional should understand.

For example, a customer is often an individual consumer (or perhaps one person making a purchase decision on behalf of a small group of others). On the other hand, marketing to another business often means meeting the needs of an entire team, not to mention catering to the company’s goals at large.

Understanding the lay of the land regarding current B2B content marketing practices is also essential. Here are some statistics to know.

• Roughly 50 percent of B2B marketers outsource at least one marketing-related task. About 84 percent of those say that the task is content marketing for them.
• B2B customers are still human beings. That’s why 50 percent of B2B content marketing is about raising awareness and interest in a brand.
• Long-form content that digs deeply into meaty topics ranks better on Google, with 1,447 words being the average length of page-one content.
• Although all positions within a sales funnel are essential, B2B content marketing teams create top-of-funnel content the most often, constituting 67 percent of their output.
• How many Google searches does the average B2B customer conduct before purchasing? According to Google, it’s about twelve on average.

Types of Content Marketing

Digital marketers’ options for ongoing content marketing strategies are wide open. Here’s a look at a few of the most common types of content marketing you can choose from to help you reach your goals.

Online Content Marketing

The term “online content marketing” is often used as an umbrella term to describe any content you might publish online to boost your brand identity, attract customers, and raise your SERP rankings.

But in a specific context, it refers to the content you publish to your website to reach these goals. The content may be standalone information pages, articles posted to your blog, and more.

Blog Content Marketing

Dedicated content marketers can use many tools to their advantage these days. But a robust, frequently updated business blog filled with helpful, search engine-friendly content remains a marketing staple for a reason.

Blogs are more than a powerful form of inbound marketing that can work wonders for your web traffic and SERP rankings. There are also near-endless ways to use a blog to express your brand identity, connect with your customers, build your site’s internal and external link structure, and more.

Social Media Content Marketing

In 2021, an estimated 4.2 billion people worldwide utilized social media for one purpose or another. If they weren’t networking on LinkedIn, they were staying in touch with family on Facebook, sharing their lives on Instagram, building vision boards on Pinterest, and more.

Social media is more than just a fun way to kill time or keep up with the news. It’s a part of how they live their daily lives. And they want and expect to see their favorite brands there, so social media content marketing is a must for connecting with an audience.

Video Content Marketing

According to Wyzowl’s annual video marketing study, 73 percent of today’s consumers say they prefer video to research brands and future purchase decisions. That’s why 92 percent of marketers also say video content marketing is vital to their ongoing strategy.

Every digital marketer would do well to include this approach in their content production routine. The video makes a great addition to your blogs and website. But it’s also a perfect fit for social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Content Marketing Best Practices

Search engines, consumer tastes, and technology are all constantly changing. That means the world of digital marketing and the best practices attached to content marketing are constantly changing, too, so it’s essential to keep your knowledge current.

Here’s a closer look at best practices for content marketing success in 2024, and beyond.

Clarify your strategy

Content marketing success isn’t something that happens by chance. It results from clearly defined goals, careful planning, and diligent adherence to a comprehensive ongoing strategy. That said, every new strategy should start with a fresh assessment of your brand goals and creating a structured plan for reaching them.

Research keywords thoroughly and frequently

Wisely chosen keywords are central to any successful digital marketing campaign, so keeping track of trends is crucial. Research your initial group of target keywords thoroughly. Then monitor keyword options continuously for metrics like search volume, click volume, and ranking competition.

Set a content production schedule

Consistency is vital when succeeding with any approach to online content. But with a website, a blog, and multiple social media channels to manage, maintaining that consistency can take time and effort. A content schedule can take the guesswork out of the process, so set one for each publishing outlet. Then stick to it moving forward.

Keep your audience front of mind

Successful content strategies always maintain that the audience is the primary focus. Take care of an audience’s needs; factors like SERP rankings, conversion rates, and more become much easier to manage. All content should be planned and created with user intent in mind.

Expertly optimize for search engines

SEO is essential, and your marketing content should be optimized appropriately with current best practices in mind. But it’s easy to overdo things and lose sight of what should be the real focus of any content marketing approach – the people who will be consuming the content. So consider search engines, but create for people.

And, of course, once you have attainable goals and a viable content strategy for meeting them, you must carefully track your efforts. Tweak your strategy as needed, and oversee your KPIs to determine the effectiveness of any changes.

How to create a Content Marketing strategy? 

Now that you know what Content Marketing is, understand its importance, and realize its benefits to your brand, it is time to discover how to create and execute this strategy.

Continue your reading and find out what you have to do!

1. Create a buyer persona

The first step to creating good content is understanding who you are talking to. But it is not about simple segmentation: it demands the creation of a character with all attributes of your target audience.

We call this character “buyer persona” and give it a name, social class, history, desires, problems, interests, and other particularities inspired by natural persons that bought from your company.

The concept of persona is more segmented than the concept of the target audience. Segmentation happens because you trace all your persona’s problems, crossing this information with what you offer.

This strategy results in content that answers their doubts, while it creates a bond between the brand and the audience.

2. Define objectives and KPIs

fter knowing your persona, you must define the strategic goals and the metrics you will use to verify if the campaign is reaching success.

Some of the most common goals for Content Marketing are:

• increase traffic
• generate more leads
• increase sales
• educate the market
• wide brand awareness
• create value
• engage the audience
• reduce Customer Acquisition Costs
• increase the client’s lifetime value

When you know your goals, you can define the indicators to follow them. It is the Key Performance Indicators function. We use KPIs as metrics, such as a parameter to monitor the results reached with Content Marketing.

Remember that these KPIs must have a relation to the goals. See some examples below:

• If you want to increase traffic, monitor the site’s traffic.
• If you want to generate more leads, monitor the conversion rate on your site.
• To increase brand awareness, monitor social media interactions like comments, shares, and reactions on social media platforms.
• If you want to increase sales, watch out for the number of sales, ticket value, items by sale, etc.
• If you want to educate the market, watch out for the number of new subscriptions on a newsletter, access to content pages, etc.
• To increase clients’ lifetime value, watch out for how long they stay as your customer.

3. Consider the buyer’s journey

The buying process goes by some steps called the marketing funnel. Inbound Marketing strategies are used to drive people through the funnel.

People usually start at the top of the funnel and go until the bottom, when they are ready to buy. The “bait” that attracts them there is Content Marketing.

Know each stage of the marketing funnel below.

TOFU (Top of the Funnel)

It is the most general stage of the journey when the consumer is discovering their problem. You may attract many people here, but just a few will fit with a qualified lead profile.

At this stage, generally, people don’t leave their information yet. But nothing prevents that from happening.

The best content for your audience is blog posts, podcasts, ebooks, complete guides, and others broadly addressing the subjects.

MOFU (Middle of the Funnel)

In the middle of the funnel, your audience already knows they have a problem and are searching for a solution.

They have given you some information about them in exchange for valuable content, like an ebook or infographic, and you may use this data to drive them to the bottom of the funnel.

Here, the best way to address the themes related to your business is through blog posts, multimedia, and interactive content, keeping the focus on the solutions your company can provide to your lead.

BOFU (Bottom of Funnel)

Only people interested in your products or services arrive at the bottom of the funnel and are highly likely to buy your products or services.

These are the most valuable kinds of leads. These people are already educated and know what they want.

Now it’s time to bring to your client some case studies, demos of your solutions, and other client testimonials that show how your business can solve their problems.

As you can see, in each stage of the buyer’s journey, the consumer has a level of knowledge and needs different information. That’s why you have to consider the marketing funnel stage they are in before producing content.

4. Set a budget

Budgeting is crucial to planning a solid digital marketing strategy, which is no less the case with content marketing.

But how much is too much (or too little) to spend on content marketing, and what are the most effective ways to set a budget right for you?

Every company’s needs are unique regarding how much to budget. However, the average company today sinks approximately 25-30 percent of its marketing budget into content marketing, so plan your content production strategy accordingly.

You’ll also need an idea of which types of content you’d like to produce moving forward and how much you can expect to pay to outsource each option.

Examples to include (but may not be limited to):

• Blog posts
• Slideshows
• Ebooks
• Videos
• Infographics
• Charts and media assets
• General content promotion

Any above assets can be obtained from completely free to several thousand dollars per piece.

Naturally, the more experienced and skilled the service provider, the more likely they will charge.

But you also get what you pay for, so be careful to go for the lowest price without considering the skill attached to it.

5. Research

Usually, the public’s first contact with your content happens through the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), and the best way to appear there is by using relevant keywords.

It would be best to research which words your audience writes on the search bar to find content like yours.

The keywords may be a long or short tail. The concept means that the more specific they are (long tail), the more precise the results and the more qualified the audience target will be.

6. Implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices

Keywords are just one point in a strategy called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These techniques are used to reach first place on search engine page results — such as Google.

The higher you rank on Google, the better the chances your buyer persona will find your blog, navigate the marketing funnel and close a deal with you.

For that to be done, your content needs to be optimized for those search engines, and, more than that, they need to deliver an excellent experience to the reader.

You can do this by:

• analyzing your results with Google Analytics to know which posts you could improve;
• using the Google Search Console tool and uploading your site map;
• installing SEO plugins like Yoast if you work with WordPress;
• using keywords that Google suggests in tools like Keyword Planner;
• optimizing the keyword’s use by putting it between the first 100 words and in some subtitles, for example;
• adopting short URLs and using keywords in them;
• optimizing your pages for mobile devices;
• improving your site speed and testing it in Google PageSpeed Insights;
• designing your content using SEO best practices to rank in Google page results;
• using backlinks.

Watch the video below to understand how to do these optimizations:

7. Diversify content distribution channels

You can use different channels to promote your content, like blogs, social media, or email marketing.

It’s a way to get your audience to access your content when they are actively searching for a specific topic — or even if they’re not researching yet, they can receive your content passively.

Being present on various channels is a way to win coverage. Below, you can see examples of some of the most commonly used channels to promote content.

Social media

Investing in Social media allows you to reach a large audience and drive them to your blog or institutional website.

In addition to the possibility of reaching millions of people, social media platforms allow you to publish content at no cost, which also explains its popularity among businesses.

To reach a specific target, you can pay for Ads campaigns that allow more precise segmentation.

Emails

Email marketing is still alive. This channel has the most significant ROI (Return On Investment) among the most commonly used channels in a Content Marketing Strategy.

It also allows you to use precise segmentation and create nurturing flows to automate your campaigns.

Besides this, the channel has a low-cost and high predictability of the target audience reached.

Instant messengers

WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram Messenger became a significant communication phenomenon and opened another channel for Content Marketers.

Corporate accounts in these apps are spreading worldwide, and each day more are used to connect brands with their audiences.

8. Analyze and measure results

Reasonable content marketing goals are more than just attainable. They’re also measurable, so determine what data you’ll be collecting to measure your progress and when and how often to collect it.

Again, every business is different regarding its data collection needs but try once a month to start with and adjust as needed.

It’s also good to pick a few key metrics to watch weekly to ensure you’re staying on target. Possibilities include:

• Website Traffic
• Pageviews
• Online and offline sales for both new and existing products
• Email subscriptions
• Blog subscriptions and social media following
• Blog and social media comments
• Conversion rates
• Social buzz

Which metrics you choose are up to you, but make sure they support the central goal of your current content marketing efforts.

Analyze your data frequently to maintain a solid idea of how much progress you’re making.

Then, discuss your findings with the rest of your team or a few trusted peers. Be ready to adapt your ongoing strategy accordingly.

Remember, there are no such things as failures in digital marketing. There are only learning experiences, so keep this in mind when something doesn’t go as planned on the first try.

What Are Content Marketing Principles?

Every aspect of running a successful business, attracting a customer base, and building a brand comes attached to best practices professionals should know to stay ahead of the game.

Content marketing is no different, and that’s where fundamental content marketing principles come in. In short, they’re directives and tried-and-true rules that consistently help marketers reach goals and succeed. Here are some examples.

Consider the customer’s emotional needs

Good content does much more than showcase a product and tell people why they should consider buying it. It also seeks to be genuinely helpful to the consumer on a deeper level, meaning it informs, inspires, or entertains.

Consistency is key

Your audience needs to know when they can expect new content from you. So regardless of how frequently or rarely you publish content, it’s essential to maintain a consistent publishing schedule.

Show your humanity

Brands are a lot like people in that they’re unique. They also have one-of-a-kind brand voices, values, stances, and principles. A good content marketing strategy aims to show the human side of a brand or company.

Avoid sales jargon

Although some sales speak is inevitable when marketing a product or service, you generally want your audience to forget that’s the core purpose of your content marketing efforts. Content that resonates the best and attracts the most shares is content that connects with the reader on a personal level.

Deliver value

The more value and uniqueness you can deliver with your content, the more successful it will ultimately be. So aim to be the best at what you do. Show people why they should care what you say, and they’ll surely listen.

Which are the 10 most efficient content formats to use in your strategy? 

Until now, we mentioned some content formats and which channel to distribute each according to the funnel stages where the leads are.

But we didn’t give you more details about them. So let’s talk more about it!

#1. Blog posts

Blog posts are the best resource to improve an SEO strategy, and that’s why they are the foundation of a Content Marketing strategy. They are responsible for attracting organic traffic from search engines.

To write a blog post, you need to think about the keyword of that content. Keyword research is essential to see what your audience is looking for. After that, you’ll need a copywriter to produce the text.

Over the years, copywriters have developed several techniques to write content that persuade the reader to take action, such as purchasing something.

After writing the content, you’ll need to optimize it, considering all the SEO rules. This optimization is the key to taking your content to the first position on the search engines.

#2. Infographics

The infographic is a content format that takes information to readers through visual resources like images, vectors, graphics, and beautiful and functional typography.

Infographics explain something quickly and objectively so that a person looks at and understands the message without effort.

Initially, the infographics’ production process is the same as blog posts, but after a review, it will be designed by a graphic designer before it is published. This kind of content may be offered on landing pages to generate leads.

#3. Videos

To stay competitive in the online market today, including videos in your Content Marketing strategy is mandatory.

Finding a way to capture the audience’s attention is significant, and video is a format that can be consumed wherever people are, including while doing other things, such as waiting for medical attention or using public transport.

Video marketing may engage your audience quickly and efficiently. People are consuming more video content than other formats. Videos are one of the best types of content to use in your strategy.

Also, according to Think With Google, 80% of people switch between video and online searches when researching products to buy.

Even if they do not decide to buy after watching the video, they remain under the effect of the video for a long time.

If you post your video on a Youtube channel, some optimization techniques can be used to guarantee that the platform users will find your video.

Using tags, video descriptions, subtitles, and links to other pages related to the content are a few tips for that.

#4. Ebooks

Ebooks are an excellent content format to offer in exchange for some information such as name and email. Visitors can’t resist downloading this kind of publication, especially when the subject is relevant.

Beyond getting the consumers’ information through forms in landing pages, ebooks allow you to dive deeper into the content, explaining points that weren’t treated in a regular blog post.

Because of that, this content format is a complete pack of efficient resources to grow your lead base and increase your sales.

The production of an ebook involves text creation and review, like a blog post, and design by a graphic designer.

#5. Case studies and testimonials

Case studies and testimonials are the best credibility booster for a brand. That’s why they are so important at the bottom of the funnel.

Case studies tell a client’s success story endorsed by their testimony.

One characteristic of this kind of content is that it can highlight your product or service’s applications and benefits. You can put the case studies and testimonials on the institutional website and corporate blog.

Interviewing the client to produce a case study and testimonial would be best. Ask them to talk about the problem they were trying to solve and show how your product/service helped them overcome their issues.

#6. Social media posts

Social media posts can promote content published on other channels, like blogs.

There are a few ways to utilize this channel, but the most interesting is to create a relationship with consumers and stimulate them to interact with your brand.

While they are used to distribute content from other channels, social media can be a platform where content is created directly on it (think Instagram and Facebook Stories).

The production of posts for social media involves picking good-quality images to illustrate the posts and writing short and objective texts with a call to action.

#7. Email marketing

We already mentioned that email marketing has one of the best ROI in a Digital Marketing strategy. That’s why it allows an exact segmentation with highly predictable results. Right?

It can reach some different objectives using varied formats, like relational, promotional, and transactional emails.

Nurturing flows

Nurturing flows are used to drive through the marketing funnel. It consists of sequential email messages triggered by reader characteristics or actions.

The flow needs an objective, and each email should drive the reader to the next until the persona receives the final message and makes the expected action, like contacting the company or buying a product.

Newsletter

Newsletters are used to disseminate news about the company or even to share new blog posts.

#8. Webinar

Webinars are an excellent opportunity to create a relationship with your consumers and educate them.

During these live broadcasts, you may answer customers’ questions in real-time, besides using the content created to write new blog posts.

To produce a webinar, you have to plan an agenda and a presentation about the subject that will be presented. Inviting your audience with some antecedence and reminding them of the day before is essential.

A checklist with some details, like equipment verification, is necessary to ensure that all is ready for the event.

#9. Podcast

Podcasts are red hot regarding consumable online content these days, and it’s not hard to understand why.

As with a blog, a podcast provides a simple, user-friendly way to maintain an ongoing connection with your target audience.

It helps you reinforce your marketing message of choice without being too pushy about it and build industry cred as a go-to authority.

Podcasts are easier and cheaper to produce than similarly popular options like video, too, so they make a great cost-effective way to switch things up.

Where to get started? You can take the guesswork out of the process by partnering with a trusted podcasting service like iHeartMedia or Wondery.

You’ll get to take advantage of a whole suite of useful tools to help you create and promote your work, but you’ll need to bring something truly unique to these services to bring you on board.

There are also numerous podcast editing, hosting, and production software options on the market to consider if you’d instead fly solo.

You can also look into becoming an authority guest on an established podcast in your niche or industry.

#10. Paid Ad

You don’t want to over-rely on paid advertising as a marketer, as there’s no substitute for organic reach and SEO.

However, it deserves to be part of your larger content marketing strategy.

Paid ad content marketing is an excellent way for a new, emerging, or rebranded company to gain momentum, generate leads, and build brand awareness.

It also delivers fast, reliable, predictable returns — a big plus when implementing marketing strategies with strict deadlines.

Paid ad content marketing is most effective when paired with inbound marketing.

You can implement a paid content marketing plan via various platforms and avenues — including social media, sponsored content partnerships, landing pages, and classic banners — so go ahead and take your pick.

Think of your paid advertising efforts as a way to launch, establish, and boost brand recognition for your company and inbound marketing as a way to add depth, substance, and longevity to your efforts.

Paid ads are a terrific way to put your company on the map, but ultimately, your inbound marketing efforts will win you, diehard lifelong customers.

Content Marketing Examples

eady to take a closer look at how successful content marketing looks? Check out these shining examples from around the web.

Blogging: HubSpot

When you think of excellent blogs that nail blogging as a content marketing strategy, it’s hard not to think of HubSpot immediately.

HubSpot is almost as famous for its in-depth, ultra-helpful blog posts on various topics as its essential services.

Take a look at their Facebook and LinkedIn presences for some great examples of how to use social media video marketing to draw even more attention to your growing blog.

Videos: Hootsuite

Excellent video marketing content and pop culture go together for a couple of reasons.

To begin with, playing off of what’s already popular is a great way to show your company’s properly in step with the times.

It’s also an excellent opportunity to show off your cleverness, humor, and mastery of what it takes to make a lasting connection with an audience.

Take the video below, for instance. It’s a classic HootSuite marketing video that played perfectly off the then-popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones to tell the company’s brand story.

Visual Content: Shutterstock

Shutterstock is all about beautiful, dynamic images, so it makes sense that its visual marketing content is also some of the best on the web.

Its creative trend infographics are excellent examples.

This incredible interactive infographic from 2022 is just one example of how dazzling and compelling visual content at its best can be.

It’s colorful, it’s appealing, and it’s beautifully done on so many levels. In other words, it’s not hard to see why it generated tens of thousands of social media shares and visits to Shutterstock’s website.

Social Media Content: GE

General Electric (GE) is one of the first names that come to mind when you think of reliable, efficient vacuum cleaners or washing machines.

But household appliances aren’t fascinating as a topic for irresistible content marketing material. That hasn’t stopped GE from taking what they do best and breathing life into it in exciting new ways, though.

The company’s Instagram account is a perfect example of this tactic in action. Not only does GE leverage interesting, balanced imagery to generate interest, but they’ve also been great at influencer marketing.

For instance, GE invited a combined group of Insta-influencers and company super fans to tour their facilities and create content about the experience.

This move won the company several thousand new followers and multiple millions of views for their Instagram account.

Of course, these are hardly the only companies killing it regarding their content marketing campaigns.

However, they’re shining examples of what the content marketing team behind a company can accomplish with creative thinking and a knack for tapping into what their audience likes to see.

6 Best Content Marketing Tools

Naturally, even the best tools out there today aren’t going to make up for a subpar content marketing strategy, but they sure can simplify the process of getting the job done right.

Here are a few examples to take a closer look at yourself.

1. Google Docs

No content marketing project is a one-person show.

Google Docs takes the hassle out of collaborating with your team across multiple projects, no matter where they might be located. And it’s free, so it’s guaranteed to fit right into even the slimmest shoestring budget!

2. Grammarly

Even the most detail-oriented content creators can use a second set of eyes to review their work and point out some weak areas to improve.

Grammarly is a must for spotting spelling, grammar, and scansion errors that can ruin an otherwise effective blog post or piece of copy.

3. Canva

Beautiful, professional, original graphics are necessary if you’re serious about creating standout marketing content.

Canva is a user-friendly tool that removes the confusion, whether you’re looking to generate unique images to accompany a blog post or visual assets to jazz up your website.

4. Airtable

All that data your content marketing campaign will require you to collect and analyze needs to be stored somewhere, and Airtable is an option to consider.

It’s ideal for storing lots and lots of data and keeping it organized from the start of your project to the finish. In addition, enjoy access to editorial calendars, campaign tracking tools, influencer management interfaces, and more.

5. BuzzSumo

Although you’ll almost certainly come up with plenty of great content ideas, it doesn’t hurt to have a user-friendly tool to fall back on when you need more.

BuzzSumo can help you pinpoint hot topics to focus on and consider across multiple platforms and zero in on top thought leaders to check out. It’s excellent for tracking various performance metrics, as well.

6. Ahrefs

And, of course, SEO is necessary for any marketing content you create.

Ahrefs takes the guesswork out of basic keyword research to give you a solid jumping-off point for any campaign. It’s also terrific for everyday tracking purposes regarding current keyword rankings, keywords your competitors are using, current traffic rates, and more.

What’s the role of ROI in Content Marketing?

Return on Investment is a metric that should be analyzed in all marketing strategies.

It is not different in Content Marketing: it is one of the most critical metrics and probably the most loved metric by marketing managers and directors.

It is a straightforward measure that gives a general idea of the performance of an investment. To calculate ROI, take what you earned minus how much you spent and divide it by how much you spent. It is significantly beneficial to help define and monitor concrete objectives.

If you take some time to apply this method in your business, you will certainly see good results, mainly because all the content you create becomes a company asset.

Wrap Up

s you can see, Content Marketing is a must in a Digital Marketing strategy.

Creating your buyer persona, writing content that persuades the reader, having a solidified buyer’s journey, and using the proper channels will surely put your company over the competition.

Regarding content marketing, success is more than just creating a killer strategy and sticking to it. You need the right people on board to help you bring your vision to fruition, including expert content creators who can help your brand identity come alive.

WriterAccess by Rock Content is home to an entire host of experienced, professional content creators with what it takes to help you smash your goals and grow your brand. Try it free for two weeks, and see what it’s all about for yourself!

The post Content Marketing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Become an Expert on The Subject appeared first on Rock Content.

We purchased WriterAccess, a U.S.-based talent marketplace that provides professional writing services to a wide variety of clients.

It was the perfect fit. WriterAccess has an innovative system in place that connects skilled writers, editors, designers, and digital strategists with clients needing quality content, whether it’s press releases, blog posts, e-books, social media posts, or plenty of other writing expertise. WriterAccess provides all sorts of creative assistance to its business clients, including SEO guidance and general digital strategies.

The company began in 2010 and has been recognized regularly for innovation. It is also known for putting on a successful annual Content Marketing Conference that attracts marketers from around the globe.

Adding WriterAccess to our suite of products nicely expanded Rock Content’s reach in the U.S. and increased the size of our creator community worldwide. More importantly, it also provided more effective tools we can offer to our clients to help them do business better and solve multiple challenges in their content marketing strategies.

New look, same mission

However, although it was a valuable addition, WriterAccess still didn’t look and feel like part of the Rock Content family.

That’s why, at the start of 2023, we made some helpful changes to the WriterAccess site and platform, starting with a new logo and a new brand identity.

The fresh-looking WriterAccess logo aligns more closely with our Rock Content brand identity and our other products available to clients worldwide. The new logo’s main color changed from green to blue and adopted our brand’s default typography.

We were careful to ensure the brand was recognizable by both Rock Content and the existing WriterAccess audience while communicating the change. Starting with the logo, we wanted everyone to know that exciting things are happening and there are more great things to come in 2023 and beyond.

Looking ahead

Ultimately, our goal is to launch an an all-in-one solution for content marketing scalability and success called Content Cloud. It provides them with the best tools of all of our signature products, what we call ‘The All-Star Team,’ to solve multiple marketing challenges.

Content Cloud is the perfect resource for ensuring your content is created, managed, and distributed easily and efficiently. With its AI-powered marketplace WriterAccess, you can create high-quality content with the help of a vetted global freelance community. You can then collaborate among your team or agency thanks to Studio – our Marketing Resource Management platform – and make sure that all projects are executed efficiently, on time, and on budget.

Finally, when it comes to getting your content seen, Stage offers an SEO-optimized solution for publishing posts onto WordPress, and Ion will empower marketers to engage, target, and convert high-quality leads using a code-free and data-driven interactive content creation platform.

Our Content Cloud is your all-in-one platform for content marketing scalability and success. It combines a global talent marketplace for content creation with powerful tools to manage your workflow while enhancing every step of the content marketing process.

The Content Cloud includes a global ecosystem of certified partners, professional services, and a robust education hub to deliver better marketing and superior ROI.

Once you login to one of the products in our Content Cloud you will be able to access all other products in the suite, so users will find it easy to switch between products. It will also provide a centralized billing system.

Still on the drawing board is an integrated analytic system allowing clients to track their journey from a “good content idea” to a fully executed outcome. It will give details about the audience, the process, and the Return On Investment for an entire project, as well as the performances of individual pieces of content. This in-depth knowledge can help improve overall efficiency for future projects and point out stronger and weaker points and the best areas to optimize in your content strategy.

We’re also including other tools and features, such as more AI capabilities and an improved White Label Portal. We’ll make it easier to create e-books with a more refined process, and, in the future, we’re excited to begin offering the ability to provide clients with videos, infographics and other types of visual media through WriterAccess.

By offering so many solutions, we want to be the sole provider for our clients, a one-stop-shop for all their creative needs, rather than having them go to multiple vendors for multiple needs.

Final thoughts

If you can’t tell, myself and the rest of the Rock Content team are looking forward to the future, especially now that WriterAccess is more closely integrated with our other products and to our next steps towards the Content Cloud ecosystem. 

This acquisition has not only increased our talent base and allowed us to offer new products, but given our clients a larger suite of services to help them in more directions. It provides Rock Content a stronger voice and a more unified message, letting clients know we’re ready and willing to help them achieve their goals, especially where quality content is concerned.

We’re looking forward to continuing our mission to provide marketing services, especially with the addition of WriterAccess.

The post WriterAccess launches a new logo and brand identity appeared first on Rock Content.

Today we celebrate a significant milestone, as Rock Content has been awarded a spot on the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private companies list.

To me, this award demonstrates that we’re on the right track. Our mission is to “make Marketing better while having a positive impact on the world.” and we are moving fast to achieve that!

The Content Marketing industry is fragmented. This giant $400+ billion market lacks a category leader, and we are here to take that spot, helping companies create and deploy great Content Marketing strategies focused on delighting the audience while helping the business grow!

We now employ over 400 people remotely in 20 different countries and continue to hire globally. We serve 4,200 customers with a talent network that exceeds 85,000 freelance writers and designers.

These are great achievements, but there’s still plenty to be done!

We are continuing to prioritize Rock Content‘s primary mission through these four pillars:

The Social Impact for our Talent Network

We are creating daily opportunities for our extensive talent network members to flexibly make money doing what they love from anywhere in the world. These opportunities are reshaping their lives for the better in unique ways. As their individual stories unfold, we will continue to invest in the individual growth of our talent network through jobs and education.

Professional Education: Rock University

Our educational platform, Rock University, is central to both our mission and our growth strategy. We have already helped over 500,000 students globally to improve their Digital Marketing and sales skills with over 25 available certifications and 150 training programs in three languages, and we aspire to continue doing so.

Social Impact: Rock.Org

As we grow, our social impact initiatives, under the Rock.org umbrella, grow too. Created in 2019, we’ve already donated over 50,000 Digital Marketing courses to underrepresented groups — women, the black community, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQIAP+ community. We will continue to provide support on a larger, global scale. Additionally, we recently joined Pledge 1%, committing 1% of our equity and our time to support and finance projects that align with our mission.

Empowering CMOs with Content Marketing Solutions

Making the pivot to a content-first Marketing approach can be challenging for many CMOs, given the overwhelming need to accelerate the completion of vast amounts of quality content. Rock Content‘s multiple software solutions and world-class services team support our customers on multiple fronts to make high-quality content production scalable.

We believe in the power of content. Content is the fuel that drives the Marketing engine: blog posts for SEO, articles for thought leadership, Interactive content to engage prospects on their customer journey, and much more. Content brings value (and revenue) at every step of the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy.

In conclusion, we are honored to follow the steps of other exceptional alums, like Intuit, Microsoft, Jamba Juice, Timberland, Clif Bar, Patagonia, and Oracle. We believe this is only the beginning of what Rock Content can do in the Content Marketing space. 

Being an Inc 5000 Honoree is truly a  recognition that we are moving in the right direction. We are committed to continuing to grow our clients’ results, expand our global reach, and help even more CMOs and professionals achieve skyrocketing results with better Marketing and quality content while creating a positive impact worldwide.

The post Rock Content Named on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List appeared first on Rock Content.

To date, we have already helped more than 500,000 students across the globe become better digital marketers and sales professionals, with more than 25 certifications and 150 training programs in three languages.

Our mission is to “make Marketing better while having a positive impact in the world”, and we believe that one of the ways to achieve our goal is through education. That’s why, starting today, our educational content distribution will be getting a “tune-up.”

These changes have been designed to make our initiatives even more available to our community. With the new distribution model, we will make more training available for free to help professionals learn and develop their skills.

I couldn’t wait to announce all the amazing changes to all of you—our audience, students and customers. Now it’s the time. 

Rock University’s New Distribution Model

So, how’s it going to work in practical terms?

Today, Rock University is divided into two types of plans: Free and Premium. We will continue to operate this way, but with some changes to each of the plans.

Free access will continue to feature certifications and training available to everyone, while Premium will now feature certifications and exclusive training for Rock Content customers.

And we’ve made some exciting changes to the Free plan, expanding our content offerings at no cost: we’ve released 13 new training paths for free:

• First Steps in Ion: Dashboard Overview
• Navigating the Creative Studio
• How to Create an Infographic in Ion
• How to Create a Calculator in Ion
• How to Create a Landing Page in Ion
• How to Create Quizzes in Ion
• How to Create an Interactive eBook in Ion
• How to Create a Solution Finder in Ion
• How to Create an Assessment in Ion
• How to Turn Static Content into Interactive
• Interactive Content Strategy
• Promoting your Interactive Content
• Stage

You can look at all certifications and training we have available in the content catalog with this link.

Premium Offerings

Rock Content’s customers now will have even more learning opportunities. Besides the free courses that have been opened to everyone, they are also going to have access to exclusive education and training resources. We call it Premium courses. 

Inside the Premium path, we have five different certifications:

• Ion for Designer
• Ion Basic Publishing
• Ion Advanced Publishing
• Ion Administrative Overview
• Building Quizzes and Assessments in Ion

And more than 25 training: 

• Responsive Design for Ion
• Edit: Animations and Variables
• Edit: Actions, Behaviors, and Rules
• Palette: Forms and Interactive Elements
• Monetization with Live
• Displaying Content in Live
• A Guide for Guest Writers in Live
• And more!

Customers who wish to have access to exclusive Premium courses and training can contact the Rock Content team to request access to the Premium plan.

What’s the difference between Certifications and Training?

Certifications cover topics from Beginner to Advanced levels, covering both theory and practice. At the end of the process, participants take an exam and are issued a Rock University certificate.

Our certification tracks are organized into modules and lessons, and take more time to complete.

On the other hand, Rock University training addresses very specific topics. There are training paths available both on-demand, and as live training. The goal is to teach participants how to complete specific Marketing actions.

While they don’t offer a certificate, the training will set you apart from other marketers who want to develop their skills in Content and Digital Marketing. Training is designed as a short sequence of lessons that can be learned fairly quickly.

Rock University Content Types

Now that you know the general difference between them, it is important to mention that among the certifications and trainings you will find different types and formats of content:

Certification:

• Free certification: available for everyone, the free certification covers Marketing topics and grants students a certificate. 
• Premium certification: it is only available to Rock Content customers and covers Marketing topics, like SEO and Social Media.
• Product certification: become certified on Rock Content‘s product — available only for Rock Content customers.

Training:

• Live training: live Q&A training webinars designed for both general Marketing topics and Rock Content products. Available only to Rock Content customers.
• Training path: sequential educational content that can be Free or Premium, related to Marketing topics or Rock Content products.

Join us in 2022 and Rock the Marketing World

We truly hope you have enjoyed Rock University’s new distribution and the educational opportunities that have become possible with the different certifications and training.  

Rock University is aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in three areas: Quality Education, Decent Growth and Job Opportunities, and Reduction of Inequalities. The fields of Digital Marketing and social media are constantly changing these days.

Rock University is, now more than ever, Rock Content’s tool to help keep our customers and students on the cutting edge of these fields — and I am very excited to announce these upcoming changes for 2022!

To know more about our Free and Premium trainings, just go to Rock University’s website.

The post Rock University: New Distribution To Make More Educational Content Available For Our Community appeared first on Rock Content.

The sheer size and scale of the internet are immense and almost incomprehensible. But the internet is more than a safe haven for adorable puppy videos and tutorials on how to boil water: it is any company’s marketing dream come true.

On a single platform, companies can connect with millions of people. They can communicate and share their messages effectively.

Companies have swarmed the internet in recent years to take advantage of this, a strategy known as Digital Marketing.

Now you may have heard of Digital Marketing along with various other hype words in seminars and other marketing-related events.

As much as you may not want to believe them, people overhyping the effectiveness of Digital Marketing are often right.

If you have been hesitant about using Digital Marketing, it can be overwhelming. This post will help you slide right into the scene.

This guide will go over:

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is any marketing efforts that rely on electronic devices, and the internet.

From this Digital marketing definition you can understand that Digital Marketing is very diverse and versatile.

The sheer amount of tools, data, and channels available on the internet creates opportunities for marketers to deliver effective content to specific people, through personalization.

Are you looking for a more direct advertising strategy for a very particular audience, that will help your brand to grow?

Well, Digital Marketing strategies like using emails or ads in specific social media groups can attract a very niche audience. They deliver a tailored message based on their specific interests.

Are you looking forward to advertising your company to a mass market, garnering massive appeal and brand awareness?

Video ads and regular ads on social media applications and search engines should put your brand in front of millions of people.

Regardless of your audience type or how niche your product may be, there’s a way to reach them.

The Importance of Digital Marketing

By now, it might seem impossible that the number of global internet users is still steadily climbing, but that’s exactly what’s happening. According to recent research, there were approximately 5.4 billion web users worldwide in 2024.

That represents 66% of the global population. And, of course, those numbers have only continued to rise since and will do so into the future as more and more people get online.

Those statistics combined with the way the internet has already changed how people shop make digital marketing more essential than ever.

Successful marketing today involves reaching your target audience where they live and at the right times. Your customers are spending increasing amounts of time on social media, searching for information on search engines, and just being online in general.

That said, online digital marketing isn’t just a good idea anymore. It’s an essential part of any comprehensive marketing strategy. Because without it, it’s just about guaranteed that you’re missing out on valuable business.

Why Your Company Needs Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has been hailed as a game-changer for good reason.

It offers a singular platform where businesses can tap into an endless stream of information, leads, and potential customers.

Ignoring digital marketing means missing out on one of the most lucrative marketing avenues available today.

In essence, the internet is the primary driving force behind this necessity.

With billions of users online daily, digital marketing provides unparalleled reach and engagement opportunities that traditional methods simply cannot match.

The current digital marketing landscape

The online world allows brands to communicate with all of their clients and possible clients. You don’t even need to be in the same country to find and engage your public.

Technology has transformed simple phones, originally designed to make calls, into true computers. These provide all the access users need to connect with others. Apps, emails, and websites are literally in the palm of their hands.

Smartphones are incredibly popular, especially among Millennials and Generation Z. Applications like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok occupy hours of their day. Companies have thus found a direct link to their lives.

Facebook, a very famous social media site, has over 2 billion users. It is a popular choice among companies to market their products. Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and all social media can be beneficial to your business depending on your goal and audience.

With such a massive reach, advertising for companies is often like shooting fish in a barrel.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools for any company to use. And to prove our point, here are some of the benefits of using Digital Marketing.

1. The most measurable form of marketing

Let’s start with what is possibly the most obvious benefit of using Digital Marketing: you can track it.

We all know that to ensure a marketing strategy works, we must track its success over time. The internet’s reliance on numbers and algorithms makes it easy to monitor how effective a strategy truly is.

Although that may be a little difficult with more traditional mediums, it is very simple to measure the effectiveness of a strategy with Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing analytics takes away the guessing games related to traditional forms of marketing.

Through these analytics, you can measure in real-time how many people are looking at your posts or ads, as well as how many users have opened your posts, along with all the people who have replied, liked, or shared your post.

2. The most cost-effective marketing technique

Other than being able to track all of your posts, along with all the likes, comments, and shares that it receives, it is also the most cost-effective marketing technique.

Now, it is important to note that Digital Marketing is comparatively cheaper than most traditional forms of marketing.

While there was once a paywall between major companies and smaller ones in terms of advertising and exposure, that is no longer the case. Nowadays, smaller companies can get the attention of people that they otherwise could not.

Competing with bigger companies for the ad space in most forms of traditional marketing can be almost impossible for smaller businesses.

This is something that they can cover with the help of Digital Marketing, as they can reach an audience of their choice with minimal effort.

3. Allows you to choose any audience

Speaking of choosing your audience, another great benefit of Digital Marketing is that it can be as specific or broad as you want.

You can find specific groups or forums on social media websites like Instagram or Reddit to market to a very niche audience.

You can also market to a very broad audience through internet ads or sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram. No matter who your target demographic is, you are sure to find them through Digital Marketing.

Other than directly marketing to your audience, you can also make use of influencer marketing, which allows you to directly tap into a specific market through mediators and familiar faces.

Sometimes influencers need the support of sponsors, and to help them, users will often follow the links they provide.

Moreover, getting a respected figure in the community you are tapping into can grow trust for your brand.

4. Everyone is already there 

A common problem that people face with traditional forms of marketing is the question “Will anyone see it?”. 

Most crowded places in the city are very expensive to rent. With Digital Marketing, you don’t have to worry about such a thing. 

With billions of people using the internet and social media daily, the question is no longer will anyone see it, but rather when.

Print ads and other forms of traditional advertising also have a limit on just how many people they can reach.

No matter how big the network might be, there is a cap on just how many people a traditional marketing strategy can connect to.

On the other hand, Digital Marketing strategies have no peak of exposure and can grow along with the company itself.

5. Customers start their buying journey on the internet

Customers depend on the internet for everything, including their buying options and choices.

For more and more customers, the buying journey starts with research and insight into the product or service. What better place to find out more about something than the internet?

Since the term “Google it” has become such a common part of our language, the first instinct of most people is to search for something on the internet.

A study published by Orbelo in 2019 registered that 85% of shoppers consult the internet on purchases they are about to make.

That is the goal of designing a great Digital Marketing strategy: you can be the answer that these people are looking for.

6. The message can be customized

Another big advantage of Digital Marketing is that this strategy allows you to customize your message to the public.

Advertising today is different from the old days. Back then, when you wanted to talk to you public, you needed a generic message, that could be used in mass media such as billboards, TV broadcasts, flyers, etc.

The conversation with the public was not so effective, once you were talking to people of different genders, ages, and interests. 

Now, you can target groups by their similarities, customizing the message and making it more real and directed to them.

Email marketing, online advertising, niche marketing: all of these strategies can be customized to reach the audience that you want. 

The Difference Between Direct and Digital Marketing

Both direct marketing and digital marketing are forms of targeted advertising. However, while they can work together nicely, they are very different from one another.

Direct marketing is a form of traditional offline marketing that involves advertising a business, product, or service via physical materials like mailers, brochures, coupons, and pamphlets. Direct marketing materials can be helpful if your representatives ever need to present something physical to customers they interact with.

Meanwhile, digital marketing aims to reach people via social media, search engine optimization, content marketing, and similar tactics.

Online Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Although people tend to use the terms “online marketing” and “digital marketing” interchangeably, the two are not the same. They are, however, connected, and digital-age marketers and brand reps need to be familiar with both.

Any type of marketing content that involves electronic devices counts as digital marketing. Online marketing, on the other hand, is actually a subcategory that covers marketing content delivered or published specifically through the internet.

In other words, all online marketing is also digital marketing and includes content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and more. However, digital marketing is a larger umbrella term that also covers marketing options like digital billboards, radio or television ads, and SMS advertising.

Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Although you may occasionally see the terms “digital marketing” and “inbound marketing” used interchangeably, it’s essential to understand they’re not the same thing. 

Digital marketing is a much more general term that applies to any marketing tactics involving digital media, platforms, or communication methods.

That said, inbound marketing is a type of digital marketing, especially as compared to outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is probably what you think of when you picture a more traditional marketing approach. Think of marketing tactics that attempt to reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they’ve shown interest in the advertised product. 

Examples include offline approaches like trade shows and cold calls, as well as online tactics like old-school banner ads and untargeted email blasts.

On the other hand, inbound marketing is about focused strategies designed to reach an ideal audience of potential customers. 

These are people who have either shown active interest in the type of solution being sold or are struggling with pain points the solution could address.

Inbound marketing content is designed to be helpful, entertaining, or otherwise valuable to this audience.

Popular examples of effective inbound marketing techniques include subject-specific blogs, ebooks, videos, social media posts, and web-based seminars.

How to Do Digital Marketing?

Creating an effective digital marketing strategy isn’t just a must in today’s increasingly web-based world. It’s easier to do than you might think, even if you’re brand new to the game. 

Here’s a look at how to get started.

Set clear goals and objectives

Without a clearly defined goal, a digital marketing strategy is nothing more than a shot in the dark that may or may not hit the target. 

So start your journey by figuring out what your goals are because they will be the focus of all your future efforts.

Keep in mind that solid goals are never vague. They’re not only reachable and specific but measurable. 

Otherwise, you can never be sure you’ve even made progress toward your goal, let alone reach it.

Build your customer personas

In the past, all a digital marketer needed to create a solid campaign was enough information and collected data about their target demographic. (Think of details like age, gender, location, interests, or profession.) 

But these days, your strategy really isn’t complete until you also have a set of buyer personas in your corner.

Buyer personas are semi-fictional identities representing one or more of your desired customers. 

They make it easier for marketers to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and are best created by interviewing actual members of the target group.

If you don’t know where to start, the AI Persona Builder by Rock Content can aid you with that.

Conduct ongoing keyword research

Thorough ongoing keyword research is at the heart of any good digital marketing campaign.

It’s how you know what your target audience is out there searching for, so it’s naturally also the key to obtaining top ranking on Google, Bing, and the rest of the search engines. 

Keyword research is an essential part of optimizing your social media marketing campaign, as well.

Start the process by choosing a keyword research tool that appeals to you and building a running list of options. Include both high-performing keywords and clever long tail alternatives to expand your potential reach.

Create and maintain a blog

Content marketing is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing today, and a blog is one of the most effective tools you can have in your corner. 

Adding a blog to your company website gives you a terrific way to boost your site’s SEO and attract interested consumers to your site in the first place.

Set a content production schedule for your blog and stick to it, so your audience knows when to expect new content from you. 

Fill your blog with content your target demographic would find useful, helpful, entertaining, or just plain interesting. 

Think industry news and answers to burning questions someone shopping for products like yours might have.

Add variety with an omnichannel approach

Competition is fierce these days, so it’s crucial that you leverage your creativity to make your marketing material unique, engaging, and exciting. 

Innovate using an omnichannel approach to digital marketing, learn where your target audience spends the most time, and meet them wherever that is.

And although written content is still the mainstay of a good content production effort, it’s far from the only type that yields results these days. 

Modern consumers respond to dynamic imagery and exciting interactive content options, so be sure to include options like infographics, videos, professional-level images, eye-catching designs, etc.

Be open to diversifying your marketing strategies, as well, especially when looking to tap into brand-new demographics. 

Energetic, clever marketing material and timely, helpful content that’s in step with a market’s current interests and concerns are crucial to meeting your marketing goals and growing your customer base.

Optimize for mobile

Another critical factor to keep in mind when putting together a digital marketing campaign is how prevalent the use of mobile technology is today. 

Mobile devices are no longer just items people occasionally use to shop, consume content, or search for information. 

According to research by Dynamic Yield, 76 percent of modern consumers say they prefer mobile shopping because it saves them so much time.

That means you’re losing a lot of potential business if your website and content aren’t optimized for mobile use. 

So if your site isn’t mobile-optimized, change that as soon as possible. And if it is optimized, go over your current mobile-responsive web design, go-to email templates, and so forth to ensure they’re in step with the latest standards.

Make yourself available to your customers

It’s no longer enough to simply add a contact page with your email address and phone number to your website and call it a day. 

Today’s consumers expect a more intimate connection with the companies they do business with. 

Your customers need to feel like you’re not just reachable but genuinely available, and it’s vital to meet this expectation.

Make sure your website’s contact page is complete and easy to find. Your landing pages should be clear, concise, and free of any requests for unnecessary information. 

Calls to action should be highly visible and crystal clear. Guarantee that your customers know they can reach you on social media, as well, and always respond to questions, comments, and messages in a timely manner.

Distinguish yourself from the competition

Although the digital market is filled with opportunities for great companies to connect with the right audience, there’s a lot of competition out there, too. 

And your competitors have more in common with you than you think. They’re selling similar products with similar selling points, and they’re certainly looking to sell to the same demographics you are.

If you’re not standing out from the rest of the crowd, you’re bound to get lost in the shuffle. 

So consider what makes your company different. Maybe you offer more variety in your catalog than your competitors do. 

Perhaps your products are more reliable, more efficient, or better suited to a particular type of customer than anything else out there.

Do some research to confirm your differentiating factors and make them the focus of your digital marketing campaign.

Be creative, get personal, and always keep your eyes open for ways you can connect on an even deeper level with your customers.

Keep track of your results

No digital marketing campaign is complete without an airtight plan for gathering and analyzing data, so be sure to monitor your progress on an ongoing basis. 

The sooner you can determine whether an approach is working, the sooner you can correct anything that isn’t working as it should.

Celebrate successes, but learn from failures. And don’t forget to gather and consider customer feedback as part of your process. 

Ultimately, your customers’ responses to your marketing efforts are the most telling of whether they’re working.

Essential Digital Marketing Terminology

There’s a lot of information online covering every single aspect of digital marketing. However, to understand what it means, it’s helpful to get to know some terminology first.

Marketing terminology isn’t complex. Go over the following list a few times, and you’ll get the gist. You may even get ideas for ways to improve your digital marketing efforts.

Without further ado, here are some of the main digital marketing terms you need to know about.

A/B testing

A/B testing means comparing two digital ads promoting the same product. Marketers use this tactic to find the best font, keywords, landing page links, and more. A/B testing can also be used to choose site keywords and design email marketing campaigns.

Brand positioning

Brand positioning means creating a voice, brand colors, and logo to stand out from the competition. It also includes the core values that make your business exceptional.

Conversion rate

The percentage of consumers who complete a desired action on your site represents your conversion rate. The task could be making a purchase, signing up for emails, or liking and following you on social media.

Conversion rate optimization

This term refers to improving your conversion rate to increase the number of people buying goods or services from your website. It’s also known as CRO. It’s one of the best ways to improve results without spending more on digital advertising.

Cost per acquisition

Cost per acquisition (CPA) is also known as customer acquisition cost (CAC). This indicates the amount of money you spend on acquiring a new customer.

Cost per click

Cost per click (CPC) is one of the most common pricing standards for online ads. As the name implies, you only pay when someone clicks on one of your online ads.

Cost per thousand

Cost per thousand is better known as CPM. It’s another pricing standard for online ads. It means you pay a set amount for every 1,000 people who view one of your online ads.

Click-through rate

The click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who view your ad and click on the link.

Data-driven marketing

Data-driven marketing is a marketing plan based on information you’ve gathered from interacting with consumers. Your website stats and digital marketing stats are good sources of data. You can also use information you’ve collected from offline marketing efforts.

Engagement rate

Your engagement rate tracks how many people take action based on your digital marketing efforts. It includes not just sales but also likes, follows, and site views.

Lead generation

Lead generation means providing users with helpful information in return for their personal information. You can use it to identify and get to know your target audience. It’s also valuable for creating a data-driven email marketing campaign.

Return on investment

Return on investment (ROI) is the calculation showing the profit you earn for every dollar you spend on digital marketing. It can be calculated using this calculator:

SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s a term used to describe the process of boosting your site’s standing with Google.

There are many aspects of SEO. That’s because Google considers many factors when determining your site’s rank. Common SEO tactics include keyword selection, content creation, link building, boosting site speed, and ensuring your site is mobile-friendly.

Target Audience

Your target audience (or target demographic) is the group of people most likely to buy something from you. It could be people of a certain age, gender, ethnic group, or socioeconomic status. It’s also possible to have more than one target audience.

Digital Marketing Approaches For Each Stage of The Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to their purchase. 

It follows them through four stages: becoming aware of a need, considering different solutions to fulfill that need, making a decision between the different solutions and becoming loyal to a brand.

The buyer’s journey is a very intricate process filled with doubts and many hassles for the customer.

To help your customers make more educated decisions through every step of the buyer’s journey, here is a small guide to what is relevant and engaging content at each of the steps.

Stages of the buyer’s journey

To better understand the different types of content that you should use through every step of the buyer’s journey, we will go over each step of it and the solution that you can use.

Awareness

Awareness is the first step in every buyer’s journey, as they start to identify the problem that they are facing and the possible solutions to it.

This step often includes extensive research by the customer, as they are not quite sure what they want.

So, this is where you step in to help them make a much smarter decision.

Since your customers will be researching the problem, they will need content that is precise and helps them better understand their situation.

You can provide them with this information through various social media posts, research studies, eBooks, and even blog posts, among other things.

Of course, your priority in each of these cases should be to inform your customers of their situation, and not sell your product or service.

You must give the impression that you genuinely care about your audience, and this content is less like marketing a product and more like informational content.

Consideration

Consideration is the next step in the buyer’s journey, and by now they have graduated to buyers that know the solution to their problem.

That means they are now looking for sellers that can provide them with solutions. In this case, the buyer may know about your company but are looking at other options, or may not know your company at all.

For the buyers that got into the consideration stage, you will have to change the perspective of the content as well as the type of content that you are sending their way.

While in the awareness stage, you were referring to people that did not know much or anything about the source material, here your target audience knows what they want and is now looking for potential opportunities.

You will have to use videos, comparison papers, case studies, and expert guides to explain the best options.

Decision

The time has come. These customers are now willing to buy a product after doing plenty of research on its utility and more.

But now they are not just searching for products; they are looking for companies and brands that are willing to offer what they want.

Here you can take a more advertising approach to your customers so they can buy your products.

You will have to use content that represents perfectly your brand and the personality around it.

Content that works well with this specific step in the buyer’s journey are testimonials, product comparisons, product demonstrations, and even product reviews.

These types of content can be very effective in convincing your audience to get your product because of its unique selling point.

Loyalty

Once the customer purchases a product from you, this is a big win, especially with all of the competition in the market. However, your marketing to them does not end with their transactions.

In fact, this is the start of a new type of content marketing that will entice them to come back and make another purchase.

Indeed, some businesses do not follow up on their old customers, but these are often bigger companies like Amazon or Steam.

These larger companies have such a dominant market presence; it is often more convenient for customers to shop there exclusively.

On the other hand, smaller companies have to rely on these marketing techniques to make sure their older customers come back to the shop.

Moreover, keeping in touch with your customers after their initial purchase is a great way of showing that you care.

This care can generate loyalty among buyers, making them more compelled to spend on your site.

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps

The term “digital marketing strategy” refers to any marketing technique or approach that leverages the effectiveness of various online resources to reach a target audience.

The right digital marketing strategy plays a key role in a company’s ultimate profitability and success. Successful strategies invariably encompass both the values of the desired customer and the end goals of the business.

Knowing you need an effective digital marketing strategy in your corner is one thing, but actually creating such a strategy is another. Here are the key steps to keep in mind:

1. Do current market research

It’s important not to simply assume you know what your target consumer wants. Even if you knew months or years ago, a lot may have changed in the meantime. So always start every new digital marketing strategy with a round of fresh research.

Try using the SWOT method to get to the bottom of things. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – all key factors to identify and assess before moving forward.

2. Clearly define your goals

Before you can reach a destination, you need to identify it, and this is just as much the case with online digital marketing as it is with anything else.

What are you hoping to accomplish with this strategy? How will accomplishing those goals help you realize your larger business objectives?

3. Know who you’re marketing to

Not everyone out there will be a good fit for your company’s services and products, so it’s important to make your efforts count with proper targeting. Developing well-rounded buyer personas based on your market research can help with this.

Buyer personas can help marketers and content creators better visualize their target customers, the better to tailor their efforts to match.

4. Take a closer look at your assets

Once you know who you’re marketing to and what you want to accomplish, you’ll want to decide how and where to do your marketing. Start with a careful assessment of the various assets you already have in your corner. Examples may include:

• Owned media assets, such as your website, your branded imagery, your social media presence, and any original content you may have created
• External digital assets that your marketing team has earned over the years, such as guest content on other brands’ websites or user-generated content
• Digital assets you pay for, such as pay-per-click advertising, sponsored postings, and more

From there, decide how each of these assets fits into your larger strategy.

5. Set a schedule

Consistency is one of the most important factors in the success of a digital marketing strategy. While great content and clever marketing techniques are helpful, they’re not enough to get you there all by themselves. Marketing efforts need to be timed correctly and delivered consistently.

Come up with a schedule you’ll follow for developing, posting, and promoting new content. Do the same with key tactics like link outreach and progress audits, as well. Then stick to that schedule religiously moving forward.

6. Keep track of your efforts

Every marketing strategy should be based on what you’ve learned from previous strategies, as well as ongoing market research and feedback analysis. But if you don’t keep track of your efforts and their results, there will be no data to refer to in the future.

So, track every change, stage, and step when it comes to your strategies. Analyze the results. Then use what they teach you to make future campaigns even more effective.

14 Best Digital Marketing Strategies

Now that you have a deeper understanding of Digital Marketing and how it is important for your company, we can move on to marketing strategies.

There are various types of Digital Marketing, each aimed to help a company in a specific area.

Each type has a different objective and is based on specific channels. It’s really important to mention that they are not mutually exclusive.

Every company, before starting its marketing, has to come up with a proper marketing strategy.

A marketing strategy often consists of all sorts of planning, from the financial side of marketing to the more intricate planning of software that they will use.

A good Digital Marketing strategy can go a long way in getting your company and brand the attention that it needs.

Choosing the right Digital Marketing strategy can be very difficult, seeing how each of them has its specific utility as well as its downfalls.

Therefore, if you are wondering what some of the best marketing strategies to use are, here is a list of the most effective Digital Marketing strategies for any company.

#1. Social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is possibly the most popular Digital Marketing trend of the current generation. It can be very hard to ignore the sheer force that social media has become over the past decade.

Social Media provides a new level of engagement that brands can leverage to increase brand awareness and positive perceptions, and, if everything goes really well, even go viral!

Applications like Snapchat and Instagram allow users to connect with their friends and even celebrities. But it is also a great place for brands to show off their products and services, seeing how both platforms rely on people sharing short videos or photos.

Other sites like Reddit rely greatly on the power of groups that share a common interest, making it a place for companies to know about the public’s current perception of their brands and publish content

These social media platforms only scratch the surface in terms of what Social Media Marketing can achieve. With over 2 billion people connected to each other through platforms like Facebook, social media cannot be ignored.

Nearly every company relies on social media to market their brand and for a good reason. To quote Todd Howard from Bethesda, “it just works.”

Since social media is so massive and branches out into various other platforms, it is difficult to be certain about which social media site to use.

The general rules fall into Facebook being the biggest social platform for any product regardless, while Instagram relies only on visual content and attracts more teenagers and young adults.

So, even though marketing is rarely about absolutes, we can certainly say that if you have a brand that’s targeted toward young adults, you need to be on Instagram.

There are many more social networks around: LinkedIn is focused on professional interactions, TikTok is a brand-new contender and there’s always a new one just around the corner.

The “secret” to success in Social Media Marketing is having a valuable message on the right social network and keeping the conversation with your audience alive.

It’s a two-way communication platform. And people love to chat.

#2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Another very popular Digital Marketing strategy is using Search Engine Marketing to promote a brand.

SEM is a specific form of marketing that caters directly to people and what they are looking for. This can be done in two ways: buying ad space on the search results page or by SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

When you use ad space you basically pay the search engine — oftentimes Google — for ad space on specific pages.

This means that your page will not appear as a regular search result and will be visibly different from the rest. This technique also applies to social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, seeing how both rely heavily on a search bar.

On the other hand, SEO is an organic way to attract more traffic to your blog or site by offering the public relevant content that clarifies their doubts.

To better understand this concept, stay with us through this article.

#3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a very powerful Digital Marketing strategy. This is a set of techniques that optimize your blog or site to rank better in search engines, like Google and Bing.

This is one of the most important strategies you can do to create authority for your brand and increase your leads and clients. 

SEO’s biggest goal is to rank your content higher in the search engines, increasing the organic traffic your blog or site receives. This is so relevant in a world where 90% of the people who make Google research click on the results that are shown on the first page of the engine.

And the Search Engine Optimization technique offers a great advantage: it is way cheaper than traditional marketing strategies, such as billboards and even online advertising. 

If you write relevant content that answers the questions of the audience, while offering a good experience on your page, you have good chances to make it to the top of the search engine.

This allows companies with relatively less funding to still compete and acquire the exposure that they want.

#4. Content Marketing 

Content Marketing is also a great way to market to your intended audience.

This strategy is based on the education of the market towards the solution your company offers. Using relevant content, you can increase your clients and possible clients by educating and engaging them.

This way, they will trust in you and advocate for your brand, creating a bond of fidelity between the brand and the customer. 

While most people think that written content is the only thing that companies use in content marketing, the truth is there are different types of content that you can use for Digital Marketing.

Since your entire audience is living in the information age, traditional marketing and advertising methods are not as effective as before.

Catchy quotes, eye-pleasing pictures, and incredibly detailed videos of your brand and its personality can reach them just the way you want.

#5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the type of marketing where the affiliate receives a commission on every post they promote. 

So an affiliate may make multiple posts and receive payments for each of these posts, based on the sales they generate.

Anyone can be an affiliate: from customers to salespeople. 

And if you wanna crossover strategies, you can join affiliate marketing with influence marketing. This way you’ll bring a new audience through the popularity of those you invited to be affiliates.

This is often an option that companies offer to smaller influencers, like smaller YouTube channels.

#6. Blog

If you have embraced Digital Marketing as a way to get to more people and turn them into clients, you know that a website is an important tool for the process. 

Blogging helps a website do its job. By posting relevant content on your blog and using the appropriate keywords, your website will be on a higher page rank at any search engine.

The higher the website ranks, the more likely it is to be seen and the more traffic you will have. That means that business blogging helps with SEO.

By providing content through a blog that answers your customers’ questions and offers real solutions, you will turn traffic into qualified leads. 

By doing that you are building a relationship with those leads and nurturing them through the customer journey, which we will talk about later.

#7. Email Marketing

While each of the marketing tactics mentioned has its advantages, email marketing is the king of content and brings in an unbeatable return on investment compared to other Digital Marketing strategies.

By using email marketing, you can attract and retain customers with personalized messages that promote your content, product, and brand. 

In addition, you can segment contacts and use personalization techniques to deliver important messages to your customers.

The fact is that email marketing is effective and cost-efficient. Besides, this is an incredible tool that allows you to measure the results of your campaigns.

#8. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the key to scaling your marketing production. By using marketing automation software your department can automate basic tasks and optimize its workflow.

Email marketing, social media posting, lead generation, lead nurturing workflows, and metrics analysis can all be done with marketing automation software.

Working with these tools, your team will be able to increase sales and leads, as well as decrease the customer acquisition cost.

All of this while having more information on your clients and potential clients, mapping all steps of the buyer’s journey, and having more time to think about your marketing strategy instead of doing the manual work.

#9. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is perhaps one of the most critical, relevant digital marketing strategies today, so it’s crucial that you make it part of your ongoing approach. 

As a methodology, it’s about more than simply driving traffic to your website and generating leads. It’s truly about making genuine connections with your potential customers and building strong long-term relationships with them.

You do this by creating content and presenting insights that deliver genuine value to your target audience. 

And how do you provide value? In one of the three following ways (or any combination of them).

• Attract: Bring your audience to you by creating content and starting conversations that position you as a trustworthy authority in your field.
• Assist: Provide your audience with solutions that either directly address their most pressing pain points or answer questions they have about a topic.
• Empower: Give your audience compassionate authority-level support that helps them make solid purchasing decisions and empowers them as consumers.

When you, as a marketer or brand representative, give a consumer what they need in the form of helpful information, genuine assistance, and authentic connection, they’re much more likely to buy from you. 

In this way, inbound marketing helps your brand build serious momentum.

#10. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has been a digital marketing mainstay for a long time and with good reason. 

When approached correctly, it’s highly effective at driving high-quality traffic to your website and generating leads that are highly likely to convert.

Today, PPC ads — paid advertisements designed to accompany a variety of web experiences — can take a couple of different forms. 

The one you’re likely most familiar with is the paid advertising that appears at the top of Google search results. However, advertisements that appear before YouTube videos, in mobile apps, and so forth also follow the PPC model.

One of the most significant advantages of PPC is it’s easy to scale your campaign to match your current budget since you only pay when someone clicks on an ad. 

However, the actual cost of a particular campaign can vary greatly from one project to the next.

How much it will cost to run a particular ad depends mainly on how competitive your chosen keywords are, as you must bid on the key phrases you want. 

But PPC as a digital marketing discipline is highly flexible. You can target consumers located anywhere globally, including local customers you want to attract through the doors of a brick-and-mortar business.

#11. Sponsored Content

Branded content is a huge deal in today’s digital marketing world for more reasons than one. 

Not only does branding your content help boost ongoing brand recognition, but people tend to remember branded content roughly twice as long as they do standard content.

That’s because brands have more in common with people than you might realize, including distinct personalities, voices, and values. 

So when you brand your content, you give it a unique identity that sets it apart from all the rest of the noise out there.

However, it’s not always time-effective or even desirable to produce all of your branded content yourself. 

Sponsored content is content you pay an influencer or another brand to create or distribute on your behalf.

It offers you a great way to generate more of the type of branded content that delivers results and leverage other people’s followings to expose your brand to a larger audience.

Sponsored posts are most successful when you partner with companies, influencers, and other content creators who already specialize in topics that align with your brand. 

The ideal result is material that is so in sync with your brand, it feels less like an ad and more like any other piece of helpful, entertaining content.

#12. Native Advertising

Native advertising is paid advertising that fits so seamlessly into the design of the surrounding media or website that it feels like it’s part of the experience. 

Consider the way the ads you see while scrolling through your social media feeds look just like the rest of the posts versus how an old-school banner ad on a website sticks out as something that doesn’t quite belong.

While traditional online advertising can be jarring and disruptive to a person’s user experience, native advertising blends nicely into the editorial flow of the content around it. 

It makes it easier to expose an audience to advertising without also making them feel intruded upon or otherwise interrupted.

Like other forms of paid advertising, native advertising can take many forms. One of the most popular, effective options is in-feed advertising that appears as part of the news feed flow on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 

However, native ads can also occur as content suggestions at the ends of articles and promoted listings on SERPs or in sidebars.

#13. Online PR

Also known as digital PR, online PR is a digital marketing tactic focused on distributing select content to choice media outlets. 

The idea is to boost coverage of a brand, company, product, or service and build that brand’s catalog of high-quality backlinks.

When a brand’s being talked about and linked to online, especially by trusted news sources and high-quality authorities, that’s a signal to search engines that it’s relevant and worth taking seriously. 

An excellent online PR campaign also works wonders for building brand awareness and increasing a consumer’s likelihood of buying from that brand in the future.

Online PR differs from traditional PR in several fundamental ways. Traditional PR typically leverages standard media formats like radio, television, and print to spread the word about a brand and get people talking about it. 

Since these methods tend to be less targeted than online alternatives, it can take longer to see the desired result.

Online PR tactics are more finely focused and use specially created content (like infographics, videos, articles, and interactive content) to reach specific audiences. 

The results tend to manifest more quickly, and progress is much easier to measure thanks to extra-precise metrics and user-friendly tools.

#14. Instant Messaging Marketing

Over the years, instant messaging has become so much more than just another convenient way to keep in touch with friends, family, or colleagues. 

It’s now a preferred means of communication for many people, including when communicating with businesses.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Avochato, nearly two-thirds of modern consumers — 63 percent — far prefer doing business with companies who offer text or instant messaging as a contact option. 

Not only are instant messages and text far more in step with the amount of time modern consumers spend on their phones, but they’re also more personal.

And although text and instant messaging are both good options for companies looking to stay connected to their customers, instant message marketing has some distinct advantages.

You’re far more likely to forget about a standard SMS text you receive from a brand about a sale or special deal. 

However, an instant message integrates seamlessly with the rest of a person’s social media activity, so it’s more likely to attract a response. 

Plus, instant marketing messages can transition naturally into a conversation if needed or desired, making it a terrific way to establish and maintain ongoing communication.

Digital Marketing Examples

Naturally, not all digital marketing campaigns are equal. Some merely get the job done, while others absolutely knock it out of the park. 

Here’s a look at some exceptionally terrific examples of digital marketing in action.

National Geographic

When it comes to publications, it doesn’t get much more recognizable than National Geographic. 

This brand knows its strengths and leverages avenues like social media to use them to its advantage. 

For instance, National Geographic has established quite a presence on Instagram thanks to its beautiful images and worldly take on current events.

With over 200 million followers, its account is a shining example of how to turn a free social media presence into a valuable digital marketing asset.

Dove

The Dove brand name is practically synonymous with concepts like authenticity, healthy self-esteem, and mindful natural beauty. 

These values are further supported by intelligent digital marketing decisions. 

For instance, Dove’s Reverse Selfie campaign spotlighted the impact of social media on today’s children and teens by showing the reverse of one teen girl’s selfie prep routine.

That campaign is a beautiful example of how powerful and intimate digital marketing can feel when a brand is truly in sync with its audience and gets straight to the heart of what matters to them.

Alice and Olivia

Alice and Olivia is a contemporary clothing company, so its team definitely knows its way around a modern digital marketing campaign. 

The brand also happens to operate a popular blog that brings much value to its massive audience.

In other words, Alice and Olivia is a brand to watch if you want to see a stellar example of the value of digital marketing techniques at work. 

Yes, it’s embraced paid advertising and other similar avenues, but its blog is where it really shines the brightest.

Always

Another example of a brand that’s great at creating successful individual campaigns is Always. 

Take their #LikeAGirl campaign, for example. It tapped into the power of emotional marketing by asking people what does it mean to do something “like a girl”.

The idea behind the campaign was to inspire and empower an audience, and it does that very well.

However, very little of the marketing content directly mentioned the Always brand. 

This helped place the ultimate focus where it belonged — on not only the values behind the brand but the women and girls who rely on Always as part of their everyday lives.

How B2B And B2C Companies Can Use Digital Marketing Strategies

These days, B2B and B2C marketing are somewhat similar. While traditional marketing methods were different for B2B and B2C companies, social media and the internet have bridged this gap.

Thanks to channels such as social media, companies can now advertise to both companies and customers alike with the same platform and the same strategies.

The difference between these strategies comes in how the company uses them and the type of content you should address them with.

The audience

The biggest difference between these two types of businesses is their target audience. This is the first thing you will have to consider when implementing a marketing strategy. 

Customers in B2B businesses include business owners and managers. In other words, people that know a lot about the industry that you are operating in.

Companies will have to make sure their content does not talk down to these professionals and instead talks to them.

On the other hand, B2C companies deal with customers who know a lot about the market but do not know the intricacies of the said market.

Companies will be able to market to them in an informative way, which will help them make more educated decisions.

Another big distinction between B2B and B2C customers is that one is looking for a product or service that has plenty of utility, while the other is looking for the best value.

B2C customers are often looking for products that give them the most utility for a lower price. However, B2B customers are rarely concerned with the price of a product and look more to its functionality, versatility, and utility.

Platform and tone

Another important distinction between the B2B and B2C companies is their marketing platform.

It is safe to say that social media plays a vital role in every company’s Digital Marketing strategy. The major difference between the two comes in the platform that they are using as well as the tone they choose.

B2C companies will often choose a very friendly, inviting and often very casual tone to attract their target audience.

This tone is also a reflection of the brand’s personality, which is why it is essential to every B2C business.

These companies will also use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and even Snapchat — casual and relatable social media sites — to promote their brand.

B2B companies tend to have a more serious tone and a very straightforward message. These companies use very specific social media platforms like LinkedIn and AngelList, which are all business platforms.

People who are on these sites have a business mindset, allowing you to connect with them on a more professional level.

Size of the market

The size of the market is also a major factor in both types of businesses’ Digital Marketing strategies.

B2C companies are effectively advertising to a massive market with millions of possible customers. 

On the other hand, you have B2B businesses that are always catering to a very specific niche of owners and managers.

Relationship with customers

B2B and B2C companies are also very different in the relationship that they form with their target audience through their marketing.

In other words, these two different types of businesses have very different business objectives.

B2C companies are more concerned with creating brand loyalty and increasing revenue.

B2B companies have a much more specific criterion that takes higher priority over increasing revenue.

Although that is not to imply that increasing revenue is not one of their priorities, they are more focused on creating long-lasting relationships with their customers.

How to Measure Digital Marketing Success

Measuring the success of your digital marketing efforts is crucial to refining your strategy and achieving optimal results. While it can be challenging to predict what will work, tracking, analyzing, and evaluating your campaigns are essential steps. 

To effectively measure your digital marketing success, it is vital to establish clear and attainable goals and identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will guide your evaluation. 

Here are some important KPIs to consider:

Site Traffic

Monitoring overall site traffic provides a broad overview of your digital marketing performance. It allows you to assess fluctuations, identify patterns, and measure the impact of specific campaigns or marketing initiatives on overall website visits.

SERP Rankings

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings indicate how well your website ranks for targeted keywords in search engine results. Monitoring your rankings helps evaluate the effectiveness of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and allows for adjustments to enhance visibility and organic traffic.

Unique Visitors

Tracking the number of unique visitors to your website provides insights into the reach and visibility of your digital marketing efforts. It indicates the effectiveness of your campaigns in attracting new visitors and expanding your audience.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate may indicate issues with website design, content relevance, or user experience, requiring optimization to enhance engagement and encourage further exploration.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rates measure the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or completing a form. Monitoring conversion rates helps gauge the effectiveness of your marketing funnel and the ability to turn visitors into customers or leads.

Inbound Links

The number and quality of inbound links to your website play a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO) and online visibility. Tracking inbound links helps assess the success of your content marketing efforts, as well as the credibility and authority your website holds in the digital landscape.

Remember that the selection of KPIs should align with your specific goals and objectives. 

Regularly reviewing and analyzing these metrics will provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy, enabling you to make data-driven decisions and optimize your campaigns for better results.

Popular Digital Marketing Tools

Digital marketing tools can help you save time and money. They can also increase the efficacy of your campaign.

There are tons of digital marketing tools to choose from. Even so, some are better than others. Here are some excellent options that stand out from the crowd.

Content Cloud

Content Cloud is a platform offering several digital tools and services. It’s run by Rock Content, a successful marketing agency with over ten years of experience.

Content Cloud includes WriterAccess, which connects you with vetted freelance content writers, editors, and designers who can create any type of content. Stage, another tool on the platform, publishes your content and boosts its visibility.

Ion is a tool for creating engaging, interactive content without coding. Studio makes it easy for team members to collaborate on digital marketing projects.

You can use any of these tools separately. However, using the complete package provides you with everything you need to create a winning digital marketing campaign.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the world’s best-known email marketing platforms. It’s used by millions of businesses and offers great tools to help you segment your audience. It sends automated emails at pre-selected times or based on consumer actions.

Even so, MailChimp isn’t only for building a winning email marketing campaign. It can help you build an appealing, efficient, optimized website. You can use it to create personalized pop-up messages for people who come to your website.

MailChimp also has a campaign management platform to help you manage your digital marketing campaign. It’s a handy tool for analyzing ad performance on various platforms. It can also monitor ad engagement, user actions, and sales.

Creatopy

Users remember visual content better than only text. Adding color, graphics, and animations to your digital marketing arsenal can improve your ROI.

Creatopy has everything you need to create engaging, appealing ads. You can use it to design social media ads, video ads, display ads, and more.

The site has a vast range of templates to suit the needs of any industry. It also offers plenty of stock images and audio files to pick from. Other tools include a video editor, PSD editor, image resizer, feed ad builder, and ad serving.

Botsify

AI tools can improve a user’s experience on your site. They can also help you get to know site visitors and identify the ones most likely to become customers.

Botsify offers chatbots that can converse with customers 24/7. These bots can help people find products and answer questions. They can even remind customers about special deals and abandoned shopping carts.

Botsify is also ideal for generating qualified leads. It can help you see what people need to complete a purchase. You can then target your advertising to meet the need and make the sale.

What’s more, Botsify doesn’t create one-size-fits-all chatbots. It allows for custom creation. You can personalize your chatbots and AI tools to suit your exact business requirements and consumer needs.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers a gold mine of information for any data-driven digital ad campaign. What’s more, it’s 100% free.

Do you want to know what days and times most people visit your site? Would you like to see which geographic locations your site visitors come from? Google Analytics answers these questions and more.

Analytics can show you exactly how users interact with your site. You’ll see what they look at, which links they click, and what they buy. It can show your top-selling products and conversion rate for advertisements.

Google Analytics also shows information to help you improve your web design. This includes your bounce rate and load speed for your site. Additionally, it shows which devices people use to access your site.

What Does a Digital Marketer Do

Even though Digital Marketing might seem easy in theory, it is quite complicated and requires a lot of knowledge as well as experience.

If you feel like having to learn the ins and outs of digital marketing is too much for you, then hiring a digital marketer might be just what you need.

A digital marketer — or a Digital Marketing Manager — is responsible for crafting a marketing strategy, as well as implementing and managing it.

These marketers have plenty of experience in their respective fields and can bring in an impressive amount of leads or customers to your business.

They use training and experience to find the most suitable marketing channels to promote your brand and products.

To put it simply, a digital marketer is responsible for the success of your Digital Marketing campaign.

They will accomplish the goals of the campaign while keeping in mind budgetary restrictions and other important aspects of the business.

They will also use their knowledge and experience to decide the best strategy to adopt for promoting a specific brand or product.

Although a marketing manager can be quite a lifesaver in certain situations, not every marketing manager may know what they are doing.

So if you are looking to outsource your Digital Marketing, here are a few tips on what to look for in a proper marketing manager.

What to look for in a good Digital Marketing manager

Digital Marketing can be quite challenging, especially when you are new to the whole affair.

You can learn a lot about Digital Marketing through online resources, courses, and training, but nothing quite matches the experience and knowledge that a dedicated professional has.

Professional marketing managers see that your strategy is successful throughout, with minimal expense.

However, you cannot just choose someone that claims to be an expert in Digital Marketing, which is why you should know exactly what to look for in a good digital marketer.

Here are traits that make for a great digital marketer:

Can use analytics and data effectively

One of the core characteristics of a good digital marketer is that they can use various quantitative data to their advantage.

Since the internet is completely based on numbers and algorithms, a good digital marketer will track the results of their strategy.

This means that they can actively track the success of their marketing strategy and make changes accordingly.

In other words, it is by keeping track of the performance of the strategy that digital marketers will gather data to their advantage, allowing them to make well-informed decisions.

Are true leaders

Digital marketers are much more than managers of your Digital Marketing campaign; they are proper leaders in their own right.

Since they will be leading an entire marketing team, they must have proper leadership skills as well as qualifications to lead your team.

Most importantly, they should be able to communicate their ideas very clearly with the rest of the team.

They should be understanding and sympathetic towards problems that their team members may be facing and should help them in overcoming such issues.

Finally, by setting up tangible goals and making sensible and fair decisions, they should be able to easily promote your brand most effectively.

Digital Marketing Services

The most common digital marketing services include SEO, social media ad management, content marketing services, and email marketing services. Other popular services are web development, link building, and conversion optimization.

You’ll likely need most or even all of these digital marketing services to grow your business. SEO helps you earn (or retain) a high rank for relevant search engine queries. Content creation boosts your SEO and conversion rate.

Social media ads and email marketing help you reach your audience with custom content. This increases your conversion rate. It also builds brand loyalty that keeps people coming back to your business.

However, you don’t have to focus on all digital marketing services simultaneously. For example, if you recently started a new blog, you’ll likely want to focus on content creation and marketing. This helps you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

On the other hand, web development may be in order if your site’s bounce rate is too high. Alternatively, you may need social media ad management if you’re promoting a new product or service.

Companies specializing in digital marketing services can help you identify what you need. They can also do the hard work of creating and managing your digital marketing campaigns.

Outsourcing your marketing team

If your digital marketing isn’t getting the necessary results, bringing in the experts might be a good idea. At the same time, even effective campaigns benefit from outside help. 

Outsourcing your marketing gives you the time you need to focus on other essential aspects of running a business.

Does accessing multiple services on a single platform sound like a good idea? Would you like to work with a firm with a very successful track record? If so, Content Cloud may be just the tool you’re looking for.

Content Cloud is powerful, affordable, and easy to use. Its features and services are designed to meet the needs of any business in any industry. Talk to one of our experts today to discover how Content Cloud can help your business reach its full potential.

[BONUS] The Basics of Digital Marketing For Beginners — A Summary of The Main Points

Are you just starting and want to learn the basics of digital marketing for beginners? This step-by-step guide gives you the practical knowledge you need to start today.

Digital marketing can seem overwhelming, especially with numerous self-proclaimed “experts” out there. However, this guide will help you understand the fundamentals and set you on the path to success, whether your business is online or local.

What Are The Basics In Digital Marketing?

You don’t need to know how to code a website or optimize Google display ads right away. Here are some essential strategies to get you started:

• Creating a Website: Your digital storefront.
• Building an Email Marketing List: Connect with potential customers.
• Optimizing Content for Search Engines: Increase your visibility.
• Launching Display Ads: Use platforms like Google or Bing.
• Engaging on Social Media: Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
• Using Location-Based Targeting: Attract local customers.

These basics will build a solid foundation for your future digital marketing efforts.

Is Digital Marketing Easy?

Digital marketing can be both simple and complex. At its core, it’s about connecting people with brands meaningfully. Creating a website and adding compelling content might sound easy, but it requires continuous effort and expertise to optimize and maintain these elements for the best results.

What Are The Key Types of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is multifaceted, encompassing various strategies. Here’s a comprehensive list of the main types:

1. Content Marketing: Creating valuable, relevant content to attract and engage your target audience. This includes blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more.
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Enhancing your website’s visibility on search engines through on-site, off-site, and technical optimization techniques.
3. SMM (Social Media Marketing): Using social media platforms to promote content and engage with audiences through both organic and paid strategies.
4. SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Increasing visibility on search engines through paid advertisements and optimization techniques. This includes both SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads.
5. Paid Advertising: Using various forms of online advertising like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other social media ads to drive traffic and conversions.
6. Email Marketing: Using email campaigns to communicate with prospects and customers, offering personalized content and promotions to drive engagement and sales.
7. Affiliate Marketing: Partnering with businesses or individuals to promote products and earn commissions on sales generated through their referrals.
8. Influencer Marketing: Leveraging influencers’ reach and credibility to promote products or services to their followers.
9. Mobile Marketing: Reaching audiences on their mobile devices through SMS, app-based advertising, and mobile-optimized websites.
10. Video Marketing: Using video content to engage audiences on platforms like YouTube, social media, and websites.

Understanding the 5 Ps of Digital Marketing

The 5 Ps of Digital Marketing adapt and expand on the traditional marketing Ps to address the unique characteristics and opportunities presented by digital platforms:

1. Product: In digital marketing, product considerations still involve the core offerings but also extend to digital products, software, apps, and online services. It includes user experience (UX) design, features, updates, and customer support through digital channels.
2. Price: Digital marketing pricing strategies often include digital pricing models such as subscriptions, freemium models, pay-per-click (PPC), cost-per-action (CPA), and cost-per-impression (CPI). It also involves dynamic pricing and digital marketing tools for price optimization.
3. Place: The concept of place in digital marketing focuses on digital distribution channels, such as websites, e-commerce platforms, mobile apps, and digital marketplaces. It includes considerations for online visibility, search engine optimization (SEO), and digital storefront optimization.
4. Promotion: Digital promotion includes all forms of online communication and engagement with potential and existing customers. This encompasses digital advertising (PPC, display ads), content marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, and search engine marketing (SEM).
5. People: In digital marketing, the people P refers to both the customers (target audience) and the digital marketing professionals who manage and optimize digital marketing campaigns. It emphasizes customer segmentation, personalization, customer journey analysis, and data-driven decision-making.

Digital Marketing versus Traditional Marketing

While both aim to reach audiences, digital marketing offers broader reach and interaction through various channels like social media, blogs, and email, whereas traditional marketing relies on physical media like newspapers and TV.

Tips for Beginners

1. Understand Brand Awareness: Recognize the importance of brand awareness and how to build it.
2. Learn SEO Basics: Start with simple SEO techniques like keyword research and link-building.
3. Discover Your Brand’s Online Potential: Explore online opportunities for webinars, courses, and more.
4. Know Your Customers: Conduct market research to understand your audience.
5. Build a Social Media Presence: Engage with your audience on social media platforms.

Digital Marketing Courses for Beginners

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, consider taking online courses to boost your skills:

• Google’s Fundamentals of Digital Marketing: Offers 26 modules and over 40 hours of learning.
• LinkedIn’s Digital Marketing Foundation Course: Covers everything from SEO to future digital marketing trends.
• HubSpot’s Digital Marketing Certificate: Provides comprehensive training from a top digital marketing brand.

What Is Digital Marketing FAQ

Here are some of the main questions on digital marketing asked online.

What is digital marketing in simple words?

Digital marketing refers to promoting and selling products or services using online platforms and digital technologies. It encompasses various tactics such as social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to reach and engage with potential customers.

What does a digital marketer do?

A digital marketer develops and implements strategies to promote a brand, product, or service online. Their tasks may include creating content for social media, managing email campaigns, optimizing websites for search engines, running online ads, analyzing data to measure campaign success, and engaging with the target audience through various digital channels.

What is an example of digital marketing?

One example of digital marketing is a company using Facebook ads to target specific demographics based on interests and behaviors, aiming to increase website traffic and sales conversions. Another example is a business optimizing its website content with relevant keywords to rank higher in Google search results (SEO).

Is digital marketing easy for beginners?

Digital marketing can be learned by beginners, but it requires understanding digital tools, platforms, and strategies. The field is dynamic and requires continuous learning to stay updated with industry trends and best practices.

Can I start digital marketing with no experience?

Yes, you can start learning digital marketing with no prior experience. Many resources such as online courses, tutorials, and certifications are available to help beginners grasp the fundamentals. Practical experience gained through personal projects or internships can also be valuable.

Can you start digital marketing with no money?

Yes, you can start digital marketing with minimal investment. Many digital marketing tactics like social media marketing and content creation can be started with little to no cost. However, for more advanced strategies like paid advertising, a budget may be necessary to see significant results.

Do digital marketers get paid well?

Digital marketers can earn competitive salaries based on their skills, experience, and the industry they work in. Entry-level positions may have varying salaries, but as digital marketers gain expertise and demonstrate results, they can command higher pay. Additionally, freelance digital marketers often have flexibility in setting their rates based on their skills and client demand.

Wrap Up

Now that you fully understand why digital marketing is important and how to create winning strategies that will help you meet your goals, it’s time to assemble the resources you’ll use to get where you need to be.

Great content that stands out, speaks to the values of your target audience, and is perfectly optimized to appeal to search engines is crucial. And you’ll need plenty of it to make the impact you want to.

Take a big step in the right direction when you assemble a team of expert copywriters and content writers to help you. Sign up for a free WriterAccess two-week trial today, and meet your future dream team!

The post What Is Digital Marketing: The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Rock Content.

If you, like me, have been doing SEO for more than 10 years, you probably have some memories of the “good ole days.” These were the days during which we could outsmart Google in order to rank first.

Google was less sophisticated back then. 

Just like the Joker and Batman, we played the seemingly never-ending cat-and-mouse game of looking for creative ways to “hack the system” or bend Google’s rules in our favor. 

The result was that we could obtain good rankings, but in reality, the end-user (the actual human who was searching for the content we wanted to rank) was just an afterthought. 

Even I’m guilty of that.

In 2012, before forming Rock Content, my blog had over 1.3 million sessions. I was publishing over 1,000 articles per month. 

The quality of these articles was questionable. I had multiple variations of a single How To Fry An Egg tutorial; all of them were stuffed with more than 500 words. I’m not proud of that. 

Things are very different now.

Let’s look at what has changed since that era.

Google’s Not-So-Secret Hidden Agenda: What It’s Been Telling Us All Along

For decades, SEO practices were heavily influenced by a strong focus on outsmarting bots, pulling out tricks, and creating complex formulas for success. Before 2011, that was all possible because Google was not “very smart”. 

Over time, Google proved us wrong. Google had, in fact, become very smart, and every time it updated its algorithms, there was a not-so-subtle message between the lines:   

“Ignore me. Focus on human connection.”

Take a moment to step out of the granular details. Look at the full picture of the most prolific updates to this search engine’s core. Let’s decode what it was actually telling us.

• 2011: Google told us to prioritize rich, valuable content with the launch of Panda.
• 2012: Google told us to stop keyword stuffing and halt artificial backlink strategies with the launch of Penguin.
• 2013: Google told us to consider the user’s search intent with the launch of Hummingbird.
• 2014: Google told us to think about people on the local level with the launch of Pigeon.
• 2015: Google told us to go where the users are and make sites mobile-friendly with the launch of Mobile.
• 2015: Google told us to understand our users better and make relevant content with the launch of RankBrain.
• 2017: Google told us to stop covering up customer-centric content with intrusive interstitials.
• 2018: Google told us to consider users’ real needs and questions with the launch of BERT.

For more than a decade, we’ve honed in on the small details of tricking the algorithm, but over time, we should have been learning the actual way to be good SEO professionals: 

Ignore Google. Satisfy Users.

Looking back, it’s neither a secret nor a surprise that Google has been planning this from the beginning. 

The search engine has been increasing in human awareness, morphing to become more user-focused and human-centric. It must adapt to survive, otherwise, the search results won’t be valuable anymore.

Google is forcing all of us to move away from the technical details of algorithm updates and focus on the detailed needs of real people. 

Ignore Google. Satisfy Users.

How Do We Ignore Google And Satisfy Users?

The minds behind Google forced marketers and SEO professionals to change their mindsets and strategies. It became essential to start thinking more as content experts who were capable of building better information for the end-user. 

Now, we need to actually become authorities in marketing spaces instead of just thinking like hackers.

The Authority Example

Canceled Practice: Using Hidden Tags To Increase An Authority Number And Other Outdated Practices

Remember the era when we had the “rel author tag”? We would simply insert the tag and be done. 

That tag was meant to connect an author to published works on other sites. It helped Google understand the author as an entity and show their faces on the SERP (I miss that).

However, a visitor couldn’t see the tag; its only purpose was to be read by machines, not humans. No authority value was added for the end-user.

That seems like a strange technique to use now, in 2022, doesn’t it? Isn’t Google smart enough to understand who’s the author of an article?  

The answer is yes, Google is now it is smart enough.

2022 Best Practice: Using E-A-T To Show Actual Authority

Let’s compare that canceled “rel author tag” practice to one of today’s most important acronyms in the SEO world: E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). 

Google has been giving a lot more attention to E-A-T in its algorithm since 2018. However, contrary to older tactics like “rel author”, there is not a specific tag, technical adjustment, or even specific information on how you can increase E-A-T. 

You can’t implement E-A-T by just adding some code. 

You should, among other things, identify authors on the page, and link to their published content in a way that helps the reader. Google will figure out the rest.

How To E-A-T

E-A-T essentially determines a website’s value by the quality of content and how reliable the page and author of its content are. 

Choosing to follow the current best practices of E-A-T could mean the difference between the best or worst SERP positions. 

This is especially important on Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) sites that refer to content from financial, government, legal, shopping, health, safety, and other websites with topics that could have a negative impact on the quality of life. 

The only thing Google asks us to do is create good content and make sure that our online presence shows that we are experts on a specific subject.

Google doesn’t provide a specific checklist of things to do, but some current best practices are:

• Provide a complete and accurate profile of the author with links to social profiles.
• Understand user intent to create relevant content.
• Earn backlinks and media mentions.
• Correctly implement HTTPS.
• Have easily-accessible, relevant information, such as an address, a privacy policy page, and a terms & conditions page.

These current best practices not only help inform E-A-T but also have a visible impact on the audience’s perception of your content and brand. 

Old-style hacking techniques that only please only Google are no longer relevant.

The User Experience Shift

As it continues to think about the human experience, Google has begun to expect good websites to be fast and properly rendered on both desktop and mobile. 

Just like with E-A-T, there is no hacker’s checklist. We must shift our mindset to think like our human visitors. 

Luckily, Google does provide some insight to help you understand what to work on.

User Experience Upgrade: How Do I Make Sure I Have A Fast Website?

Right now, user experience is primarily measured by the Core Web Vitals, which can be found under User Experience in Google Search Console.

Here, you can see your site performance, based on how Google perceives it through the human lens. This can serve as a guidepost for what to fix.

At this time, it doesn’t matter how you fix these issues, as long as you have high scores in the “Good” category.

User Experience Upgrade: To AMP Or Not To AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are an easy way to optimize your mobile site experience. Enabling AMP on your website can serve as a quick fix to give Google the perception of a fast, properly-rendered website.

Implementing AMP is a matter of choice, even though a few years ago it felt almost mandatory. AMP never was, and still is not, required.

At Rock Content, for example, we’ve decided to stop using AMP and invest in optimizing our website globally. 

We’ve had zero negative impact on our traffic, nothing changed for our visitors, and our website became much easier to manage without the duplicated pages.

Just like with E-A-T, Google has asked us to change our mindset. The focus is on the final user experience instead of the technology we are using to achieve the best results. 

As long as you are getting good scores in your Core Web Vitals, you are fine.

2022 & Beyond

All the changes that we observed over the last two years brought us really close to where we are now – Ignore Google. Satisfy Users. 

We saw, first hand, that when you think of the user first, Google will find your value – regardless of the implementation method used. 

With extremely advanced AI already being used by Google (oh, hey MUM!), trying to “trick” Google is useless.

The quality of your content’s answers to user intention, plus a great user experience, is what matters.

A Case Study

The proof of this shift in mindset is in the pudding.

Canceled Practice: Content Created Around High-Ranking Keywords Only

We are no longer creating hundreds of the same posts about [frying eggs], each with a different color egg, in an attempt to trick “old Google.”

The “old Google” is gone. 

Google now knows that [brown eggs] and [white eggs] are both [eggs]; it will easily mark those pieces of egg content as spam. Keyword density is no longer the primary way to rank.

2022 Best Practice: Using E-A-T And Human-Centric User Experience To Create Meaningful Content

Rock Content set out to rank for a very specific core term when we created our Business Data post. That single term was [business data].

However, instead of ranking just for our core term, we ended up ranking for intent terms and phrases that were completely different from our original plan.

This post ended up being one of the top three results for keyword phrases that we weren’t expecting to rank for, such as [data for business] and [the value of data for companies].

What happened?

Our team had created a strong article that fulfilled a series of interconnected queries around a topic. The content helps answer in-depth questions that readers truly have.

Google, who now understands user intent, user experience, and topic queries, saw multiple markers of high quality on our site. It also recognized answers to a multitude of human-centric topic queries. 

Google isn’t the only thing that has changed; we’ve changed our definition of quality content, too. 

The Key Takeaway

If you have to choose between all the green lights from your Yoast plugin inside WordPress or more clear and organized information for the user, don’t think twice: choose the user. 

As marketers, we know much more about our prospects than a plugin with non-humanistic rules.

Google is thinking like a human, and we need to do the same.

I don’t mean to imply that we can completely ignore Google to do great SEO. Technical optimizations are key. Yes, we should still utilize these. 

However, they are not the primary driving force. We see the technical improvements as a way to deliver what matters the most – the actual content – in the best possible way.

My Prediction

2022 will be the first year in which it will be truly possible to do good SEO by just thinking about the end-user and leaving Google to be an afterthought.

And that, my friend, is what good marketing is all about.

This article was originally published in the Search Engine Journal ebook “SEO Trends 2022, According to 44 Experts“. It’s an awesome read, download it right now!

The post Ignore Google, Satisfy Users: The Major Shift In The SEO World Is Finally Here appeared first on Rock Content.

Today, over 2 thousand of you use our tools and many of you have upgraded to our new product offerings giving us a very low customer churn rate. Thank you!

As we’ve grown, our CEO, Diego Gomez, has spent time sharing our growth story with podcast host Nathan Latka.

The show has passed 13 million downloads and our profile has been viewed over 30,000 times. You can listen to the last podcast here.

In addition to the podcast, each year Latka publishes the Latka 250 — a list of the fastest growing SaaS companies. This year, 5,091 companies applied and just 5% made the list.

We’re thrilled to share that we grew 84.6% between December 2019 and December 2020, and we look forward to growing another 100%+ this year with new product offerings!

How The Rankings Work

Nathan Latka sold his SaaS company in 2015 before launching his SaaS CEO Podcast and database at GetLatka.com.

Each year, he gets revenue growth figures from SaaS CEO’s and confirms the revenue via email with the CEO. The rankings take December 2019 monthly recurring revenue annualized (multiply by 12) and compare to revenue 1 month ago (December 2020). 

The companies are then split into three buckets since it’s easier to grow a $1m company 300% compared to a $10m company. The three categories are

• $1m-$10m
• $10m-$20m
• $20m-100m

In total, the top 250 companies do $8.5 billion in revenue, service 2.2 million customers, and have raised a total of $12 billion dollars. 

You can see a digital version of the top 250 SaaS companies here and find the deeper story on our growth in the March issue of Latka Magazine. 

Thanks to all of you for helping us land a spot in the Latka 250 for 2020. We look forward to another 8 years of helping you build your businesses!

Want to find out more?

• Rankings
• Visit us

The post Rock Content Makes Latka 250 Fastest Growing SaaS Company List appeared first on Rock Content.

In this battlefield, we have companies like Apple, Firefox, and Google, which are creating limitations in the way we are tracked online, fighting against large players in the market, such as Facebook, who need this data to serve more targeted ads.

We do not know the future of this dispute, but probably there will be more control by the user over their data, and many current models will no longer work. Third-party cookies, so used for targeting, are at risk. And with them, a good deal of ad efficiency.

Paid media will have to reinvent themselves again. At the same time, the less relevant the advertisements, the more essential investment in content becomes. But we are at the end of 2020, and like paid media, Content Marketing is going through a reinvention phase.

The algorithms of social networks are less and less favorable to organic reach of brands, and even Google is no longer the great friend of marketers, with about 50% of searches not generating any visits to our sites.

We can no longer rely on traditional vehicles in the same way, so it’s time to create your own places, such as podcasts, blogs, and newsletters. These are distribution channels where there is no intermediary for your content to reach the audience who explicitly asked to receive it.

But far beyond channels and formats, nothing is more important than focusing on a widely recognized and desired brand. No algorithm will prevent someone from simply visiting your blog directly, or that someone looking specifically for your brand will go to the website of another company.

Incredibly, we’re giving importance to branding again, but in a scenario where the best way to create a positive brand perception is to develop high quality content for the entire buying journey with a consistent message and, above all, creative. That means we’re creating a content experience.

In this edition of Rock Content Magazine, we’ll address this topic to help you, reader, create Marketing that goes beyond.

Good reading!

The post Building content experiences — Letter to the reader of Rock Content Magazine #5 appeared first on Rock Content.

Creative professionals, who once dominated the field, now work side by side with engineers and data scientists. Excel is more widely used than Photoshop, and acronyms such as CTR and ROI dominate the conversation.

The use of data is one of the pillars of Digital Marketing, and, little by little, it has become the most important piece of good planning. The pressure for CMOs to deliver measurable and increasingly efficient results gave us no other option.

Increasingly advanced and valuable tools and techniques were developed.

Today, I can track the exact return of a simple blog post or ad on Google Ads, figuring out the revenue generated. This type of information avoids misplaced investment and increases the efficiency of marketing actions.

Data-oriented marketing is no longer optional or secondary, it is the rule and must be performed well. But, like almost everything in business, it has also become a problem.

When they see a new toy, marketing professionals tend to exploit it until it breaks. And in the case of data, this is represented by two important phenomena.

The first is an obsession with tools and models, which has caused a devaluation of creativity and a detachment from the end-user in marketing. Data are super valuable and essential, but they are only the means to the end: to positively impact the public.

And the only way this can happen is by combining data with creativity. No wonder that one of the most valuable professions on the market is that of a Copywriter, the persuasive writing professional.

The second phenomenon is the indiscriminate collection, use, and sharing of data, without worrying about users’ privacy. Scandals and data leaks have caused laws such as GDPR to be implemented in several countries around the world. The public and the media are already demanding changes, and this will require marketers to adapt when it comes to data use.

Being able to interpret data is no longer enough. It is necessary to be able to transform data into information that serves as a foundation for creating valuable experiences for your audience, always respecting the law, being ethical, and remaining transparent.

To help you with this new world of data marketing, we chose this subject to be the central theme of Rock Content Magazine, the fourth issue.

Enjoy your reading!

The post Letter to the reader: the launch of Rock Content Magazine appeared first on Rock Content.