Written by Tim Ferguson, Editor of Marketing Digest
Brand awareness is, in many ways, the backbone of your marketing endeavors. If your customers are not aware of what makes your brand special, they have no reason to engage with you, least of all, buy from you.
Therefore, in order for people to know about your brand, you need to show up where those people are most active, and that is where content marketing enters the picture.
There is a reason they say ‘content is king’ – the kind of content you put out determines how your other strategies will pan out. Here are six ways in which effective content marketing can improve your brand visibility:
Pretty much every brand out there has its own blog where it shares insights and builds an audience of interested readers. However, there is only so much mileage that the brand can generate from its own posts, and that is where guest blogging comes in.
When you write and publish a guest post on another site or for another brand, you get visibility from all the people who follow that site or brand and your own following.
Therefore, do a quick Google search for blogs in your space using keywords relevant to your industry space or searching for ‘guest post guidelines.’ Consider starting writing for blogging platforms such as MyBlogGuest or Business2Community.
As we mentioned above, pretty much every brand out there has its blog – including your competitors. So what can you do to make the most of your blog? Share fresh content that the competition does not have.
Anyone can put together a list of industry trends, but not everyone can share intelligent new perspectives on those trends – something to consider for your blog. The next step is to share quality content more than once a week.
Consider using tools such as BuzzSumo or Ahrefs to understand the topics that are most popular in your niche. Alternatively, a reputed SEO company can help you to come up with appropriate topics and relevant keywords for optimization purposes.
The more often you post, the better chance you have of engaging with audience members interested in what you are writing about. Ensure that your posts contain concrete takeaways for the reader, and always choose specificity over spreading yourself too thin.
Creating high-quality content with original insights takes time and effort. Once you have created that content, please make the most of it by splitting it into multiple pieces of content that you can bundle.
For instance, if you have written a detailed whitepaper, you can divide the contents of it into multiple blog posts, an email series, social media snippets, and a PPT.
This not only increases your chances of reaching more people (as different customers may be searching for different types of content) but also helps you retain your readers, as not everyone may wish to read through a lengthy whitepaper.
You can also use those shorter pieces of content as teasers to drive traffic towards the whitepaper – for instance, by putting a CTA at the bottom of a blog post.
There is an ongoing debate about whether or not paid media is essential. Still, the fact remains that investing in PPC content and branded keywords allow your content to rank at the top of search listings for people who are already interested in those keywords – and thus, in the topics you are writing about.
Therefore, you can include your brand name in the PPC ads and in your meta title-tags to boost visibility. This way, it drives home the fact that the content originated with your brand.
When planned and executed well, referral programs can be one of the best ways to spread the word about your brand. The beauty of a referral program is that it is the actual customer – rather than a celebrity or an influencer – who is recommending your brand to friends and family, which makes it more authentic and increases conversion chances.
Plus, when the referred customer successfully signs up or makes a purchase, both the referred customer and the original customer get a discount or freebie. Therefore, invest in a strong referral strategy that allows you to reach as many new customers as possible.
Be sure to offer compelling rewards so that your existing customers have an excellent reason to participate. If you can, provide tiered rewards so that customers who bring in more referrals can enjoy more benefits.
When your customers share content you have created, you get visibility from their followers without extra work yourself. Leverage this by creating content that is worth sharing, such as an infographic.
Be sure to design one that is visually appealing and shares information through intriguing illustrations and charts that people will want to click on. These make great posts for social media and can also be offered as a downloadable resource on your site.
Getting noticed amidst all the competition out there might seem daunting, but have a solid content strategy in place, and you are golden. As long as you are focused on creating value for the customer, you will earn visibility and positive sentiment for your brand over time. Therefore, be consistent and keep experimenting with different tactics to succeed.
About Tim
Tim Ferguson is a writer and editor of Marketing Digest. He helps marketing agencies with SEO, link building, content marketing, online reputation management, and blogger outreach. When he is not writing and editing for Marketing Digest, he spends time on learning more about content marketing and getting better at it.
