The digital marketing world is constantly crossing newer milestones with each passing day. It is changing and growing continuously. In order to keep up the pace with the technological advancement of the latest age and enhance your business growth, you must integrate your marketing endeavours with the growing digital marketing trends in 2020.

Make your brand marketing more impactful and relevant by following these successful digital marketing trends to push newer boundaries in 2020

Digital Marketing Trends

1. Augmented Reality

The technology related to Augmented Reality (AR) is still untapped in more than one way and still in its infant stage. It offers great scope to your brand to get greater ROI with your digital marketing endeavours.

It is well-known that games like Pokémon Go that were AR-based became a major hit among the people in mid-2016. A large segment of manufacturers and developers are working to create wearable gears based on AR technology to enhance the user experience and creating value for their brand.

In the upcoming scenario, traditional advertisements will give way to AR-based 3D advertisements, allowing the users to stream 3D content directly to get an advanced experience. It enables the users to connect with your brand offering on a much deeper level emotionally.

It also enables your marketers to augment your brand awareness, leading the customers to test your products well before they move towards placing the orders.

2. Marketing Automation

The various mechanisms related to marketing are getting accelerated by data-driven technologies. Marketing automation enables marketers to establish better relationships with their customers by automating some of the repetitive tasks such as e-mail reminders, social media postings and leads generation.

It is especially beneficial for the new market entrants and small companies that are competing with the top-notch companies by saving their effort and time. Customers are attracted to the brand in a better way when they receive e-mails that cater to their particular requirements.

The process of marketing automation requires the use of software that is needed to be uploaded with the necessary data related to the user’s personalized data. It is a complex technology that can be better managed by partnering with a professional and experienced digital marketing company.

3. Artificial Intelligence

AI has been continuously making dramatic shifts in the digital marketing world for the developments of any brand. It is running parallel to any other marketing tactics and promises to offer you better marketing opportunities in the future.

It analyses the behaviour of your users by reading their search patterns on various social media platforms to enable the brands to understand the demands of their users better and offer them the services accordingly.

AI can solve the problems much more effectively than any human mind, and provides you a defined output without any definite possibility of errors.

Repetitive tasks can be better handled by AI bots that reduces the load of the employees, further enabling them to perform better. It allows your marketing team to develop a highly curated content that will be highly significant for the recipients.

4. Impactful Stories on Social Media

Social media platforms are ever-evolving and presenting the brands with unlimited opportunities to grow their business with digital marketing efforts. It enhances customer engagement in a big way.

Also, it enables marketers to keep the online audience updated with all the current developments taking place in your industry domain. It gives way to daily promotions of your brand by posting marketing content on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

5. Visual Search

Brand optimization with visual search is a great way to offer focused and defined results for your users. It allows the users to click a picture or upload a picture related to the product they are looking to find online.

It directs them to the items without any hassle. Even though it is in its nascent stage, it holds great potential to become a leading digital marketing technology to deliver perfect results.

6. Influencer Marketing

Under this marketing trend, brands use key figures to promote their brand offering among the online audience. Instagram is rapidly growing up the ladder to become a major source of becoming a platform used for influencer marketing.

As the network of social media is scaling up with every single day, there is a rapid increase in the number of influencers as well. Users tend to listen to these well-known celebrities and popular figures ardently.

With the increased use of hashtags and promotional content directed by the influencers on their social media handles, smart brands are taking the content reference from these mentioned posts, and locating the precise on-brand engagements, thereby enhancing their performance of better user engagements. It also plays as a great medium to enhance human-to-human connections and showcase your brand creativity.

7. Programmatic Advertising

An extension of AI to improve the efficiency of your marketing endeavors. Previously, ad industry was managed manually by publishers that controlled and ran the ad industry on the basis of hectic meetings with middlemen and unending negotiations.

With the multiplication of online publishers on a daily basis, it has turned out to be a challenge for the advertisers to keep up the pace with it. The solution is bringing in automation in the advertising industry to take better control over things.

It allows your brand to cut out the middleman and make the advertising procedure simply. Marketers are developing target-oriented ads that are produced by using and analyzing the personalized data of online visitors.

It has enabled the brands to promote transparency in their advertisement campaigns and curtail the instances of fraud, created by the middlemen. It also makes the process of advertising quicker that leads to increased conversions, better ROI and a decrease in the cost of spending. This digital marketing trend is definitely here to stay.

8. Video Marketing

It is one of the ever-growing trends in the digital marketing world. Over the years, visible growth has been seen in user engagements led by pre-made video posts and live videos.

It channelizes the information of a particular product or service to the audience in a much clearer manner, making a direct connection between the audience and your brand.

Directly dealing with the audience via Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels with the help of personalized messages and video content enables you to improve the consistency of lead conversions, thereby leading to better opportunities of your business development.

9. Use of Chatbots

It is a mode where you engage with your customers on a real-time basis via an instant messenger and provides solutions to all their queries related to your brand offerings. Over the years, many companies have agreed to the viability of integrating chatbots in their digital marketing strategy to add value to their business.

It also allows your brand to offer high-quality services to your customers at any hour of the day, and meet the expectations of your customers at every single time. It has been observed after research that almost 80% of the businesses are planning to incorporate the technology of chatbots in their marketing planning by 2020.

10. Voice Search

Technologies of Google Voice and Apple’s Siri have already made a big name for themselves in the digital world. Voice search provides precise answers to the customers without confusion, leading to the desired outcome for them.

Most of the successful marketers create a detailed voice script matching the customers’ requirements and offering creative solutions to their concerns. In the digital marketing world, people are looking forward to creating better voice scenarios based on surveys, internal data, and communications with real customers.

Not just the target audience, it is also hitting successfully with the new and emerging digital audience as well, especially in the small cities and towns.

To emerge as a successful marketer, you can very well explore the great potential of voice search for your marketing efforts related to brand promotions.

11. User-Generated Social Media Content

It has been on the trajectory of growth in recent years in the digital marketing world. User-generated content is any type of brand-related content that is shared by the brand audience on their social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Attention is better directed towards producing and promoting more and more user-generated content, as the targeted audience looks forward to getting validations from social and digital marketing platforms.

It also enhances customer engagements with your brand. It creates a chain of customers that bring closer the potential leads with the existing customers smoothly. It is a growing trend among the millennial generation and needs to be used to its full potential to get better access to lead conversions and brand promotions.

2020 will be all about enhancing the user experience by delivering better personalized, AI-driven and automated content.

To stay ahead in the competition, you need to get a better grip on generating custom content, integrating it well with audio and video enhancements to attract the attention of the targeted audience towards your brand in a seamless manner.

The post Top Digital Marketing Trends to Follow in 2020 appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

So you have been updating your blogs 5 times a day, but still, are not getting the kind of engagement that you have always desired for? Well, something is definitely wrong!

The world of content writing is a vast one and some of the initial reasons for the popularity can be owed to the thoughtful nature and uniqueness of it which has challenged the traditional marketing ideas in many ways.

The thought of inbound marketing was rather revolting to some of the marketers at first, but as times passed, it turned out to a more interactive form of marketing. Not only was inbound marketing brought to the forefront with specific strategies, but it also went on to lead to unbelievable conversions.

Naturally, brands started to take a keen interest in content marketing which led to the web being subjected to unexpected content flooding. But no matter how much content was been poured out by companies over the web, the rate of failure (in terms of engagement) also increased drastically. Here are the 5 top reasons which cause content marketing engagement failure.

1) Your content lacks uniqueness

Brands often confuse content marketing with large scale production of content. And obviously, when you need to produce such a large chunk of content, you would have to find enough sources to fetch info to write them down. In such circumstances, keeping a close eye on the competitor’s content strategy seems to be the easiest way. And this is where the problem starts.

This is what leads to the web being flooded with the same content which is something that restricts your content marketing strategy being similar to that of your competitors. Obviously, when similar content is presented all-over, it would only make it harder for your content to attract customers easily.

Let’s elaborate on this with an example. If there is one grocery shop in your locality, then it is bound to get all the business of your area. Herein, if you see that there are 5 grocery shops in your locality then the business will be shared, hence reducing the profit quotient likewise.

A similar phenomenon takes place for content marketing, which according to quite a few experts has been explained to become a lot less profitable over time. The only way to change things for you here would be to understand your business better and ascertain its true value.

This is what will allow you to formulate your content marketing strategy accordingly and produce unique content on the web about your brand.

2) Personalization

When you talk about marketing, personalization is considered to be extremely important, not only for the customers but also with the brands. Personalization deals with targeting content keeping in mind the reader’s preferences and tastes in mind.

Personalization is done on the basis of who customers are, where they reside, what interests them and so on. Surveys have shown that nearly 85% of the brands are using personalization models for marketing purposes which is a staggering statistic in terms of content marketing.

If a reader found good and useful info on your site which is what he was looking for, he is sure to return back. And the cycle continues.

However, the real challenge is to use personalization in a way that customers get comfortable with it, without you bombarding the tactics on them. Herein, another survey was conducted to find out the actual problems which the customers feel and here are the results

• 38% of of respondents were not sure whether the data was accurate
• 40% faced issues getting an insight of the product at first
• 39% of the respondents feel that they don’t have enough data

But irrespective of the problems, the tendency of most marketers here is to get over these issues and provide a much careful and strategic content to the customers. As a result, brands that actually implemented such personalization strategy prudently saw a rise of 19% in their overall sales.

It is highly recommended to serve content which has quality and relevance to the customers. Moreover, it would be wise of you to keep a keen eye on the type of content they are already being exposed to understand how they respond to it as it.

This will allow you to devise your own content likewise. This thorough study of your competitors’ content will also help you realize what your customers actually look for in the content, a piece of information that is crucial for better content marketing.

It effectively assists you in formulating a better strategy which will be tailor-made for your customers. The best way to initiate your own study on the behavior of your customer base would be to follow the on-going trends and understand how and why the preferences change from time to time.

You have to understand if you can understand their basic personalization, then you will be able to adapt to customer behavior with ease.

3) Content which is not good enough

As already said, bombarding the users with a lot more content than what is actually required is not going to do any good. Quality content is the key here. This is the reason why even after putting all the relevant information in your content, your competitors win the race with their short and simple content.

You need to start a dialogue with your customers, engage them, and interact with them to make sure that the required info is imparted while keeping them hooked. Creating one-dimensional content that hinders the reader’s flow is one of the prominent reasons why your content marketing fails.

This content does not have the X factor which separates your content from the others, and why would users like to read the same content twice and thrice when they have already read it at your competitor’s blog? Most of the surveys conducted here have found that the respondents would want the content to be made according to their specific needs.

Moreover, as many as 91% of the total respondents have advised the brands to come back with quizzes, calculators, and information in a graphical form which will help them understand and engage with the brands better.

4) Content shock is not good for your customers

One of the reasons why content marketing is such a sound strategy is that it lets the customers get information and an understanding of your brand. But after the initial content surge on the web, the supply of content actually exceeded the demand.

And soon it was realized that there was a lot more content than what the customers could take in. This capacity of the customers to take in the content is known as content shock.

In simple words, this can be described as the content about a brand being a lot more available than it should be. This in effect distracts them to such a degree that they cannot consume it as much as we would want them to.

Moreover, the content shock is something which is more likely to happen if the consumers perceive your content to be way too similar to that of your competitors as it makes them think of you to be boring.

5) Messages not right for the medium

Humans are fickle minded and can be easily distracted and when it comes to the web, their attention span is not more than 15 seconds. It is for this simple reason you have to formulate your message in such a way that it can direct their 15 seconds of attention to your product.

You need to realize that it will not take them a lot to move on from your product which also means that you are losing valuable customers each minute or rather every 15 seconds if not less.

Therefore, the key here is tailoring your message in exact specifications which you can provide the customers at the right time. However, a safe distance should be maintained from delivering monotonous messages, which is certain to harm you and will make you lose customers faster than you can count.

Another reason why you should avoid monotonous message is that they don’t appeal to the customers, hence take longer to get out even on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

So what you need to do here is make your content accessible and interactive which you can do by providing quizzes, breaking the content into shareable parts, provide graphic information, etc. This will eventually help your content get the exposure it needs and allows the customers to decide whether it is meant for them or not.

Even if they think that the entire message you are sending is not worth their time, they might choose the ones which cater to their specific needs and can also pass them on to more people. You have to understand that the web is flooded with messages and most of the brands don’t let their consumers pick and choose.

Therefore, allowing your customers to choose which messages to view, receive and share will only play to your advantage as it allows your message to stand out. However, if nothing is working out and your content marketing strategies are not yielding the desired outputs, it is the right time that you look for content marketing services. It is better to be late than never!

The post 5 Adverse Content Marketing Strategies Leading To Customer Engagement Failure appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Time on site, referring links, bounce rates, and page views are some of the data regarding your site visitors that can amaze even the best of content marketers out there. How can you determine which data is important for your content marketing strategy and how can you use that analytical data to your advantage?

Content marketing strategies are crucial for online success. However, just like any other technique, it is imperative that you crunch the numbers to determine what works for you and what does not. The most effective way to find this is through use of analytics, such as Google Analytics.

Read on to learn about the 10 ways in which you can enhance your content marketing strategy to get more leads, and ultimately, improve your bottom line..

1. Understand the High Page View-High Bounce Rate Relationship

We often come across pages that have high page views, but they also have high bounce rates. What can we make of this? Well, it shows that even though the content on the page is most probably useful, the visitor does not have a clear, established path to follow after they have gone through it.

This calls for the right call to action (CTA). Are you giving your visitors an option to act after reading something on your website? Think about this.

2. Review Your Daily Report

Make sure you set up your Google Analytics to get a report in your email every day. You will be astonished to know the pages of your website that are shown in your top 10 list. They may include your team page, an old blog post, or even your pricing page. In general, regardless of which page shows up in your top 10 list, it implies that there is considerable interest for those particular pages, and this is a signal for you to take action to promote them further.

For example, you could consider running social ads for those pages or scheduling social shares, whatever works best for you.

3. Think About Your Least Viewed Pages

A lot of people pay attention to the top pages. But are your bottom pages getting the attention they deserve to get? Do you want people to see them? What is the reason behind them not getting the number of views you expect? Where does the fault lie? Is it with the content or with the way it is optimized?

All pages of a website must be in harmony with each other. If it’s cluttered, people will not find what they are looking for. Every now and then, review which pages are not being navigated to and see how you can make them easily accessible.

4. Translate Technical (or Difficult) Stuff into Plain English

Does your website explain technical things or things that are difficult to understand? You can figure this out by viewing the time spent on a particular page. People often navigate away from pages that have difficult-to-understand content. Sometimes it’s an excellent idea to turn them into plain English sentences by adding ‘which means…’ and explaining it in simpler words.

You will notice an improvement in the time spent on pages.

5. Focus on Popular Blog Topics

How can you find out what topics you should focus on? View your top performing blogs to identify the topics that the visitors engage with the most, this will put you on the right track when it comes to writing more of similar content.

In Google Analytics, you can view this data by navigating to ‘All Pages report’ under Behavior. Make sure that those pages that contain blogs are shown (use advanced filter).

6. Understand In-Page Analytics

It is crucial to understand how your visitors engage with content on your site. This will help you determine whether it is correctly optimized for conversions. You can see the clickable elements on the page with which the users interacted using the In-Page Analytics Report in Behavior section of Google Analytics.

7. Have Clear Objectives

It is necessary that you set up goals and have objectives even for non-revenue generating content. Spend time to track engagement and interaction for useful feedback regarding what works and what doesn’t in relation to your goals.

8. Can You Convert?

The ultimate aim of any content marketing strategy is to successfully engage visitors and get them to interact with your business. This interaction steadily builds trust, and transforms them into your loyal customers. If this isn’t happening, then you are missing the whole point of it. Traffic, regardless of how much you are getting, will do you no good if your website fails to convert people into leads.

Check your conversion rates to determine where you’re falling short, and rectify it by improving on areas that need work – such as your landing pages, for instance.

9. Learn from Those Who Refer to You

Review the websites that have referred traffic to your website (excluding search engines and social media). Check out a few and see what they are writing about, whom they link to, and what their founders or writers share on social media.

Using this intelligence, you can develop content with utmost confidence that it is up to the mark, particularly when compared to your referrers’ content.

10. Utilize UTM Parameters

UTM parameters enable you to attach extra information to the links that point to your site, allowing you to collect detailed data regarding the clicks that lead up to your website.

In a content marketing strategy, UTM parameters are most commonly used during the promotional stages. You can use these to tag social media posts that have the content you posted on your company’s website. This will help you determine not only which social media channels are most useful for you, but also the time of day at which they are most effective.

UTM parameters are also useful when you post content to third party websites where more than one link is used for each post.

The post 10 Analytics Tips To Improve Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Have you ever wondered why Google pays so much emphasis on quality content? It’s because the website content contains the value proposition that makes it the most important aspect of any website. Content delivers the message that businesses have to convey to their clients. How would any visitor know what the website is about if there is no content portraying the nature of the online business?

Quality content marketing strategy opens the doors of success for online businesses. The digital content marketing strategy chosen by a company will determine how successful it is in persuading users to buy goods or services. Creating effective content marketing strategy is essential if you want to improve your online business’s performance. In other words, quality content will translate into improved sales and profits.

However, I have encountered many companies, including some content marketing companies, that have the wrong mindset or take the wrong approach when it comes to creating website content.

Below are 10 common misconceptions about content marketing that I see businesses have when it comes to the content of their website.

Myth# 1: Content Marketing is Effortless and Cheap

The biggest misconception about content marketing is that it is easy and cheap. I have encountered many online businesses that wrongly assume that creating content is an effortless task. Anyone can create quality content in quick time without much effort.

The wrong, and somewhat conceited, view about content marketing can easily lead an online business to its doom. It’s true that almost anyone can create content. But creating quality content that is focused to a specific customer segment, containing highly relevant keywords in just the density, and carrying persuasive message that converts visitors into customers, requires much time, experience, and resources.

Myth# 2: Content Does not Need to be Customized

Another big misconception about content marketing is that it does not need to be customized according to a specific target market. A single ‘One-size-fits-all’ content cannot cater to all the needs of the audience.

The reality is not all the potential customers that visit your site are the same. They have varying levels of needs, motivations, and desires for visiting the site. So, thinking that the same piece of content can satisfy all of the audience is an unrealistic approach. You need to tailor the website content based on preferences of potential buyers, product characteristics, and demographic profile.

Myth# 3: Outsourcing Content Marketing is Not a Good Idea

Another myth among business owners that I have encountered is that it is not a good idea to outsource content marketing activity. They think that they can easily handle the task of creating quality content in-house.

Although, businesses can decide to create website content in-house, outsourcing to a reputable content writing company will bring much better results. The reason is that content marketing companies specialize in creating high quality content.

As a result, they can do a much better job in devising effective content marketing strategy as compared to performing it in-house. They have the experience, resources, and time to create effective content that is targeted to your market needs and preferences.

Myth #4: Content Marketing is done Only to Boost Search Rankings

It is true that effective content marketing strategy can help improve search engine rankings, but this is not the only benefit of content marketing. The fact is that content marketing is the platform on which lies the success of your business. People visit your site to find information about the products or services. It’s the content that serves to satisfy their informational needs and desires.

How persuasive the website content is will determine whether the online visitors will make a purchase, or just leave after scrolling through the landing page. The fact that content marketing can also help boost search engine rankings is a value added advantage that can help improve your online business’s performance.

Myth #5: Content Marketing is Not for B2Bs

Some online business owners of a particular market believe that content marketing will not be beneficial for other business firms. They think that content marketing is only for B2C (Business to Customers).

However, a number of studies have found that B2Bs can also benefit from an effective content market strategy. You can greatly improve your online sales by analyzing your business audience, targeting their issues and pain points, and providing effective solutions through content marketing.

Myth #6: Content Marketing is the Same as Brand Marketing

Content marketing is perhaps an effective way to boost brand image, but it is not brand marketing. It isn’t just for improving customers’ perception of the brand. The real reason for undertaking content marketing strategy is for addressing the needs of the customers, engaging them, and persuading them to make a purchase.

Myth #7: ROI on Content Marketing Cannot be Measured

Majority of businesses wrongly assume that it is not possible to measure the results of an online marketing strategy. That’s why they do not take into account a content marketing strategy and look at it with doubt and suspicion as to whether it really delivers.

The reality is that it’s possible to accurately measure the effectiveness of an online marketing strategy. A number of online tools are available that can help in assessing the effectiveness of the content marketing campaign. For instance, you can use Google Analytics to dig deep down and get detailed results about the performance of your content marketing strategy.

Myth #8: Content Marketing is a One Time Activity

A number of business owners have the misconception that content marketing is a one-time activity that needs to be conducted only once. However, the fact is this will not bring maximum benefit to your site. If you want to attract a continuous stream of online visitors, the content marketing strategy needs to be conducted regularly.

Myth #9: Content Marketing is One Way Communication

Most businesses also presume that content marketing is a one-way communication just like other marketing techniques. But in contrast, content marketing is a two-way communication where the customers also interact with the company. The marketing content encourages users to take some action and provide input and suggestions. This brings better results for the company as compared to traditional one-way digital communication.

Myth #10: Content Marketing is Same as Content Creation

Finally, you must understand that content marketing is not just content creation. Content creation is just a part of content marketing. But it is a comprehensive term that not only involves the creation of content but also publishing them in highly relevant media in order to funnel a maximum number of customers to the site.

On final note:

If you want to ensure the success of your online business, you will have to give emphasis on content marketing. After reading above mentioned misconceptions, you will be able to make your content marketing strategy more effective. You should also keep in mind that quality content not only enhances user engagement and reputation of your company, but it also boosts your search engine visibility.

The post 10 Big Misconceptions about Content Marketing appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

In 2014, the use of the Internet has grown up significantly, speeding up the implementation of successful content marketing strategies by the website owners to endorse their business brands online. Undoubtedly, content has become king of website promotion process because it is the key tool for generating interest among the users to remain on your website and to know about your offered services and products. If you want your website to rank well among the top pages of popular search engines, then you must have to adopt strong and valuable content strategies to compete in this highly cutthroat marketplace.

Content marketing has fundamentally altered the way companies utilize their website, blog, and social accounts. The concentration has shifted from a self-centric approach to sharing useful information and developing long term relationships. But some old practices are not so easy to leave that causes many companies to commit big mistakes.

To help you get out of this problem so that you could execute the content strategies effectively on your website for better traffic and enhanced sales, I am listing the 9 most common content marketing mistakes committed by us. We will also scrutinize how to avoid these mistakes to ensure enhance leads and conversion rates through the site.

Absence of Customer Centricity

The success of both online and offline businesses depends on how much you are able to satisfy your customers with your services. Therefore, it is very necessary to highlight the needs to recognize, anticipate and satisfy the customer requirements if you really want to get higher productivity through your website. If you are not focused towards your customer’s need and there is absence of customer Centricity policy in your services, then your business revenue will definitely suffer. Listening to your customer’s talks and pains through formal or informal meeting is an indispensable requirement part of a proficient content strategy.

It does not matter if your website has high quality content, but catering your services according to your customer’s need is the best way of increasing leads and sales through your online business.

Quantity vs. Quality

Google search engine algorithm Panda or Penguin update cannot affect the ranking of your website if it has high quality content because it is “Quality’ only that matter the most and if you execute quality of your services then you are meant to gain uninterrupted success in your business. A single piece of low quality content has the potential of damaging your complete content strategy. Use editorial calendar for planning and creating objective focused content because lack of content quality can affect your website traffic while quality content make sure that to retain as well return the users to know more about your services. Focusing on quality of content instead of quantity of content will surely drive better traffic and leads to your website.

Writing Content with No Sharing Intention

Do not write content by completely ignoring the need to share it over popular social platforms because sharing is the best way to get your services and products known among the internet users. Ensure that all content on your website are written with an objective to share. The effective sharing of your content is guaranteed by integrating social sharing icons on all your web pages.

Unsure About Your Content Purpose

This is often one of the blunders committed by website owners that results in low traffic and lesser productivity. While writing content requires quality to gain better user engagement, the purpose of the content should also be clear to the readers about why you are in this business and how effectively you are doing content marketing? Every single piece of content written for your website has an obvious reason of its existence, which includes blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, as well as the content shared through social platforms.

Reaching Your Audience

A high quality and great content is not so effective if it is not reaching the audience. For strategic planning of content marketing, ensure to perform a thorough research to explore what are your audience levels and their needs. After all, marketing is all about finding and reaching the right customers, at the right time in the right place.

After a profound interpretation of your audience and their requirements, you can create user engaging and creative content for your website, which eventually drives more leads to your website.

Repurpose Your Content

It is not necessary that once you have written a piece of content over a certain topic, you cannot write it again. Instead a piece of content can be used repeatedly. Try to prepare a goof  leadership piece for every single survey question. You can also create a variety of tweets for a piece of content or blog post. Meanwhile, you can also promote your content over several platforms. Whatever content, format your are opting to write, ensure to stick with its objectives which ranges from lead creation to lead nurturing.

Creating Monotonous Content

Sometimes we get stuck with monotonous content, writing style, but not everyone wants to read the same type of content repetitively. It affects the user interest towards reading your content that will impact your website traffic significantly. There must be a balance between the types of content you are writing for your users since people like to consume information in various ways. Some users prefer reading texts while others prefer visual. Some users have enough time while some don’t have and hence it is necessary that you adopt different styles for providing information on your website to get better user engagement.

Trying to Create Content That’s Too Perfect

Often content marketers engage themselves in creating and editing high quality content that is fit from all reader’s point of view and they set the bar so high that all other rivals involved in content marketing are afraid to create anything less than just right.

However, perfection is not what triumphs the content marketing game. Your content might be perfect for everyone, but it should be informative and valued from your customers’ prospects as well. It clearly means that you don’t require winning a prize with every piece of your content published on your site, but following an intelligent policy of publishing valuable content will indisputably bring tremendous leads to your website.

Content That Is Not Measured

Every business has goals and some of them are sketched in your mission while others are sketched in your performance goals. Does it make true sense that you must have your content strategies aligned with these goals? After all, it is the goals only that you always try to achieve for both long term and short term business’s success.

Understanding what success looks like is important for improving your content marketing strategy. It means that you must track and measure every part of your success journey to evaluate what role does content plays? What metrics will you select for measurement completely depends on what you are trying to measure? Your measure depends on what you are struggling to achieve.

Conclusion

Good content marketing is a continuing process and not a one-time investment. There are many mistakes that often committed when it comes to effective content marketing. Some of these mistakes might be minor while some may be major. Having a clear understanding of these mistakes will help you in avoiding traffic dwindling on your website, but an effective and comprehensive content strategy is a must for achieving compelling results. It is better to spend our time in compiling a successful content strategy rather than doing research because quality content develops by hard work, ensuring long-term engagement and developing brand reliability within your customer database.

The post Understanding Big Content Marketing Mistakes Often Committed appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Since consumers had started backing off from traditional methods of marketing of the brands, they looked forward to seeing a few changes in the marketing strategies. This is how; smart marketers realized they needed to give buyers what they wanted: information. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including video, news, white papers, e-books, case studies, infographics, how-to guides, Q&As, photos, etc. On the basis of marketer’s understanding of his consumer’s needs, he has begun with Content Marketing to provide quality information, which is developed to entice and engage consumers in hope that they will convert into customers.

What exactly is Content Marketing? How it can benefit business? What are the effective Content Marketing Strategies? If these are the questions popping in your mind, read this blog to find answers in an elaborative way.

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing provides an outstanding alternative to traditional advertising methods. It is an umbrella term that covers a set of effective techniques, strategies and tactics in order to fulfill predefined business goals by using content across the customer life-cycle. Its main purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating valuable and relevant content with the intention of satisfying and enhancing consumer behavior. Content Marketing cycle starts from research work and then creating, optimizing, publishing, promoting the content and finally measuring your success.

What is the need of Content Marketing?

Businesses, small as well as big, can enhance their brand image and overall marketing efforts by creating and sharing optimum quality content. The research conducted by Kapost has found that per dollar value, Content Marketing contributes three times more leads than that of traditional online advertising. In addition to being cheaper as compared to alternative forms of marketing, Content Marketing also allows you to send interesting, original and valuable information to potential and existing customers, which is why it has been an intriguing subject for online marketers. An effective Content Marketing can:

• Generate more sales for you
• Pull in unexpected customers
• Build valuable relationships with your audience
• Help making a personal connection
• Improve your PR strategy
• Enhance your brand image
• Help beating your competition
• Boost customer engagement
• Attract people with real interest in your brand
• Work with any industry
• Improve your customer experience
• Help growing a long-term audience
• Create informed buyers
• Give you the opportunity to find out what’s important to your customers

Furthermore, I have collected some stats, facts and insights that will force you to shift a big percentage of your marketing budget to Content Marketing.

• 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day. Source: AOL / Nielsen
• The average office worker checks their email 30 times per hour. Source: Statistic Brain
• 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content. Source: Custom Content Council
• Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. Source: Content+
• LinkedIn generates more leads for B2B companies than Facebook, Twitter or blogs individually. Yet only 47% of B2B marketers say they are actively using LinkedIn vs. 90% on Facebook. Source: Inside View

What are effective Content Marketing Strategies?

If you aspire to be successful in Content Marketing, you need an effective strategy. A well-thought out plan is essential for valuable communication with your target audience and gaining a higher return on marketing investment. I present to you an eight-step process of Content Marketing, which after implementation results in a successful and profit making business.

1. Set Goals

Before starting Content Marketing, you should first find out what do you want to achieve through Content Marketing and what do you want to gain from the money and time you put into the creation, promotion and distribution of eBooks, blog posts, and white papers? Some common goals include leads and customers, increasing web traffic, building awareness of your brand, becoming more active online and generating blog subscribers. In addition to this, you should also evaluate current marketing data like bounce rates and conversion.

2. Research Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is the key to create Content Marketing Strategy that works. You should research the demographics as well as online behavior of your target audience, and consider your ideal customers’ occupations, personalities, needs and wants. Further, you can conduct surveys via email, your company website or social media platforms to get a grasp on what potential consumers are looking for. You can start by focusing your content efforts on just one customer segment at a time; however that segment must include your best customer. After that, this customer should serve as the model for your target buyer persona.

In addition to this, one of the simple and budget-friendly research tactics is to track keyword, product and brand mentions on social networking sites such as twitter and Facebook. You can find out what are your target audience doing online and how can you use your content to reach them?

3. Analyze Your Competition

You should take a look at your competitors and analyze what they are saying and how they are disseminating the information. The type of content they are creating should also be noted. You can also find out whether they focus on offering downloadable white papers and eBooks, or they are going the business blog route? Further, you can gain an advantage over your competitors by offering something that you know your competitors are not. For example, you can use a backlink analysis tool like MajesticSEO and WooRank to see who is linking to them and why, and search their company name on Twitter and various other social media sites to notice if, and how, their brand is being discussed.

4. Create content according to Target Audience

Good content informs as well as attracts, persuades, serves and engages buyer’s persona, prospective customers and other target audiences. Companies that focus on quantity of content often lose out over companies that focus on quality. High quality blog posts will get more shares on social media platforms, will interest other industry stakeholders as well, and will position your company as more of a thought leader, educator or expert.

While writing content, think about your target consumers: Are they small business owners? Fathers? Mothers? Dog lovers? Teenagers? Exercise Fanatics? Keeping your target consumers in mind, decide on the type of content you want to offer. Some popular forms of content include blog posts, eBooks, infographics, interviews, case studies, surveys, podcasts, contests and webinars. Once you are well-aware of your demographic and content type, find out competent writers who can write excellent content for the purpose of apt brand communication.

In addition to this, you can also take-out the stock of old content that you have already created and distributed and find out how it performed. Look at page views, social shares, downloads, lead generation and comments, and identify which pieces were exceptionally well-received by the audience, if any.

5. Think About Variety

Content Marketing does not mean a lot of writing and cranking out text-heavy blog posts, lots of eBooks and various white papers. In reality, variety and creativity will help you stand-out in your industry. You should think about using a variety of media such as videos, pictures, infographics, checklists, webinars, audio content and even live events, in addition to written content. Furthermore, variety can extend to what kind of content you create. You can create thought leadership pieces and “behind the scenes” content like pictures of your product/service, interviews, customer features, list of resources and many other types of content. Just use your imagination power! It will pay off in terms of attention.

6. Don’t Ignore SEO

Content Marketing is successful because it has the ability to combine your content (which can establish your expertise) with Social Media Platform (which can help you spread your information) with Search (helping you being found via Bing, Google or other search engines). Some companies limit the “Search” part of this equation as they are not aware about the basics of SEO, by using terms that people do not use (for example, internal company jargon vs. commonly used terms), and by not posting enough keyword-rich content on their blog or website. Take a simple example– when embedding a YouTube video in your website or blog, why not include some of the key points or a full transcript (if it is not too long) in text below it so that Google can pick up on these terms? If you want to make your content search engine friendly, I recommend hiring SEO experts who can perform this task more effectively.

7. Share your content

Social media is an ideal complement to Content Marketing. Content works as the fuel that keeps the social media “engine” humming as people share and re-share content on these platforms. You should find out which social media platform your target audience spends maximum time on. If you are not sure, do some research-work. In order to make your task simple, I have mentioned percentage of B2B as well as B2C marketers who use different social media sites to distribute their content.

In addition to this, you can also use tools like Bitly that will track click backs and Google Analytics that will check traffic to your website; by doing this you will be able to see which social media channels are bringing your website the most traffic.

8. Constantly evolve

After a few months of posting content, check to see which ones were mostly shared by people and design your Content Market Strategy accordingly. You should not be afraid to filter out what is not working and write more about the topics that are gaining the most of traction. In addition to monitoring, engaging with people who responded to your content can be a very powerful way to spread your reach and to connect with target audience or industry stakeholders. You should keep in mind that Content Marketing is not just creating content, but it is about sharing as well as engaging people who resonate with the content.

The post 8 Content Marketing Strategies: 9 of 10 Marketers Are Using Them appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

The great merge – this is going to be the recurring theme in internet marketing this 2013. As the internet browsing experience become highly multi-sensory, your strategies should touch on your audience’s different interest points almost simultaneously, hence, the need for integration.

Two online marketing executions that definitely need to be seamlessly integrated are content and social media. After all, Tweets, Facebook updates and Google+ posts are essentially pieces of content published on social platforms. An effective synergy between these two strategies will produce better results.

So, how do you integrate social with content? Believe us, it’s not rocket science. Here are a few easy-to-implement tips we culled to help you get started.

Align Your Content Calendar with Your Social Media Schedule

This is an example of how your social media posts can amplify the reach of your content (blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, etc.) marketing. Typically, you create social media posts at a much faster rate than your content development. This is perfectly fine. Just be sure that every time you publish a new piece of content, your social media updates are there to back it up.

Proofread Your Social Media Posts Just Like Any Piece of Content

A content marketing team usually appoints an editor that checks everything from grammar, spelling, syntax and construction. Implement the same level of meticulousness in polishing your social media updates. If you’re going to use social media to promote your content, you have to ensure that social posts are impeccable and free of basic errors. No one wants to read anything that is not grammatically sound

Use Social Media to Generate Excitement for Your Upcoming Content

This is one of the benefits of syncing your content calendar with your social media schedule. A few days before you publish, say, a new blog post, your social media marketing team can create a teaser to generate buzz and anticipation. This teaser phase can be done in two or three stages until you finally reveal what’s new. Your creativity is your only limit. Use media-rich materials such as photos and videos and intriguing one-liners.

Promote Content by Triggering Conversations

It’s pretty standard how social media marketers share their company’s new content in social media. It’s usually composed of a short summary, the link to the content and a thumbnail photo to accompany the link. However, don’t forget the social aspect of content sharing which is to spark rich dialogues. Yes, your followers can comment on a blog post or an article itself, but conversations in social spaces are usually more sustainable and the insights you get are extremely rich. Plus, it boosts your level of social activity which is good for SEO.

Integrated marketing communications has been around for years in the field of traditional or offline marketing (i.e. advertising and PR) and today, its value is being realized in the field of internet marketing. Try out the tips above and let us know how social media was able to amplify your content marketing and vice versa.

The post Integrating Your Content & Social Media Marketing Seamlessly appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

“Content is King” – this phrase has been thrown around since Panda and Penguin were rolled out. Today, there is an overwhelming consensus that great content should be the cornerstone of every business’ digital marketing strategy.

However, it can be said that this recognition for effective content marketing is long overdue. Good content should have been the focus of marketers from the start. However, while Google was still figure out what kind of information internet users are looking for, bad content from unethical marketers proliferated. Now, good content is the talk of the marketing town and without good content, marketing success is next to impossible.

What Makes Content “Great?”

Internet marketers have been using the term “great content” but those who actually cared to explain what they mean is almost next to none. At a glance, it’s easy to spot a well put together piece of content if it’s creatively made, unique, has impeccable grammar and well-researched. Again, these things are the obvious.

When you search around for content marketing tips, two characteristics of good content particularly stand out – value and virality.

“Life Changing” Content

Creating value for your target audience through content is to some extent changing their lives. And we are not talking about grand gestures here. It could be a mom getting information from a blog post about the different types of schooling available for her child. It could be a DIY enthusiast finding a how-to video on how to design a home using the Mediterranean style.

Essentially, creating value is about giving your target audience what they want – information, answers, solutions, guides, entertainment, clarification and the list goes on and one. The common denominator here is that great content should have a real impact on the lives of your target audience.

Great Content Spreads like the Flu

The next characteristic of great content is virality. Attempting each and every time to create content that can spread like wildfire is probably one of the most powerful content marketing tips you should implement. It’s about producing content that is so good that you were able to transform your audience into your brand ambassadors and content propagators.

That being said, the question on your mind should be: how do I create viral content? The answer is current content has a high pass-around value. Here, current does not mean now as in “current events.” It means developing content that satisfies what your audience is looking for as of the moment. Again, it’s all about what your audience wants. If they care about a specific topic so much, they will share whatever information they find to their network.

Based on historical trends, content that provides solutions are very sharable. And since you know your niche and your audience better than anyone else (assuming that you invest time and resources in market research), you’re the best decision maker as to what topics your market is genuinely interested as well as the challenges they are facing and the solutions you can provide that relates to your products or services.

Determining the Proper Distribution Channel

The next on this list of content marketing tips is utilizing the best distribution channel. A good piece of content is practically useless if you use the wrong distribution channel. In order for you to identify the most appropriate distribution channel for your content, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can you sustain a highly effective content marketing in this channel or will it be a challenge to distribute content using this channel in the future?
• Do most of your customers or prospective customers have access to this channel?
• Are you launching a short-term or a long-term content marketing campaign?
• Are you using just a single channel or multiple platforms?
• Will your choice of content distribution channel stay relevant despite changes in your consumers’ information consumption behavior in the future?

Doing content marketing effectively is by and large reliant on your choice of distribution channel. Once you have this in place, you can now decide on what form of content you should produce which can range from articles, blog posts, videos, infographics and others. The best content marketing tips would dictate that how you present your content should be based on the demographics and psychographics.

Good Content Can Fuel Your Success Online!

At the end of the day, doing effective content marketing is not about being the greatest publisher online. As an internet entrepreneurship strategy, great content should engage your people, encourage purchase and foster customer loyalty.

The post Revealing the Secrets of Highly Effective Content Marketing appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

The importance of high quality, compelling and unique content cannot be overemphasized. Content marketing has gained momentum when Google unveiled Penguin and Panda and today, “Content is King” is every marketer’s battle-cry.

In just a short time, SEO content writing has matured. Brands have now become publishers in their own right and every organization with an online presence is striving hard to become the preeminent information providers in their respective niches.

At the end of the day, not all content marketing strategies are created. Here are seven steps to help you in achieving awesome and effective content marketing.

Step 1. Review Past Content Marketing Efforts
For those who have not done any form of content marketing previously, you have nothing to worry about. All you need to do is to evaluate where you are in terms of your online presence and where content marketing will play in. Is it to build brand equity or boost your social presence?

For those who have done some content marketing in the past, you don’t necessarily have to begin in square one. You just have to streamline your past content materials and tailor fit it to the demands of today’s Internet users. If you are clueless where to start, it’s advisable to hire content writing services to get your strategy going.

Step 2. Identify Your Objectives
Content marketing is not all about beautiful words strung together. Rather, it should fulfill certain business objectives. One of the major mistakes content marketers make is diving right into content development without definite objectives. Do you want to increase traffic? Increase sales by 10%? Improve your conversion rates? Be specific and realistic when it comes to determining your SEO content writing business objectives.

Step 3. Establishing Your Audience
Yes, you were able to develop great content, but do people read them? For those who hire content writing services, it’s not enough to provide the writers with topics to write about, you should be able to identify who you are talking to. Pay attention to their demographics and their psychographics.

More importantly, know their motivations which can stem from their needs and fears among others. You can do this by employing social listening. Go to the forums and social media platforms where your target market is and listen to their queries.

Step 4. Create Your Content Blueprint
When it comes to SEO content writing, failing to plan is planning to fail. Before you engage in any content creation, make sure everything is mapped out. Topics should progress and build on one another. Create a feasible timeline. Every piece of content should be in line with your strategy and most importantly, with your brand equity.

Step 5. Content Development
Once you’re done with your content strategy and matrix, it’s time to proceed with content creation. One technique you can use is by merging content and copywriting. This basically means making the information you are offering more interesting and palatable to your audience.

Also, when you talk about content, you should not just focus on written content. Diversify your tactic. For example, videos are very in right now. Next to Google, YouTube is the second biggest search engine. Photo-driven social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest are gaining momentum so make sure you look into infographics and the like.

Step 6. Marketing Your Content
Your articles, your blog posts, your infographics and videos won’t promote themselves. Even viral content starts with a push. There’s nothing more disappointing than spending time and creating perfectly good content and no one sees it. When you create your content strategy, make sure to include how you are going to promote your content. Are you going to do a blogger outreach? Are you submitting press released to credible media firms and PR distribution networks to redirect traffic to your site? Social media is big, how are you planning to leverage on this?

Step 7. Gauge Your Success
After all has been said and done, it’s time to go back to your set business objectives and measure how well your SEO content writing initiatives measure up to your success metrics. If you can identify an ROI, this means you set really good metrics and the strategies you employed are spot on. If not, maybe you have to revisit your objectives and revamp your content roadmap.

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