Content Marketing

Your customers, leads, and audience members want valuable content from your business. And
that content needs to reach audience members in a way that feels natural and organic versus
being disruptive. Content marketing helps businesses do this, and it describes the process of
attracting, engaging with, and delighting your target markets.
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and
publishing content via channels such as social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, apps, press
releases, print publications, and more. The goal is to reach your target audience and
increase brand awareness, sales, engagement, and loyalty.
However, content marketing is not just publishing a thin piece of content and hoping people will
find it. It’s about purposefully tailoring your pages, videos, ebooks, and posts to your target
audience so that they find you the inbound way rather than the outbound way.

Why is content marketing important?

a. Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
b. Boost conversions
c. Build relationships between your customers and business that result in increased loyalty
d. Show your audience how your products and services solve their challenges
e. Create a sense of community around your brand

Types of Content Marketing

There are many types of content marketing that you may choose to incorporate in your strategy
— here are some of the most common:

1. Online Content Marketing

Online content marketing refers to any material you publish online, but more specifically, it
refers to your web pages. A strong online content marketing strategy will help you rank higher in
the search engine results pages (SERPs) and get you in front of the right people at the right time.

2. Social Media Content Marketing

With over 4.2 billion global social media users, it’s easy to understand why so many businesses
invest in social media marketing. There are a number of platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram,
Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat) to work with and several ways you can create and share content
on each of them (e.g. photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, stories).
3. Infogr-aphic Content Marketing
Info-graphics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand, graphic format.
With a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear images, info graphics are a great way
to effectively communicate your content.
4. Blog Content Marketing
Blogs are a powerful type of inbound content and allow for a lot of creativity in terms of their
purpose and topic. With a blog, you can do things like promote other internal and external
content and blog articles via links, add social share buttons, and incorporate product information.

5. Video Content Marketing

According to a research, 73% of consumers say they prefer to learn about a brand's product or
service through video. Additionally, video marketing can boost conversions, improve ROI, and
help you build relationships with audience members. You may choose to share your video
content on social media platforms, landing pages, or on a co-marketer's website.

Step by Step content marketing

Content marketing works best when you have a well-defined strategy and plan. If you post
relevant and engaging content, it will drive traffic to your website and boost sales. But, if you
have not thought your strategy through, you could be wasting your time and money. So, before
you even begin to think about posting content, you need to do some research and formulate a
plan. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you devise a content marketing strategy and plan.

1. Establish Your Goals

The first step in creating your content marketing plan is to understand why you are creating
content. Do you want to generate more sales leads? Do you want increased traffic to your
website? Or do you see content marketing as a means of establishing the authority of your brand?
Once you have decided on your objectives, you will need to set some targets.

2. Define Your Audience

Understanding your target audience is crucial to content marketing. Suppose you want to attract
a specific segment of the population. In that case, you will need to understand what those
people's likes and dislikes are.

3. Research Your Competitors

The next step is to investigate what competition you will face when attracting your target
audience's attention. But remember, it won't only be your traditional competitors you will be
competing with for people's attention and time. There may also be content from sources such as
news, reference and entertainment sites that cover the same topics as your posts. When you
research your competitors, note what type of content they are producing and what appears to
have been the most successful. Also, find out what keywords they are targeting.

4. Complete Topic And Keyword Research

Once you know your objectives and understand your audience, the next step is to find out what
your audience is searching for online. You will need to research the keywords that people are
searching for on Google and other search engines. You can begin this process by investigating
the search volume for the keywords that you believe are relevant.

5. Review Your Existing Content

You may also gain some valuable insights from the content that you have already published. So,
investigate what types of posts have generated the most interest and which pages of your website
currently receive the most traffic. Also, research what keywords have been used by people to
find your site. The performance metrics of existing content will help you build up a picture of the
type of content that interests your target audience the most.

6. Devise Your Strategy

The next step is to plan how you will use the information that your research uncovered. You will
need to consider which platforms you will publish your content on and what methods you will
use to promote your content. You will also need to think about the most appealing type of
content for your target audience. For example, would your audience be suited to white papers
and blog posts, or would videos and infographics be more appropriate? In most cases, a mixture
of many different media options will be the best approach.

7. Plan Your Resources

Your content marketing research will no doubt give you plenty of ideas. But now, you must also
look at what you can realistically achieve with the resources you have. You will need to decide
whether you will produce your content in-house or if you are going to outsource content creation.
You will also need to appoint someone to manage your content marketing campaign, and
someone will need to respond to the comments and questions that your content gets. Content
marketing can be time-consuming, so you need to be realistic about how much time you can
devote to your campaign.

8. Plan Your Content Production Schedule

Now you need to bring all your ideas together in a content publishing schedule. The schedule
should contain a calendar of publication dates and the personnel assigned to create each piece of
content. A publishing calendar will help you publish content regularly, which is a must in
content marketing.

9. Create, Publish And Promote Your Content

Each piece of content that you publish should be created with your objectives in mind. And
remember to make use of the keywords that you discovered in your research. Most crucially,
keep the quality of your content high. Don't rush creating content merely to meet the deadline on
your content publishing calendar. Once your content is published, you will also need to promote
it. So, share your posts on your social media accounts, and send the content to anyone you think
might be interested in the piece.
10. Monitor And Refine

The final step in your content marketing plan is to monitor the success of your campaign, and,
based on what has been successful, refine your strategy as appropriate. Your content marketing
strategy will evolve. So, you must be flexible in your approach to your content creation.

Conclusion

As you can see from the 10-step plan above, developing a content marketing plan is a cycle
rather than a one-off task. You will learn more about your audience and the content that works as
you make progress, and you will need to refine your plan frequently. However, the above tips
should help you get started on creating a content marketing plan.

What Is Email Marketing? And How to Do It

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses email to connect with potential
customers, raise brand awareness, build customer loyalty, and promote marketing efforts.

In the world of digital marketing, email marketing is commonly considered a low-cost but high-
impact tool with the ability to increase customer engagement and drive sales. As a result, it is
often a cornerstone of many digital marketing strategies created today.

Email marketing impact

Email is one of the most popular modes of online communication. In fact, it is estimated that
approximately 306.4 billion emails were sent daily in 2020. That number is projected to grow to
376.4 billion by 2025 [1].

The ability to reach large numbers of potential customers with just a click makes email a
relatively cheap digital marketing tool with a potentially high impact. This is backed up by the
data. One 2021 study, for instance, found that the average return on investment (ROI) for email
marketing is $36 for every $1 spent [2].

Nonetheless, the ROI for email marketing is not the same for every industry. In the same study,
the researchers broke down the average ROI per dollar spent for four different industries as
follows:
 Retail, economics, and consumer goods: $45
 Marketing, PR, advertising agency: $42
 Software and technology: $36
 Media, publishing, events, sports, entertainment: $32
 Whatever the industry, it is clear that email marketing offers a potential return worth many times
the initial investment.

Email marketing examples

If you have an email account, then you have likely encountered some form of email marketing
before. Typical examples of email marketing include:

 Email newsletters that inform recipients about upcoming events, such as at a museum,
playhouse, or concert venue
 Emails promoting holiday sales, such as during Black Friday or the Fourth of July
 Emails sent after a purchase (also known as transactional email) offering a discount on a
future purchase

Email marketing glossary

Digital marketers use a variety of terms to describe the email marketing process. This glossary
includes some key terms you should know:
 Acceptance rate: The percentage of messages received by recipients’ email servers.

 Bounce rate: The percentage of messages not received by recipients’ email servers.

 Open rate: The percentage of emails opened by recipients. An email campaign’s open rate is one
of the key metrics for determining its success. The higher the open rate, the better.

 Subject line: The text that shows up in a recipient’s inbox describing the email. Subject lines
should be intriguing and relevant to recipients.

 Call-to-action (CTA): A link or button that connects to a download or website, such as a product
page, blog post, or scheduling page.

 Conversion rate: The number of recipients who follow through with a CTA by clicking a link or
making a purchase, such as when a recipient clicks onto a link to your website.

 Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who click on a CTA in an email.

 IP warming: The practice of gradually sending an increasing number of emails to a recipient in

order to establish your IP address.

 Opt-in/opt-out: To either subscribe (opt-in) or unsubscribe (opt-out) from an email list.

 Nurture sequences: A series of automated emails that are sent when someone signs up for your
email list. Nurture sequences foster customer engagement and help push customers further along
the marketing funnel.

Email marketing best practices and tips

A well-executed email marketing campaign has the potential to engage previous customers,
attract new ones, and help you meet your marketing objectives. For effective strategy you need to
create a thoughtful email campaign that strategically attracts potential customers with relevant and
well-timed messages.

As you are working on creating your own email marketing campaign, keep the following tips in
mind:

1. Craft eye-catching subject lines.

A subject line catches the reader’s attention and prompts them to open the message, while the
content of the message elaborates on your value proposition and urges readers to act.

The high volume of daily emails means that competition is high in recipients’ inboxes—a stellar
subject line can help you stand out from the crowd.

2. Intentionally structure your message.

Structure is an important piece of any writing, but especially so for marketing emails.

Effectively structuring the content of your message will allow you to immediately articulate your
value proposition to your reader so you don’t waste their time. In fact, according to one study, the
average time a recipient spent reading branded emails in 2021 was estimated to be just 10 seconds
[4]. You might literally only have seconds to get your message across.

To optimize this brief time, make sure that your email is well structured. Some ways to optimize
the little time you have with your reader include:
 Put the most important information at the top of your email, such as the promotion you
most want them to see
 Make it scannable so readers can easily find the information they need
 Keep text at a minimum and use links to re-direct readers to longer pieces, such as blog
posts referenced in the email

3. Keep your design simple.

There is a thin line between eye-catching and distracting. On one hand, you want to create a
dynamic visual design that attracts attention. On the other, you want to make sure that key
 information is easily conveyed and highlighted. A simple design, then, is generally more
effective than a more complicated one.

Some key considerations when designing a marketing email include:

 Use three or fewer colors in your email.
 Emphasize your logo and branding. You want the recipient to quickly know exactly who sent it
and where they can go to get your product
 Visually emphasize CTAs

4. Only email people who opted into your list.

It is important that you only email individuals who have purposefully opted to receive them.
There are several reasons for this practice.

Firstly, while it is technically possible to purchase lists of email addresses from third-party sellers,
this practice is often forbidden from many marketing platforms.

Secondly, in some cases, it may actually be illegal for you to send marketing emails to individuals
who’ve opted out of receiving them. In the United States, for example, CAN-SPAM (Controlling
the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) is a 2003 law that expressly
forbids sending emails to those that have previously opted out of them. According to the law,
“each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to
$43,792” .

Finally, sending emails to those who don’t expressly want them is simply inefficient. While it
may seem like sending as many emails as possible will help you reach your marketing goals, the
reality is that email marketing is most effective when it’s targeted to a specific audience.
Rather than sending emails to people who don't want them, it makes more sense to advertise
your product or service to those who have already expressed an interest.

5. Strategically time your emails.

In many ways, email marketing is all about timing. Sometimes, sending the right message at the
right time is the best strategy to improve customer engagement and meet your marketing goals.

As a form of digital marketing, email marketing benefits from being easily automated. Marketing
automation allows you to send automated emails to a targeted audience. Use automation to either
send targeted emails at certain times of the year, such as during the holidays, or to create
automated nurture sequences.

Automated nurture sequences help keep recipients engaged by automatically sending out relevant
emails that maintain brand awareness and guide them through your marketing funnel.

6. Keep tabs and run tests.

One of the benefits of digital marketing is that you regularly receive data on the efficacy of your
campaigns. As you further develop your marketing campaign, this data can be invaluable to
finding more efficient approaches to reaching your target audience.

Email marketing platforms allow you to keep track of important data, such as your open rate,
CTR, and conversion rate. Furthermore, many of them also allow you to run A/B tests, which
compare the performance of two different campaigns to identify the most effective one.

Routinely analyzing your data and conducting tests will help you improve the performance of
your overall email marketing campaign.

Types Of Email Marketing: 10 Emails You Should Be Sending

Whether you are just starting with email marketing or you're already sending marketing emails
every week, you know that emails are one of the best channels to sell — and smart marketers are
always looking for new ways they can build relationships and grow revenue.
In this post, we review the different types of marketing emails you can send, and their respective
advantages and disadvantages — this information should help you make an educated decision
about picking the most appropriate email type and how to go about using it.

Most Common Email Marketing Types

1. Welcome Emails

Initial contact with prospects typically finds them unready to do business.

In fact, research shows that only 25% of leads are immediately sales-ready while 50% of leads
are qualified but not yet ready to buy.

Nurturing, therefore, is critical for pushing your leads closer to the buying stage.

Welcome emails show better open and click-through rates when they offer a personal touch and
introduce your organization without slathering on the sales pitch. Don’t introduce a new product
or service before you’ve built a relationship.

2. Email Newsletters

Many businesses and organizations send email newsletters to stay top of mind for their
recipients.
Most industrial businesses actually use email newsletters as the foundation of their email
marketing program because they are great tools for educating customers and prospects about
your business and showcasing employee profiles, company passion projects, and relevant
graphics.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of creating email newsletters, you will need to
determine your goal.

3. Dedicated Emails

Dedicated emails — also known as standalone emails — contain information about only one
offer. For instance, you can notify your target audience about a new white paper you have
released or invite them to attend an industry event that you are hosting.

Dedicated emails help you set up the context to introduce the main call-to-action. In this sense,
they are similar to landing pages. Dedicated sends are generally used to reach out to your entire
email database — a practice that is not necessarily efficient in optimizing conversions and
minimizing unsubscribes.

5. Sponsorship Emails

All the types of marketing emails we have discussed so far are under the assumption that you are
sending communications to your own email database. If you want to reach a different audience
and gain new leads, you might try out sponsorship emails with display ads. A sponsorship
usually entails you paying to include your copy in another vendor's newsletter or dedicated send.

Generally, you’ll have to design your email copy or ad placement according to the specifications
listed by the vendor. Check if the partner has any size restrictions or image suggestions. Provide
them with both the HTML and plain text versions of the copy in advance.

6. Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are the messages triggered by a specific action your contacts have taken and
enable them to complete that action. For instance, if you sign up for an industry webinar, you
will fill out a form and receive a transactional (thank-you) email, which gives you login
information to join. If you are using a double opt-in, people will receive an email asking them to
click on a link to confirm their registration.

Transactionals are also the messages you receive from e-commerce sites that confirm your order
and give you shipment information and other details about your recent purchase.

7. Re-Engagement Emails

If metrics show that a portion of your subscribed client list has been inactive, it may be time to
send out a re-engagement email to re-establish contact and goodwill.
Asking for feedback is an excellent way to bring your business back to their minds, and if they
respond, it’s a win-win — they’re again actively aware of your business, and you’ve got fresh
feedback to work with for improving processes and marketing tactics.

And even if they wind up unsubscribing, there is a bright side: Your email engagement rates will
improve overall, and your email reputation will see a boost among internet service providers
(ISPs).

8. Brand Story Emails

Storytelling can be a powerful tool to get your point across to customers and prospects by taking
advantage of emotional responses. So ask yourself this: Is there a personal story behind your
brand? Do you have a company profile video you'd like to share?

Across emails and other marketing collateral, make your story evident and use your history to
display reputation and showcase your focus to prove purpose. Every business has a unique story
to tell, so it's good to start with your unique selling proposition.
9. Video Emails

Video emails go a bit hand-in-hand with brand story marketing. They can more creatively share
your company story and expertise. You can email:

o A factory tour video

o A Product/project spotlight video
o A Company overview

Incorporating your videos in email marketing is a smart strategy because 95% of a video
message is retained versus only 10% when reading text. They simply get high engagement!
Wistia performed A/B testing on their email marketing campaigns and discovered a 21.52%
increase in clicks from image to video thumbnails.