How to Differentiate Your Brand with a Content Marketing Strategy

The cutthroat competition requires you to position your brand uniquely – be it online or otherwise. Moreover, you need to opt for alternative avenues to distinguish your brand and promote it as a thought leader. One way of handling is by creating content, in the form of blogs/ articles, videos, online posts, to arouse interest amongst your target market.

52% of buyers strongly agree that if brands packaged relevant content together, it would help expedite the research phase.

• Demand Gen Report 2018 Content Preferences Survey Report

Creating and publishing content allows you to reach out to your target market with your customised messages; thereby enhancing the visibility of your brand.

Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.

• DemandMetric

It all starts how you are positioning your brand. You need to differentiate yourself from your competition. To start with, you need to formulate the branding goals of your product – what is the brand mission and vision?

Your competitors have also thrown in the towel. They are also creating content. So, how do you stay different?

Create content that keeps the reader engrossed

Before you start working on your content strategy, you need to create the target personas in mind.

What are the demographics of your readers?

What information are they searching?

What are the queries?

You need to put yourself in the shoes of your readers and understand what they want as takeaways from your content. If there is a match, it can also result in the content shared online, and making it go viral!

Next, you need to be unique and different. Else, you get lost in the crowd. Researchers have said that if they come across anything exciting and thought-provoking, they store it in their long-term memory. To keep it more interesting; you also need to back your content with the latest data.

Customer trends change | Stay updated

Despite deploying resources to know the latest trend; you may still miss some of them. While you are receiving the updates in trends, you also need to keep a track on industry leaders and your competitors and abreast of the latest trends. This way, you get to know what is currently the favourite with your target market. Accordingly, you need to tweak your content marketing strategy. Being the first mover helps.

Create video content

Video is an essential addition in the content toolbox. Research states that 53% of consumers engage after viewing a video online (Source: Brightcove’s 2018 Video Marketing Survey). However, creating videos are not easy. Videos that do not explain the solutions on offer or are of low quality do not matter much to customers.

You need to understand the buying cycle and after that, create separate videos for each step in the buying cycle. Then you need to have a storyboard in place based on which your content marketing team creates the video. Do not forget to keep it short and simple. Finally, do not forget to include a call to action. Suggest the step ahead:

Download the video;

Contact your team for more information;

Click for outright purchase; etc.

Influencer Marketing | the New Order

Customers are more and more getting influenced by reviews online. Studies have shown that customers prefer to get attached to a brand based on reviews by an influencer. More and more companies are including influencers in their content strategy.

Most influencers share valuable content. Some of the positive effects include enhanced word of mouth and social proof.

89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels

• Big Commerce

You need to decide how to get associated with the influencers and benefit from the association. To start with, be specific about your goals. Then shortlist the influencers for your brand and engage them in a relationship. The influencers may present you with opportunities, or you may need to create campaigns to draw their attention.

Set up KPIs | measure results

When you are spending resources; you also need to track their performance. One of the prime analytical tools is Google Analytics. They provide a large volume of data that allows you to track the users who are visiting your content, number of news and returning users, how much they are engaging with your content. All these data help you by providing valuable feedback for your content strategy.

Conclusion

Brands need to project their USP to their target market. Content proves to be a cost-effective way that allows you to stand apart. However, marketers forget that they still to differentiate themselves from the competition. You need to be ready with a content strategy that caters to the changing behaviour of your clients. Moreover, given that the ranking algorithm of Google changes periodically, you can take the help of artificial intelligence to give you specific inputs about what content to create and the specific distribution strategies.