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Content marketing is the promotion of content with a view of bringing your audience to your website, branded microsite or social media landing page and converting them to perform an action. This is also known as inbound marketing. The process of content marketing across multiple channels needs to be carefully managed for successful results and positive conversion outcomes.

Examples of conversions prospects are likely to perform include:

  • Buy -- add a product or service to a basket and check-out (paid or not)
  • Inquire -- complete a form to inquire about a product, service or event
  • Download -- complete a form to gain access to premium content
  • Watch -- go to a landing page to watch a product video
  • Social share -- Like/Tweet/Digg; your customers sharing your content with their network of contacts

Email and social media are the most important channels for pushing your content to your website or mobile web. They need to be used, tested, measured and continually improved in order to gain optimum results.

The Challenges to Great Content Marketing

The main issue businesses have when looking to improve their channel content marketing is failing to plan effectively. Channel content marketing is part of your marketing strategy, so much of the detail will be included in your strategy document.

The Objective

You will need to identify the objectives of your activity such as selling more of a certain product, gaining more registrations online or boosting traffic to a social media channel.

The Offer

You then need to define the messaging and offer that will be used to promote your objective. This needs to be aligned to your target audience with appropriate tone of voice and a suitable call to action to drive traffic.

The Channels

Each channel needs to be reviewed so that the most appropriate channels for your message, objective and audience can be selected and utilized. For example, LinkedIn is not suitable for B2C promotions, and Facebook is unlikely to be suitable for B2B activity. Also the landing pages need to make use of the most suitable channels. It is quite acceptable to use social media such as a Facebook page as a landing page for some objectives, but don’t forget, getting people to buy something online is easier to manage on your own website or mobile website.

The Technology

Finally, the tools, systems and processes within the company will need to be aligned for efficient and effective campaign execution. Many firms are looking to Customer Experience Management (CXM) vendors to supply all the technology needed, such as Content Management, Commerce, Email, Landing Sites, Mobile, Social Media Management and Monitoring, Hosting and Analytics.

Solutions for Excellent Content Marketing

By utilizing marketing skills and technology, successful content marketing across appropriate channels can be used to drive traffic, conversion and sales. By taking a structured and planned approach, your objectives can be met with the correct activity, supported by suitable Customer Experience Management tools.

Title image courtesy of winui (Shutterstock)

Editor's Note: To read more of Rob McCarthy's views on the customer experience:

-- CXM: Defining Your Website Structure and User Journeys