3 tips every content marketing agency should follow

Any content market agency worth its salt knows that campaigns should involve much more than blogs, pretty pictures and celebrity retweets. A good content marketing campaign can include all that, yes, but real success comes from collecting data in the right ways, identifying meaningful trends, correlating these against wider industry movements and building a brand message that hits harder than any of your competitors. 

Done right, a content marketing campaign will not only provide you regular blogs to boost organic visibility, but will also capture targeted lead information, analyse that data in unique ways and improve ROI, all while entertaining and informing your audience.

That sounds like an awful lot of benefits. Can creative content really go that far? The answer is an emphatic yes; content is the cornerstone of every and any marketing campaign. However, the right message needs to be crafted and amplified across the most relevant channels to pique interest and spread the word.

Identify your market for creative dominance

A content marketing agency knows that the audience is key to any inbound strategy. There’s little point in creating content that doesn’t intrinsically attract attention and light a spark.

Content is absolutely everywhere in a multitude of forms. The noise can be unbearable at times; everybody – thanks to smartphones – is now a photographer, a vlogger, a videographer and a blogger all rolled into one.

You need to be clever with your content, not just for it to get seen, but for it to appear in front of the eyes of high-value leads and people ready to spend money with your company on the optimal platform at the perfect time.

The first step to creating effective content isn’t to know how to string two words together. It’s looking deep within yourself and the structure of your business and processes to give an honest assessment of who you are and what you can do better than anybody else.

We say that because the next stage is by far and away one of the most important that any content marketing agency should consider: building personas and identifying the people you want to create content for.

Would you create content about rollerblades for a pensioner? Probably not, so who would you produce it for? Creating a narrative that focuses on your market’s demographics, their daily routine, their working environment, their level of industry knowledge, their job beliefs, how they view their industry and the trends surrounding it are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself before you even begin to create something new.

To do that effectively you have to have confidence in your brand, what you offer and, again, research your personas and target the right people. Once those foundations are laid you can begin to talk a good game; looking online to discover how your market is communicating with each other and with brands over social media, and introducing that language into the content you create to be more relatable and show people that yours is a brand that cares about the people it wants to build relationships with. 

Set the tone with a creative content strategy

Once you get a solid picture of your market and research where they spend their time online, you can begin to build an effective creative strategy with a content marketing agency that enhances your brand presence and draws them to explore more about you and who you are.

Consistency is key when it comes to content marketing, partly because of the sheer volume of noise you’re competing against online. One blog post every couple of months or so simply won’t be enough to keep in the minds of leads you want to attract and nurture. Batching, for instance, is a technique that can help you produce content at set times on a regular basis and steer the conversation toward topics that are currently trending as well as offering your unique perspective on current events.

How does a content marketing agency go about creating the next big brand, though? Can it be done with content alone?

It can and it can’t, which is why working with a content marketing agency can help brands unlock both their creative and sales potential. Content alone can only do so much in aiding business growth; the real power of an inbound marketing campaign comes with complementing that creativity with other channels such as social media platforms and email marketing to target the right leads and continue to nurture them without turning them off.

Reach out to your audience with powerful content

Content syndication is just one form of creative outreach that can take brands to the next level. Not only can syndication amplify your content and get it in front of a wider audience, it’s also vital to attracting attention from other websites and building a natural link profile that boosts your organic presence which will – in the long-term – reduce your inbound costs as people find you without having to resort to biddable channels.

Really big brands though realise they can grow and improve their sales almost immediately by pairing some persuasive content with biddable media to better convert that traffic and collect essential lead data in ethical, transparent ways.

No matter how deep down the rabbit hole you go though, or how complicated content theory appears, there’s one thing you need to remember: the user matters the most. You’re not just creating content for yourself; you’re creating content mostly for them.

And it doesn't have to just be one-way traffic. One of the most powerful inbound content strategies you can employ is letting your target audience contribute and interact with your brand with user-generated content.

Every single person on the planet has a story within them. Allowing them to contribute to your brand in unique ways and tell it – whether it be through social media, guest blogging or other medium – is one of best ways to create real relationships with your brand, using creative content to bridge the gap between business and audience to attract targeted leads who want to build real long-term relationships with you and your team.

Working with a content marketing agency

Content marketing is an essential part of the inbound marketing process. However, all this can seem daunting to the uninitiated, and it certainly takes some commitment in terms of time, effort and resources. Learn how to attract, nurture and convert leads in a creative way with the Six & Flow team. We're experts at what we do, and we love hearing from someone new.