2021年内容营销:什么可行，什么行不通

With a new year often comes the motivation to shake existing marketing strategies out of outmoded ruts. Relooking your approach to content is one of the best places to kick off the revitalization of your marketing efforts.

在这篇文章中, we’ll take a look at content marketing practices that need to be put out to pasture and what to replace them with, as well as some new angles that will generate and nurture high-quality leads more effectively.

内容营销2021:什么将会起作用

在客户的旅程中，与他们见面

Mapping out your customer journey is a critical step on the road to success in the digital business world. The ways that a customer journey plays out in your company’s sales and marketing strategies go FAR beyond content, 但为了这篇文章, 这是我们关注的地方.

HubSpot的定义 客户旅行地图 如下:

“A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer or prospect goes through to achieve a goal with your company. 通过客户旅行地图的帮助, you can get a sense of your customers’ motivations — their needs and pain points.”

If you take this definition and place it in the context of content, 这一切都归结到最后一句话: 了解客户的各种需求和痛点. If you have a solid understanding of what these are for ALL your customer types, you’ll be able to provide content that speaks to these specifically.

This is in direct contrast to taking a more functional, SEO-driven approach to your content strategy. 当然, 你需要考虑关键词和排名, but doing so without thinking about what your visitors may actually find helpful is counterproductive.

访问你博客的人会有各种各样的原因. 他们可能不知道存在像你这样的产品, in which case they may not even know that they’re experiencing a particular need or pain point.

Your prospect may know about their pain point but have no idea how your product can address it. Or, they may know how your product can solve their problem but have no idea which model or option is best for them.

我开始明白了?

It is imperative that the content you publish on your blog covers topics that speak to every single one of these leads and their respective needs.

Gili Sports就是一个做得很好的网站. Their blog takes every single potential customer’s awareness of paddle boarding (or lack thereof) into consideration. 取 这篇文章 作为一个例子. It’s obviously positioned to speak to leads that have an awareness of the activity but have some hesitation about becoming involved.

看看Gili体育博客上的其他帖子, you’ll find topics that introduce expert tips as well as articles comparing stand-up paddleboarding with other, 更常见的水上运动爱好. Both of these speak to the needs of prospects in various stages of their relationships with Gili Sports’ flagship product.

提供了严重的信誉

许多公司落入了……的陷阱, 再一次, focusing too heavily on hitting the 正确的 keywords for the sake of the very top-end of the marketing funnel. This often happens at the expense of creating content that readers (leads) will find exceptionally valuable. 这也对你博客的可信度没有任何好处, especially if you’re operating in a space that involves science and tech.

来对抗这种懒惰的内容营销方法, forward-thinking businesses ensure that they’re not simply repackaging existing information but also adding their own personal angle of expertise to each piece.

这种专门知识通常得到“专家审查委员会”的支持.” The role of this board isn’t necessarily to generate content from the ground up but to provide new, value-added views on topics that could easily just be “spun” from the mass of info already out there on the web.

Some sites, like Each Night, even go so far as providing a page dedicated to 把焦点放在了相关专家身上 审查他们的内容. 在这一页上, 每个专家的证书都被突出显示, adding a massive level of confidence and goodwill to each piece of content the company publishes on their blog.

gdp8 %智能

While retargeting isn’t purely a content play (it depends heavily on elements of paid advertising), I’m going to discuss it specifically in terms of content in this section.

Many marketers don’t get granular enough when setting up the relationship between their retargeting criteria and advertisement landing pages. They feel that a cookie identifying a visitor as a visitor and nothing else is sufficient reason to show them an advert for a generic landing page containing an equally generic lead magnet.

这在2021年是不够的.

Remarketing technology allows you to get pretty specific when categorizing prospects. If you notice that a specific visitor has read one or more blog posts relating to a specific topic, the obvious thing to do would be to entice them with a Facebook ad that speaks to what you know about them, 正确的?

那么为什么很少有公司这样做呢?

LeadPages offers a terrific example of leveraging this knowledge to serve up landing pages containing specific content and equally specific lead magnets. Neil Patel discusses this example in greater detail in his excellent post on the importance of intelligent content remarketing.

As technology in this space continues to mature and offer greater sophistication, personalization will just get more and more important – to the point of us marketers not being able to ignore it anymore.

现在就赶上这股潮流吧. 这是数字营销的现状和未来.

你的内容营销还有效吗? 这里有 衡量内容营销成功的7种方法!

内容营销2021:避免什么

不要将内容局限于文本和图形

It’s remarkable to me that so many marketing professionals still equate “content” with traditional blog posts containing text and the odd image. 展望未来, embracing video is going to become increasingly effective for companies who have long sales cycles or sell sophisticated services.

It’s an inescapable fact that our audiences’ attention spans are decreasing. A famous 2015 study by Microsoft found that the average internet user’s ability to remain focused decreased from 12 to 8.仅仅15年的25秒.

波士顿数字公司使用了“冲动的一代’ when describing the crop of content consumers that marketers need to somehow keep engaged to successfully continue selling their products.

正如我之前提到的, this issue is compounded if you’re selling a complicated product in a B2B space. The more a prospect has to bend their mind around how your service can be integrated into their operations, 你越有可能失去他们的兴趣.

输入解释视频作为博客内容.

In a recent post about how marketers can find an antidote to our declining ability to ingest written information, WyzOwl 引用的一项研究 conducted by Forbes Insights proving that the average internet user will watch 2.7分钟的在线视频.

想想你还能传达多少信息.7分钟的声音，演讲，视觉，文字和动画.

Now, compare that to the amount of information an internet user will take in when reading 8.25秒的文本.

是的，这甚至不是一场比赛.

当然, this is a slight oversimplification; excellent written content will win out over poorly produced video. But the difference in averages here is just too astonishing to ignore. Video as a format is the clear winner when it comes to breaking down complex topics.

缺点是生产成本. Whether or not your service warrants this investment is a question only you can answer.

作为一个例子，看一下 LFA胶囊填充剂. These guys sell expensive, niche machinery to an audience that has other analog options. Getting a medicine or supplement manufacturer to switch from their manual methods isn’t an easy sell. This is why they spared little expense in producing a wide variety of videos that highlight the benefits of each of their products.

不要在真空中发布内容

Okay, I may be overstating the negativity somewhat by calling it a vacuum. 但如果你仅仅依靠SEO来为你的着陆页面绘制线索, you’re likely coming up 再一次st a legion of established competitors. And a massive proportion of them is doing (at least) the same level of keyword optimization that you are.

Essentially, breaking into the top page of results isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight. 这就是为什么内容营销是一个长期的游戏. 即使你设法让你的一些内容排名, you can’t count on Google’s fickle algorithm to keep it entrenched at the top.

不是一个作家? 不是一个问题! 在本文中抓取专家提示: 如何写精彩的网站内容.

Building additional windows onto your content is absolutely essential if you’re relying on your blog to generate and nurture leads. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to actively generate a solid social media following and continually promote your content on these various channels.

有 不缺少经过验证的方法 来增加你的社交媒体曝光率, but one that’s often overlooked is simply motivating visitors to your website to join up.

A site that does this effectively and without seeming too desperate is 光环. Three-quarters of the way down the Amazon repricing tool’s homepage is an elegantly designed UI element clearly communicating the benefits of joining their thriving Facebook community.

没有当面的硬性推销. 有 just a selection of quotes from existing members highlighting what they have enjoyed as being part of the community.

在关闭

新年只是日历上的一个新日期. Content marketing strategies that worked at the end of 2020 are likely to still be effective well into 2021. 事实上, I’ll go so far as to say that content marketing trends that brought leads in 2016 are mostly still relevant.

日历上的新日期经常给我们带来什么, 虽然, is a renewed sense of purpose – a willingness to look at what isn’t working and switch things up a little.

I want to encourage everyone who read this article to think even beyond the changeups I mentioned here. Try to do even more research into how you can mix things up in your approach to content marketing.

One thing I’ve always found an excellent common denominator when replacing stale strategies with newer, more effective ones is to think from our target audience’s perspective. We get so close to solutions that it’s often hard to see the forest for the trees.

后退一步. Remove your CMO or CEO hat and think about your content from a lead’s point of view. 你想看什么? 你想学什么? 这家公司如何才能赢得你的信任和你的血汗钱?

带着这些问题, you’ll be able to develop an approach to content marketing that makes things work better than any prescribed tactic out there. 祝新年万事如意!

 

Travis Jamison is a founder turned investor and a search engine mega nerd. After a decade of experience in building and growing online businesses (with two sizable exits), 他把注意力转向了投资. 并创建了 投资.io for other entrepreneurs turned investors to learn, connect and collaborate.