Over 50% of the world population have access to internet and 39% are active on social media. In 2014, a billion websites were identified worldwide.
The art of storytelling
In an overly competitive environment, a differentiation strategy is more likely to make your brand stand out. Offer your readers unique and high added value content. Don’t just talk about your products or services but focus more on your reader’s needs. Talk about your company’s values and what you stand for. People rarely buy a product but rather the story behind it. Why should a client choose your product over a competitor?
Storytelling is commonly used in brands marketing strategies. But big pharmas are reluctant because of the many regulatory constraints medical content must align with.
Where to start?
Content marketing offers many advantages:
- Grows your audience
- Increases your brand’s visibility
- Positions you as a thought expert in your field
Steps to get started:
- Set your goal: Building brand awareness, generating leads, increasing sales, etc.
- Identify who are your readers (personas): a marketing persona is a fictional character created with a combination of raw data and educated guesses, representing slices of your website’s readership in order to identify and meet your readers’ needs better
- Select key themes and subjects
- Set up your editorial calendar
- Diversify content: visuals, videos, ebooks, etc.
- Amplify: think about online advertisement and set up a SEO strategy. If your content doesn’t reach the right target, your work will be in vain.
- Track campaign performances
Content marketing is a long term investment. You won’t get results in just a month or two. Be authentic and consistent and always stay true to your brand positioning.
Ready, set, go!
For this project, as in any project, assess risks and set up an action plan to help minimize them. Before you publish anything, be sure you have a strong content base. Thereafter, regular monitoring will help you find topics to share on your website.
If you are not convinced yet but this project, answer these simple questions to help you make a decision:
- What are the advantages of new contents?
- What impact on my brand?
- What do your competitors do in terms of content marketing?
- How do they deal with crisis?
Test, adjust, start again…
It is essential to assess actions’ effectiveness, but what do you assess exactly? It will depend on the goal you set:
- Traffic sources: what traffic source (social media, emailing, or online advertisement) is more efficient? Knowing this will let you know what channel need more investment.
- Links: track your links to measure their performance. It will help you know what topics are more interesting for your audience, what partnerships perform the best, etc.
- Lead generation: Newsletters’ subscriptions or number of downloads if your goal
If content is king, performance monitoring is your compass for a great content marketing strategy!