Content marketing is like a chess game. You have to plan several moves in advance. You sometimes have to make sacrifices to move forward. You have to make decisions based on changes in the market. Your competitors are also playing this game. No matter how big they are, you can always compete with them on content marketing. Here’s some tips on how to beat your competition at content marketing.
Know Your Competition
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” – Some really smart content marketer. Your competition is trying to do the same thing you are: reach customers in the most efficient and effective way possible. You should collect data on what they are doing to find out what is working and what is not working. If you see that they are posting certain articles which are driving a lot of activity, you should try posting similar articles and see if you get the same type of results. A great tool to monitor your competition’s content is BuzzSumo. They allow you to see the articles that your competition is posting and which ones are getting the most social actions. Another strategy is to compile a Twitter list to monitor what your competition is posting.
Create Interactive Content
Interactive content is a powerful marketing tool. You are probably most familiar with this type of content when you think of personality quizzes, polls, and trivia. However, there are tons of different interactive content formats out there. This form of content allows your readers to actually interact with your page. It is fairly new to the market and your competitors are probably not utilizing this type of engaging content. Interactive content can be used to drive website traffic, increase social engagement, and collect leads.
This type of content will help you stand out and gain a competitive advantage over your competition. You need to add this to your content marketing strategy and publish interactive content on a regular basis. A great site to create interactive content for your own website is ContentTools.
Have a Clear Call-to-Action
Look at your competitor’s articles. At the end of the article, is there a clear call-to-action? Your competition might be getting website traffic from content marketing efforts but are they missing out on conversions because they are lacking a call-to-action? At the end of all your content, make sure you have a next step for your reader. This can be signing up for a free trial, requesting a demo, downloading an Ebook, or subscribing to a newsletter. You can also test different calls-to-action on different articles and see which one has the best conversion rate.
Conduct Q&A’s and Interviews with your Customers
Companies like to say that they know their target customers, but do they really? Conducting customer interviews kills 2 birds with 1 stone. Not only do you get to learn from and build a strong relationship with your customers, you also get to collect valuable information to create a quality piece of content. If your customers are all saying the same thing about a topic or all have the same problems, your potential customers are feeling the same way. Use this information to create a piece of content that people in your industry will want to read and share.
Use Retargeted Ads
Your content can get potential customers to land on your website. They browse around and then end up leaving. What do you do now? Go after that person! Just because someone left your website without signing up does not mean they are not a potential client. They could have had something come up or they just weren’t ready to make a decision. You can use services like AdRoll or Google Remarketing to stay in front of these potential customers with ads. This can be a powerful 1-2 punch. Lead them there with content and bring them back with retargeted ads.
Use Data that you have Collected
You’re an expert in your industry. This is why people want to read your content. You see pain points that your customers have and you offer a solution to those problems. You have probably collected data about the industry or have seen overall trends. Use this information to put together an article. Using real data is a great way to produce a really informative and engaging article. Have you seen that customers in your industry who do <blank> see an increase in <blank>? Have you seen a decline in <blank> when <blank> increases? Fill in these blanks and create a really solid piece of content.