5 Types Of Content Marketing To Boost Your Campaigns

You read that right. This is one of those interesting cases where you don’t just get what you pay for. With content marketing your investment in creating great pieces that engage your audience, throughout their buyer journey, will keep paying itself forward.

For one thing, 60% of marketers reuse and repurpose content between two to five times. And there are studies showing that people can recall 65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later. 

Ready to up your marketing game? Check out these 5 types of content that will give it a boost:

1) Social Media

Everyone knows they need to be on social media, but not everyone seems to be clear on why or how. First thing’s first – social media is where most of your target audience is spending a lot of their time. Establishing a presence there is vital to ensure that you’re amplifying your reach.

Now about the how. Do a survey of all of the social media platforms on which you can establish a business account. There are the 7 that you’ll think of more or less immediately – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube. And there may be more that are relevant to your particular industry and target audience.

Make sure you’ve done your research and have put together a comprehensive list to choose from. Depending on what you have the capacity to do, you may wish to start with 2-3 accounts initially and build momentum from there.

You’ll want to focus on the platforms where your buyer personas are spending their time. And you’ll want to create the kind of content that performs best there. There is absolutely no need to start from scratch. Take some deep dives into what your competitors, and others targeting your buyer personas, are up to. Be sure to build on and tweak their strategies so that you are tailoring them to your needs.

2) Ebooks

Ebooks are a very effective type of content to produce. They help you establish credibility, generate and segment leads and build email lists; they give your leads something of substantial value that they can download; and they’re typically longer form content, allowing you to engage your target audience in meaningful ways. They’re also relatively low cost to produce and still give you fantastic ROIs.

When preparing your ebook(s) consider the following:

– Tie your ebook to a larger marketing campaign so you can reuse and repurpose your marketing creatives.

– Do you have any existing content you can use to build out your ebook content?

– What topics do you want to be considered a subject matter expert on?

– If you have an active blog content, which of your posts are the most popular? Enlist the help of Google Analytics to make sure that you’re getting an accurate picture. OR you can visit BuzzSumo and see what your competitor’s top performing pieces of content are. This will give you a great starting point for the type of content you’ll want to produce.

– Make sure that your writing is easy to understand and full of valuable information. Break down complex concepts and don’t assume that your readers will have an understanding of your industry’s jargon. This is where your buyer persona’s come in handy. They will ensure you know who you’re writing for and how you can create value for them.

– How can you break down the ebook topic into segments? You don’t want your ebook to come across as a never ending monologue. Just as you have a goal for what your readers will take away from the entire ebook, there needs to be a goal for each chapter. 

– How can you break up the content? Infographics, other visuals, and lists are all great tools to break up the text in your ebook and make sure that your readers stay engaged. 

– Getting your ebook professionally designed will ensure it stands out as a polished piece of branded content. That polish will come from the consistent use of fonts and colour and a well designed layout.  

3) Infographics

Infographics allow you to break down content into bite sized chunks that emphasize only the most compelling pieces of information. This helps you reach those who tend to skip content when there’s a lot of data involved.

Infographics are easily consumed, shared and help you establish a sense of authority on a subject. This is true so long as your infographics are well thought out and effectively designed. Keep your infographic designs simple and clean so that they’re easy to understand. Organize the content into distinct sections and make sure that all of the text you’re using, from the title to any descriptions, are necessary.

Cut out any excess and focus on providing concise explanations. The ROI you’ll get on the time you put into telling your story visually can be significant in the form of shares and engagement.

Kimp Tip: Get more mileage out of your infographics by repurposing them. Resize them or slice them up for easy sharing on social media. And be sure to integrate them into your blog or email newsletters. 

4) Templates

Templates are a great way to provide added value. They can generate leads for you, if you require the submission of contact details to access your template(s), they can give you great data (which templates do people seem most drawn to?) and they will help you provide your audience with value, by saving them time and helping them achieve their goals.

They’re an effective way to keep yourself top of mind too. After you create value for your audience the first time, they’ll be returning to your website to find more. Not sure where to start? Think about your audience and the types of processes that are important to them. Once you’ve determined those, create efficiencies for them through templates that they can easily use and edit/modify.

Hearing the word processes might make you think that this is most effective for B2B marketing. Don’t be fooled – there are plenty of opportunities to make use of templates with B2C marketing as well. It could be as simple as a how to guide or a to do list that breaks down a complex task into manageable small steps.  

5) Blog Posts 

Blog posts are an essential part of any content strategy. They keep your website up to date with thoughtful content that engages your audience. They’re shareable, searchable and attract new visitors, helping you secure organic traffic. And they can be easily repurposed into other forms of content.

There’s a ton of resources to help you create great blogs and lots of think pieces on how exactly you should structure them and how long they should be. Figuring out the right combination for your audience will require ongoing trial and error. 

A few tips and tricks to get you started:

– Stick to around 1000 words in length, per blog. Be sure to study how your audience is engaging with your content, and others’ to determine whether to increase the length.

– Make Google Analytics your best friend and study how each of your pieces performs. 

– Study your competitors, and others who are writing high performing pieces on related topics. Use tools like BuzzSumo and Ahrefs to help you get this job done.

– Depending on your findings from your research of high performing content, and your analysis of your own content, play around with different formats for your blogs. This can mean lists, how-to-guides, case studies, anecdotes, profiles – the options are really endless. 

– Make sure you have compelling headlines. CoSchedule’s headline analyzer can give you a hand with that.  

– Have a CTA and don’t just make it about getting a sale. You can use your CTAs to drive engagement in other ways too. 

– Try to balance seasonally relevant or time sensitive content with evergreen content (the types of content that are always relevant to your target audience).

Your Content Marketing

Try implementing even just one of the types of content we’ve recommended and your marketing will benefit from the investment. Content marketing is all about the stories you tell and how they engage your audience on an ongoing basis. And this has become increasingly important as the world we live in gets more crowded with messages vying for our attention.

Standing out from the crowd won’t come from one-off campaigns and grand gestures. No, slow and steady really does win this race.