The central goal of content marketing is to create relevant and consistent content so as to attract new audience and retain the existing ones. The ongoing pandemic crisis has changed the face of the world as we know it. All businesses and customers alike are slowly adapting to the new world. It is, therefore, necessary for us to change our content marketing strategy to adapt to the changing needs of our customers.
LinkedIn has drafted a thorough report on Content Marketing In Times of Uncertainty. In this report LinkedIn has analyzed how to adapt proper content marketing strategies and navigate forward in time of crisis. Let’s take a look at the key elements of the report.
Analyze the changing needs of the customers
Content marketing requires the analyzing of the needs customers, both current and prospective. Once you’ve comprehended what they need, you can provide them with the solution, and lead them to purchase.
What the customers need right now is a way to adapt to the changing world. If you hope to engage them, your content marketing strategy should focus on that as well.
The first step is to find out where your audience is spending most of their time. Your content should appear on the right platforms and in the right format to be visible to your customers. Social media, YouTube, webinars, eBooks, and white papers are an excellent place to start.
Adapt your marketing strategy to meet their needs
Your customers are recovering from the shock of the pandemic. Will a hard-sell, materialistic ad appeal to them right now? This is highly unlikely.
What your customers are looking for now is a helping hand offering comfort and support. The best way to engage them is with generosity and empathy. Convey to them how we are all in it together, and together we will overcome it.
Communication and engagement will strengthen their bond with your brand and can potentially make them loyal customers.
Focus on long-term marketing strategy
Unlike short-term sales strategy that B2B companies sometimes focus on, a long-term strategy of brand building has more chances of gaining success with your customers right now.
An effective content marketing strategy is to use emotions of empathy and humanity to increase the mental availability of your brand in front of your customers. The right image of your brand in your customers' minds will benefit you in the long term.
Improve your organic presence
Organic marketing is a slow and steady process. Therefore, now is the best opportunity for you to improve your brand’s organic presence.
· Devote time to optimize your website’s technical SEO.
· Stay active on social media platforms.
· Post Content in different formats (images, videos, PDFs).
· Engage and interact.
Videos are one of the most effective means of transporting your message to your customers. In the current scenario of isolation and home quarantine, people crave human connection. Most of them will easily choose a video over a long-stretching PDF.
If you want to yield even better results, go live.
Use paid advertising to reach the right audience
The most crucial aspect of content marketing is to push your content in front of the right audience. Paid campaigns help you do just that.
LinkedIn offers the best tools and features to market your content to the right audience at the right time. It engages your target audience, increases your brand awareness, and drives more traffic to your website.
Reaping results
Long-term marketing strategies have one downside: a low ROI in the beginning.
The stakeholders, however, measure the ROI during the initial months of the campaign and thus, find the ROI to be dissatisfying.
To tackle this problem, you need to explain to your stakeholders how Key Performance Indicators (KPI) work and the value it adds to your brand in the long-term.
Summing up
COVID-19 has changed the future of content marketing, among other things. All the businesses will need to revisit and re-evaluate their content marketing strategies to continue to fulfill the needs of their customers. It is not a one-day transition and will take time and effort to form a marketing strategy that best serves the changing circumstances.
To read about it in more depth and detail, download the complete "Content Marketing in Times of Uncertainty" report by LinkedIn here.