It’s well-known that a well-executed content marketing campaign can provide a substantial return on investment.
According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times more leads than most outbound marketing strategies at 62 percent less cost.
As marketers allocate more of their budgets to content marketing this year, one strategy that often gets overlooked is content promotion.
A survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute revealed that 55 percent of B2B marketers were unsure of what a successful content marketing campaign looked like.
Content without promotion is like link building without links or creating a landing page without a call to action. That’s why promotion should receive as much focus as creation.
Here are seven proven content promotion strategies that will drive traffic to your content and website.
- Paid Social Promotion
Paid social promotion can be one of the most precise strategies available to market your content to people who are interested in and likely to engage with it.
For example, by utilizing Facebook’s Audience Insights, businesses can segment audience lists by specific boundaries, such as demographics, psychographics, and intent. This allows marketers to create audience segments more aligned with their brand and specific content topics on their website. The benefits of paid social promotion include:
- Increasing website traffic with relevant visitors.
- Generating more conversions by marketing to people with high purchasing intent.
- Familiarizing users with your brand.
Advertising content can help increase brand recall for customers who come across your website in future searches. They’ll view your brand as more authoritative because they’re already familiar with it.
Paying to promote your content can help you cut through the noise and competition.
Paid promotion is also an excellent strategy for targeting users who have interacted with your website or blog in the past month. Remarketing increases your chance of reclaiming a missed conversion and fosters brand loyalty by providing useful content based on past consumption.
Before implementing a paid promotion strategy, it’s crucial to outline your goals. These might include increasing readership for your content or generating more conversions on your website. With these in mind, you can quantify the impact of these strategies and assess their success.
- Targeted Sharing
Facebook is no longer the B2C marketing giant it once was; after its recent algorithm update, organic reach for business posts on the platform is limited.
To reach more people over social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, consider targeted sharing.
Targeted sharing involves tagging someone in a post in hopes they will share your content with their audience. Some methods to achieve this include:
- Linking to people who would be interested in your article within the post snippet.
- Citing sources featured in the article directly in the snippet.
- Engaging industry peers with a question or debate point in the snippet to curate conversation over a topic.
Twitter’s advanced search tool allows you to find people in your niche geographically, using certain hashtags, and more.
Instagram recently introduced a feature allowing users to follow hashtags. This enables businesses to reach more customers interested in their industry on this platform.
- Use Videos Over Social Media
Incorporating videos into your content is a proven way to stand out on social media channels.
The statistics around video marketing are remarkable:
- Google states that half of internet users search for a video related to a product or service before visiting a store.
- Views on sponsored videos on Facebook increased 258 percent between June 2016 and June 2017.
From experience, including a video on a landing page can significantly boost your conversion rate. The demand for video content on social media often surpasses that for written content.
Video can also be more engaging than written content, with viral videos serving as ongoing promotional gifts.
However, hosting a long, informative video could discourage click-throughs to your landing page. Posting a teaser video, eye-catching image, or GIF can entice users to visit the landing page.
- Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is an underutilized tool in our industry.
Influencer marketing, in theory, is powerful. Not only do influencer shares expose your content to a new audience, but they also enhance credibility.
According to a MuseFind study, 92 percent of people trust influencers more than advertisements or celebrities.
Approach this strategy by reaching out directly to influencers in your industry to share your content or engage in promotional partnerships.
Use tools like Followerwonk and Intellifluence to find active influencers in your industry.
Mentioning an influencer within your content or linking to them can draw their attention, increasing the likelihood they’ll share your content. This enhances your content’s shares and link opportunities.
- Content Syndication
Content syndication is a time-tested SEO strategy, rarely the main focus of many content marketing efforts. It’s a great way to quickly broaden your audience reach with minimal effort.
Research prospective syndication sites, asking about their analytics and monitoring keywords for relevant discussion topics.
When syndicating content on sites like LinkedIn, Medium, or forums, be selective, sharing only your best material.
In content communities, actively sharing others’ content and building relationships is key for potential links and shares.
- Link Building
Link building remains one of Google’s top three ranking factors for organic rank. Improve your content’s visibility by enhancing its organic backlink signals.
Link building for content promotion should be strategic, focusing on evergreen content or key website pages.
Here are some basic link-building strategies:
- Guest blog on authoritative sites with a contextual link back to your content.
- Engage in broken link building through outreach to offer value to existing content.
- Email industry thought leaders about content valuable for their research.
Ultimately, producing high-quality content encourages organic backlinks, which requires promotion for discovery.
- Personalized Email Marketing
Email marketing effectively engages already interested customers. It enhances retention, delivering shares and links directly to your content.
Not everyone on your email list will immediately engage with your newest post. Here are strategies to increase email engagement:
- Create an e-newsletter showcasing recent or viral content.
- Segment subscribers based on site interaction.
- Personalize emails with recipient names and relevant site engagement info.
- Use interactive content, like GIFs or videos, to make emails stand out.
- Conduct A/B testing on subject lines and content to measure impact.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing has gained significant traction in our industry. With decreasing organic reach in search and social channels, focusing on effective promotion strategies to enhance content visibility is more crucial than ever.
