Your marketing plan needs to include a content marketing strategy. The days of just posting on Social Media are over, as are the days of just refreshing your website. Whether you are a destination marketing organization (also known as a CVB (convention and visitors bureau)) or a small business, it is critical to generate content on your site. Success is having a plan behind what you publish and the right team, and brand advocates, to execute the plan.
What I have noticed in the tourism world, is that many destination marketing organizations do not have a blog where they are generating content or enough content on their website. Basically, their websites look like a phone book directory, with the name of their partner business name, address, phone number and a brief description. Tell the consumer more instead of listing all of your restaurants. What makes your dining different than my hometown? What is your area famous for? What your popular local restaurant?Also, instead of making the consumer sort through all of your restaurants, separate them out into different types of food categories, to make it easier for them to find what they are looking for. If you are a small business, tell your story. What makes you the best xyz in your industry, tell me a little bit more about you, show me when upcoming events are happening at your business. Basically, you want to keep the consumer coming back to your website. Here are several reasons why you need a content strategy for your business.
Here are my 5 Reasons Why You Need a Content Marketing Strategy
1. Content Marketing Fulfills the Consumers Desire for More Information
User behavior and technology are changing, as consumers want to know more information about the product or service about your industry before they call you or make a purchase. Consumers are no longer just searching for this information on their computers, they are doing so on tablets and smartphones, as over 75% of consumers own a smartphone. Marketers must rise to the challenge and build a content system that engages, inspires, educates and informs consumers on your product or service.
2. Content Marketing Will Position You As a Brand Leader
Creating great, useful, authentic content will position your brand as a leader in your industry, and increase not only views to your website but word-of-mouth recommendations. If you are Destination Marketing Organization (CVB) it is critical that you have a strong content strategy and create information that is useful. In Lake County, we had a group of bloggers that blogged about family friendly things to do in the area with kids. I had to create a content strategy that not only competed with the market share for those viewers but also work with them to help strengthen our brand. Content marketing allows you to extend your campaign, as it is more long term, cost effective and allows you to create a more engaging content marketing focused strategy versus a campaign which is short lived.
3. Content Marketing Will Improve SEO
By creating strong content you will improve on the SEO front as well. I believe that your content marketing strategy needs to be at the center of your SEO strategy. As people search for you organically, the search engines, (Google, Bing, Yahoo) will deliver the appropriate information to them. Basically, the more engaging and shareable your content is, the better your SEO rankings will be. Also, be creating relevant content, such as a list of all the 4th of July fireworks or trick-or-treat hours in your destination, Google will favor that content as it feels it is relevant to its users. With so much emphasis on SEO, your content needs to be excellent.
4. Social Media Will Promote You Content
Without great content, your social media platforms will suffer. People will not follow / like your brand or engage with you on any social platform. Content marketing should be produced with social sharing and engagement in mind. You can also use Social Media to influence your content strategy. At Lake County, I used our Twitter and Facebook pages to ask our audience questions like, which restaurant has the best burger in Lake County, and then I created a blog post off of that. Once you know your social media audience you are able to create content that resonates with them and in turn they will share your content and engage with it. I also found that our audience like guides and lists, such as a fall guide of all the things to do in Lake County in the fall or the trick-or-treat hours for all of the communities in Lake County. Both of which allowed for people to share the information and interact with the social media posts, as well as generating clicks back to our website.
5. Consumers Will Turn Into Your Brand Advocates
When I created a content marketing strategy for Visit Lake County, I put our customer first. I analyzed the audience that we built on Facebook, what the consumers who received our monthly newsletters were clicking on, and what people were searching for on our website. I then decided to group area events together for certain times of the year, like our fall guide, so everything was in one place and easy for them to find. I quickly learned that I was no longer making a sales pitch, as the content we were delivering was what the consumer was looking for. Content marketing is never a sales pitch, you create great content to be useful to your target audience, as it informs, inspires and entertains them. The key in all of this, is to produce great content to help your target audience find what they are looking for and to connect your brand to the consumer in a memorable way.
With this strategy I found, I was able to build trust in the community and with our Social Media followers without thinking of selling. This also helped us with word-of-mouth marketing and brought us high quality, long-term customers who repeatedly came back to our website, brand advocates who constantly shared our content and super fans who were always engaging with our social media posts. This strategy turned our brand into a publisher who informed customers by giving them relevant information that they were looking for. Our website usage saw record numbers and our content strategy was a main reason for that, as nearly 40% of the website traffic was being generated through our blogs.
Your competitors may already have a content strategy, they may not, but you don’t want to wait for them to start your own content strategy. Get ahead in the game and start giving your consumers what they want, be a leader in your community and someone consumers think of immediately when they are searching for things do, places to dine, etc. A strong content strategy will lead to increased traffic to your website, brand advocates and sales. Do you have a content strategy already in place?
