How Are Entrepreneurs Using Content Marketing in the New Normal?

Content marketing has always been a vital channel for entrepreneurs, specifically small business owners who engage local customers and optimize local searches. However, things have significantly changed, and it’s safe to assume that we won’t be going back to pre-pandemic normalcy any time soon.

This is not to say that you can’t continue using this channel to grow and scale your business. However, if you want to be more successful with content marketing, you have to calibrate your strategy for the times. Here are some of how the pandemic has changed priorities and strategies in content marketing.

Knowing Your Audience Segment is Crucial

Businesses of all sizes must now communicate concretely to their audience segments. This helps target customers depending on their situations and what is most relevant to them. For example, understanding the condition on the ground, from country to country, state to state, and zip code to zip code. Customizing communications store by store may be necessary when it comes to some businesses—like banks and restaurants.

Instead of focusing on general demographics like age and gender, experts have realized that marketing messages must be tailored to customer circumstances.

To engage with people emotionally, it is necessary to segment them based on various factors that affect their purchasing decisions, from psychographics to attitudinal traits. Check out these statistics from five waves of studies conducted by the EY Future Consumer Index:

·       For 32% of consumers, affordability is the most important consideration for shopping.

·       Health comes first (25% of the time). Ensuring their well-being and their loved ones by purchasing things they know are safe and taking precautions to reduce the likelihood of harm.

·       Some 16% of those polled said they prioritized the environment over all other considerations regarding purchasing products.

·       People buy from brands they think are upfront, honest, and transparent for the greater good. This consumer priority focuses on society (15%).

·       12% say that they value “living in the moment,” which means they judge businesses on the type of experience a company provides through the different customer touchpoints.

With the help of customer segmentation and personas, you will better understand your customers’ needs and preferences. Even better, the information gleaned from these analyses can improve the entire client experience.

You Are Competing with Your Customers’ Best Experiences They’ve Had To Date

Before the pandemic struck, consumers’ expectations were already on the rise. Generation Z was raised when technology was woven into every aspect of life. Our expectations for hyper-personalization were already being set by direct-to-consumer companies like Parachute and Glossier, who were good at using personal data.

As soon as COVID-19 struck, the pace of digital transitions increased dramatically. As a result, consumers’ expectations of what companies can do for them with digital experiences skyrocketed.

Customers want so much more than a simple digital transaction to be frictionless.

Companies are now looking for anticipatory, personalized experiences throughout the consumer journey since they have access to their data. Three guidelines can help businesses adapt to the ever-increasing expectations of their customers online:

·       Consider employing real-time analytics rather than a snapshot taken at a specific point in time to measure brand scores for the entire customer-facing business.

·       Build a solid data and technology foundation to support critical customer journey use cases.

·       Ensure that customer support, sales, and marketing are aligned across the customer journey so that the end consumer does not notice any inconsistencies between them.

If you can’t meet this new breed of customer demands, your business is at risk. On the other hand, if the standard keeps rising, we’ll have to look for new ways to value consumer experiences, whether they’re B2C or B2B.

Increasingly, today’s consumers demand any experience to be seamless, anticipatory, relevant and linked. Put another way, they are only interested in receiving what they want when they want it. There are no obstacles in their way, they insist.

Data and technology must be at the heart of any company that wants to create these experiences. This may necessitate the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

Revitalized content can be supplied through email, social media channels, or mobile apps. In addition, you can create hybrid experiences like a virtual trade expo for B2B buyers or webinars for consumers. Finally, be sure to add convenience to the formula – like offering an optional but rewarding membership program for exclusive perks when engaging with your business.

Customers are increasingly demanding greater personalization. Therefore, organizations will need to employ more data analytics and business intelligence to sharpen their decision-making and drive more relevance in their customer interactions to build better human relationships with the brands they represent.

Content Formats in the New Normal

Podcasting

Podcasting has been a growing content marketing area. Podcasts have become a popular source of material since more people are at home and want to learn new topics and new skills in their spare time.

What are you currently working on that could be turned into a podcast? A podcast, like a blog, must be maintained and updated regularly. You can’t lose the interest of your audience by droning on and on. In addition, your podcast needs to be entertaining and educational.

Video

Video is not new, but not all companies use it effectively. Video is a growing trend due to its performance and number of viewers. Does reading a book or watching a video sound more appealing to you? With our video marketing cheat sheet, it’s easy to get your videos seen.

Craft a concrete content strategy to succeed in digital marketing in the new normal. For example, are you planning to make ‘How-to’ videos, provide client testimonials, or provide particular insights and points of view to help your customers understand your product or service? All of these considerations should be taken into account when building a well-structured video content strategy.

Content for Voice Search

With the rise of smartphones and speech-activated devices like Google Home and Alexa, voice search has overtaken conventional search in terms of popularity. A free eBook on Anvil’s website explains how to use voice search. Is your content ready for voice searches? For the time being, the majority of voice search is focused on local search, which is critical for brick-and-mortar businesses. How do you help your clients if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar location? It’s a terrific method for potential buyers to find your brand if you create a FAQ for your company, products, and services. You can create a video series or podcast that answers the FAQs, too.

Content for Visual Search

Is your material searchable through visual means? More than a third of online searches are now based on picture recognition techniques — visual search. If you don’t prepare your content for visual search, you’ll be left behind as the landscape of SEO continues to change.

ML/AI is used to understand the context and content of searched photos, and related results are displayed. Amazon and Google are leading the path; these two are currently the most popular visual search engines, but Microsoft and the other search engines adapt swiftly. So it’s no surprise that even Pinterest has jumped on the visual search bandwagon with its Pinterest Lens feature.

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