Whether you are a solopreneur or employee at a larger company, you may be curious about how you can optimize content marketing in your business.

You should definitely follow your curiosity here.

In recent years, content marketing has been on an absolute roll. Brands both large and small have understood that content marketing is an effective way to connect with their audience. Instead of traditional print or television ads, content marketing is more about providing true value to members of your audience.

It is about building a long-term relationship in the hope of driving future sales.

But how do you effectively do this? How can you create stellar content that audiences will love? And how can you do this consistently so that you aren’t reinventing the wheel for each campaign?

At Dubb, we spend lots of time thinking about video content and how we can create video that will truly connect with our viewers. Because of this, we have collected some tips and tricks that help us in our content marketing efforts.

Content Marketing: A Primer

Content marketing, if you do not already know, is often thought of as a strategic marketing approach that is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain some specific audience. The goal, from there, is to drive profitable customer action—like a purchase of your product or service.

Content marketing has become an extremely important part of brands’ marketing toolkits. The statistics are illuminating.

For example, a whopping 93 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing. 60 percent of marketers create at least one piece of content each day.  Content marketing also leads to more visits to your website: according to Aberdeen, year-over-year growth in unique site traffic for content marketing leaders is 7.8 times higher than followers. Even better, content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing and generates three times the amount of leads compared to other marketing channels.

Because of its effectiveness, companies both large and small have embraced content marketing. However, this doesn’t mean that these companies are using content marketing to the best of their abilities. These companies know that content marketing is important, yet they often put it aside in exchange for other marketing strategies that often do not work.

In order to make content marketing work, you and your company need to take it seriously. Content marketing truly is a skill and it takes practice to do it well.

But even though content marketing is an art more than a science, there are several content marketing tips and strategies that we have successfully used at Dubb. These tips are extremely effective, yet they are simply starting points. By continuing to focus on and produce great marketing campaigns, you will ultimately discover what is best for you and your organization.

Key Tips to Develop Awesome Content Marketing

Don’t Take It For Granted

When creating awesome content marketing, you will want to recognize that it is an essential part of your marketing portfolio. For as much emphasis as there is on different types of paid marketing—including print, television, and social media ads—you should not let content marketing go by the wayside.

Therefore, you are going to want to spend a good amount of your time developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy. Answering questions like “What is our objective” and “What does success mean for us” will allow you to shape a tighter campaign. It helps to think of these questions now, rather than when you are in the thick of it and trying to salvage something from one of your content marketing campaigns.

So don’t halfheartedly start a content marketing campaign. It likely will be a waste of time.

On the flip side, if you take it seriously and put in the work, content marketing will provide immense rewards for your business. You just have to commit and have the belief that it will pay off for your organization.

Know Your Audience

One of the most critical aspects of good content marketing is having a deep understanding of your audience. This, quite clearly, is true of all marketing, but it is especially true for content marketing.

Without truly understanding your audience’s problems, wants, and needs, it is impossible to create compelling content that will keep them begging for me.

So before creating any type of content marketing, ask yourself: will my audience find my content interesting? Will they stop reading or viewing it after 10 seconds or will they be intrigued enough to read or watch all of it?

To get a good sense of what your audience wants, there are several things you can do. First, you can simply ask them. Whether this occurs through daily discussions with your customers or even customer surveys, you can be proactive and discover what your customers truly want. Better yet, you can be your ideal customer. If this is the case, you will have an intuitive understanding of what your audience wants, so you can follow your gut and create content that way.

However you go about it, you cannot ignore this step. You cannot ignore what your audience wants and expects. But by taking the time to truly tap into the psyche of your audience and cater to their wants and desires, you can generate better content marketing that will stick in the minds of your audience.

Leverage Evergreen Content

From understanding your audience, you will also want to create evergreen content. If you don’t yet know, evergreen content is content that is always relevant. It isn’t like a news story that is only relevant for a short period of time. Ideally, your audience will access your evergreen content months (or even years) down the road.

So when you are thinking about the “content” part of content marketing, you should be strategic about creating content that will stay relevant for a long period of time. Your specific strategy may depend on the market or sector that you are in. But having said that, think about the type of content that you can share that will continue to be relevant.

By doing this, you create nuggets of content on the internet that can continue to deliver qualified leads. And because the cost of this type of evergreen content is extremely cheap, what’s not to like? It is the gift that keeps on giving.

Design and Follow Workflows

Finally, it really helps to create some comprehensive workflows that can help you organize your content marketing efforts. A workflow, to put it simply, is an actual diagram of what you are going to be doing, whether it involves content marketing or something else. Essentially, it is a proven list of procedures that can guide you and your team toward a certain goal.

As far as workflows with content marketing, you want to incorporate the steps above (and others, as you see fit) into your workflows. Whether it is the team member writing a script or an editor cleaning up your video for production, you will want them to be on the same page as you are working on your next content marketing campaign.

For example, if you are creating a content marketing campaign on using CRM processes to help your business, you need to ensure that everyone working on the campaign knows the objective, knows the audience, and as the campaign advances, can execute their particular tasks to ensure success for the campaign. Creating a visual diagram of your workflow and posting it around your office can also be extremely helpful.

You can find one example workflow here. As you can see in this example, there are several different teams (from content strategists to graphic designers to product managers) that are tasked with certain tasks in a certain order. For instance, the UX team only executes user tests after a subject matter expert approves the content. While this is just one simple example of a workflow, you will definitely want to develop an agreed-upon workflow for your content marketing campaigns. Design your workflow to capitalize on the resources and talent that you have.

By following your custom workflow and sticking with a proven process, you can increase the odds that your content marketing campaign will be successful.

The Beauty of Optimized Content Marketing

If it is done correctly, optimized content marketing can be a godsend for your business. It can help you reach your audience in a new, more entertaining way. It can help your business truly connect with your audience. And it can remain relevant for long periods of time, so long as it is evergreen content.

Don’t forget that content is king. No matter how great your product or service truly is, you should leverage content marketing to cultivate that relationship with your customers. It is essential for your business—whatever it is. Therefore, don’t put it by the wayside and don’t put it at the bottom of your to-do list.

By making content marketing an important component of your marketing portfolio, you will be on your way to business success.