Top 10 Ideas to Improve Your Content Marketing ROI

There are near-endless possibilities to explore when it comes to growing and enhancing your content marketing efforts. With so much talk about creating engaging and high-quality content that speaks to your target audience and aligns with your business goals, it’s easy to lose sight of something else: your bottom line.

While content marketing is a comparatively affordable marketing strategy, it does have a cost. This is why it’s so important to be strategic. Here are the top 10 ideas to improve your content marketing ROI and ensure your return on investment remains healthy as you amp up your content marketing efforts.

1. Listen to your audience.

   Knowing your target audience is only part of the equation. You must also endeavor to reach them in the most effective way.

   Contrary to what many people believe, this doesn’t mean selling harder. It does mean providing valuable content that acknowledges and addresses their pain points. Your audience should be at the center of your content strategy.

2. Reassess your SEO strategy.

   Google and other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to determine SERP. Search engine optimization (SEO) is another content marketing strategy that does the work for you — if you set it up for success. Content marketing + SEO = the best way to drive traffic to your website.

3. Tell a good story.

   The key to connecting with your target audience isn’t offering the products and services they want and need. Rather, it’s packaging those products and services in the most compelling way. Enter storytelling.

   Storytelling helps you make emotional connections with your audience in order to build trust and credibility while asserting authenticity.

   Plus, when it comes to building your brand, having a compelling story is everything.

4. Promote, promote, promote.

   The ROI of your content hinges on people engaging with it. While inbound marketing strategies like SEO and social media are excellent for developing leads and customers, don’t overlook the importance of outbound marketing such as email and direct mail.

   For example, sharing a weekly newsletter that links to content on your website can help you build your relationship with current clients while simultaneously improving your content marketing results.

5. Amp up your social media efforts.

   Social media is an easy and effective way to reach your target audience. Building up your social media presence amplifies its impact exponentially.

   Not to mention that if the content you’re posting is useful, your audience will do the work for you by sharing it. This also generates buzz and creates invaluable social proof.

6. Update your website.

   
   With more and more people surfing the web via their mobile devices, a growing body of evidence tells us that a responsive website is one of the most important ways to get their attention. If your website is hard to access, slow to load, or difficult to read, your audience WILL click away.

   Not only that, but Google and other search engines may also rank mobile-friendly sites higher. The takeaway? Investing in a responsive website is a win-win.

7. Minimize the number of clicks to find your content.

   We live in an era of instant gratification. This absolutely applies to your website and content. If your target audience can’t easily find or access your content, they may become frustrated and annoyed. Or, even worse? They’ll lose trust in the credibility of your business, and your reputation will take a hit. Avoid this at any cost by making it easy for them to find and access the content they are looking for.

   Our recommendation? At the top of every page, include a drop-down navigation bar. This way, visitors to your site will find what they need in just one click.

8. Take advantage of curated content.

   Consistently creating original, high-quality content can be a time suck. Sharing content from other websites and writers can help you fill the void. Your audience will appreciate your efforts to share helpful content with them, even if it doesn’t originate with you.

   Furthermore, when you link to other sites, you increase the chances of them linking back to you — a boon for SERP.

9. Have good content.

   This may sound silly or obvious, but we can’t stress it enough. Many businesses churn out low-quality content that fails to represent their interests or the interests of their audience. In addition to being interesting, engaging, and useful, your content must also be reliable, factual, and current. Data goes a long way to establishing your authority — just make sure it’s current.

10. Be consistent.

    Quality is a pillar of effective content marketing, but so is something else: consistency. You may hear that more content is always better. This is true — but only to the degree that the content you’re producing is of high quality. In order to feel compelled to buy your products, your audience must feel like you’re answering their questions.

If you can produce high-quality constant content, do. But if the quality of your content is suffering due to high production demands, scale back.

Whichever route you choose, commit to a consistent posting schedule. Above all else, your customers need to be able to rely on you.

All of which begs the question: How do you know what the ROI is on your content? That’s where we come in.

At The Light Digital, we not only help you implement these top 10 ideas to improve your content marketing ROI, we also deploy analytics to help you understand where you efforts are working and where they’re falling short.

To start optimizing your content marketing and other digital marketing strategies, contact The Light Digital team today.