With an estimated 85.6% of companies using digital content marketing this year and 89% of CMOs and senior marketing executives surveyed saying that they plan to increase their marketing budget in 2023, it’s not a question of whether your brand should be doing content marketing, but how much you should be investing in it. Assuming your company has plans to include content marketing in 2023, it’s essential that you set content marketing goals so you’ll know if and when your team achieves them. Here are some to consider.
1. Build brand awareness
Asking for a marketing budget increase to build brand awareness can feel like a hard sell. But if you think of it in terms of driving profitable action — such as sales or through savings in a more affordable and trusted marketing form than advertising — it makes sense.
Brand awareness includes letting consumers know your product or service exists, as well as what problem it solves. Brand awareness, by nature, isn’t designed to elicit immediate revenue through sales but rather the potential for delayed revenue when the consumer is ready to buy down the road.
2. Set up long-term lead generation with SEO
Sharing long-form, SEO-optimized content frequently can help your blog or website turn up higher in search engine results. Be sure to add video to your content, and if you’re not already using software that helps you optimize your content with feedback on SEO and readability, now is the time to invest in it.
3. Boost customer loyalty
One of the biggest mistakes new marketers make is focusing all their attention on gaining new customers. But your marketing team should be spending as much time in improving customer retention with your best existing customers.
Consider starting one if your company doesn’t offer a loyalty program. If it already does, set goals that will help demonstrate to your customers that you appreciate them and are in the relationship for the long term.
4. Educate current and potential customers
Potential customers, even those who know your brand well, may benefit from tutorials, FAQs, and product demonstrations that cover features and benefits. This is true for existing and new products and services as well as upgraded models, bug fixes, and other improvements that may have kept consumers from buying or promoting a product or service from your brand in the past.
5. Share customer results
Testimonials, reviews, and videos that highlight customer successes can provide effective results. By sharing these objective reviews with your customers and prospects, you’ll lend an air of authenticity to the results and build trust by communicating the value of your product or service in the words of paying customers. Even if this user-driven content doesn’t immediately earn you sales, your brand may be able to gain leads, subscribers, or followers.
6. Build interest groups
Create a goal to build up audiences that you can remarket to over time. This approach works especially well with influencer marketing, especially if you build long-term relationships with trusted content creators who can speak to their niche with authenticity.
Retargeting campaigns can also work well with consumers who have watched your social media ads, read your company’s blog, or viewed certain pages on your website, such as seminar registration page or reviews.
7. Gain followers
Gaining followers on social media, especially after an influencer marketing campaign on that platform, demonstrates that you’re likely doing something right. After all, you’ve earned the attention of prospects who have committed to your brand in terms of interest and availability. More followers mean more immediate reach in terms of messaging, which in turn might make consumers more likely to turn into customers.
8. Drive attendance to events
Whether you host webinars, in-person conferences, or live Q&As about your products and services, your goal includes getting consumers to sign up or attend the event. By setting a content marketing goal to drive attendance to these brand-boosting happenings, your marketing team can set parameters on budget, messaging, and what to do with any leads you generate.
9. Gather email subscribers
Like many other content marketing strategies, immediate sales are often a latent consequence rather than a top goal. This is certainly true with campaigns or tools that allow you to collect email addresses for retargeted messaging later.
Devise content marketing strategies that allow you to increase subscribers for your brand’s newsletters, email campaigns, webinars, conferences, and product or service updates. With access to prospects via email, your brand can focus on nurturing the connection until consumers are ready to take the leap and convert.
10. Build credibility through influencer marketing
There are few ways to build more credibility for your brand than through influencer marketing campaigns. With built-in audiences that already trust the source, these social media efforts can help raise the bar on how consumers think about your brand, company, products, and services.
Set a goal to invest more time and money into influencer marketing. The return on investment is one of the best you’ll run across and you can build long-term partnerships to continue retargeting the influencers’ audiences.
Take your marketing team into the new year with fresh content marketing goals. If you need assistance achieving your goals, ContentMarketing.com can help. With content solutions for brands, agencies, and publishers, ContentMarketing.com can help you streamline your content production so you can spend more time on other company-wide goals.