Did you know that in 2021, 43% of marketers increased their content marketing budget and that in 2022, 63% of marketers expect to increase it again? Do you know why? Because content marketing works and delivers the best ROI for small businesses. But to be successful, you need a well-thought-out content marketing strategy. So let’s look at 7 things you’ll want to consider when developing your 2022 content marketing strategy so you’ll be set up for success!

Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or an online business, you need to know how to use content marketing effectively to drive customers to your website. This means having a strategy that incorporates all of your content marketing efforts – blogging, podcasting, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, video marketing, etc. – so that they have the greatest impact and effect on your small business. 

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As we near the end of 2021,  all businesses need to reevaluate their existing strategies and add any missing elements that will have an impact on growing their online visibility. So what are these important elements you need to add to your 2022 content marketing strategy?

Here are seven content marketing trends to consider for your business to help boost brand awareness and sales.

Before We Build A Content Marketing Strategy, We Need to Be Clear About Our Marketing Goals

Before you can even begin to develop any strategy, including your content marketing strategy, you need to consider your marketing goals. What is it that you want to achieve with your marketing? 

Get very clear and specific about your goals, as this will help you get very clear about what content marketing activities will best help you achieve your goals.

A great place to start is looking at your current analytics. In what areas are you excelling? In what areas are you failing? What areas have the greatest impact on your business?

By understanding what is currently working and what is not in your business, you can consider what content marketing areas you need to focus on to drive more traffic and brand awareness.

7 Aspects to Consider In Your 2022 Content Marketing Strategy

Before we jump into the seven marketing trends we think you should consider when developing your 2022 content marketing strategy, let’s remember exactly what content marketing is:

Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating, distributing, and promoting valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Now that we are clear on that, let’s look at the seven most important elements you SHOULD consider when developing your content marketing strategy.

1. Have a Better Understanding of Your Audience

Many businesses neglect customer sentiment. They undervalue their audience.

It’s crucial to know who your customers are, what they want, and how you can provide it in order to meet their needs. When you have a clear understanding of your audience, you’ll be able to better cater to their wants and needs.

Understanding your audience will also enable you to create more appropriate content (and, dare we say, craveable content) and share it on the most appropriate channels to attract your target audience.

For example, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, you might want to consider a stronger investment in local SEO or PPC ads to target and attract more customers. 

Or, if you are an online service-based company, webinars, podcasts, and blogs can help you generate brand awareness, boost organic traffic, and get you qualified leads and even sales. The key is knowing your audience so you can create the content they need to solve their problems and be more successful.

2. Focus on Customer Retention

Typically when we talk about any type of marketing, our focus is always on attracting and capturing new prospects. But what about the customers and prospects we already have?

The first place many businesses go when looking to increase sales is to their current customer base. Why?

• Repeat customers are easier to sell to and tend to spend 300% more than new customers.
• Repeat customers refer 50% more people than one-time buyers
• Obtaining new customers is 7X more expensive than keeping an existing one
• You can boost your profits by up to 95% with just a 5% increase in customer retention 
• Existing customers spend 31% more than new customers

Those are some pretty compelling stats to consider! So, as we think about our content marketing strategy, let’s focus on those we’ve already captured and how we can improve their experience with our brand. Some ideas include:

• Creating a more personalized experience for your customers by personalizing emails and sharing more interest-focused content.
• Keeping your website up to date and optimized to enhance the customer experience.
• Engaging them with videos to ask for feedback and testimonials. We use a great tool called Dubb to create personalized videos to send to customers and prospects.

3. Create High-Quality Content that People Will Find Valuable

Here is one rule that will never change: To be successful in content marketing, you need to provide content that has high value to your target audience.

There is a lot of noise on the internet, so you need to offer value if you want to attract people. That means that gone are the days of just throwing half-thought-out blog posts on your site that don’t offer any solution to a problem or any actionable advice that will bring your audience greater success. 

You need to ensure you create something worth reading! If anyone ever thinks to themselves after reading your blog or watching your video, “well, that was a waste of time, and 5 minutes I’ll never get back”, that’s the kiss of death, and you’ll never see them again.

How do you create high-value content? 

Think about your audience and what problems they face or questions they have, and provide them with a solution. That’s the most simple way to ensure that your content will add value.

4. Add Podcasting to Your Content Mix

A podcast can be a great source of information and entertainment for your audience and one that more and more people are moving towards as a preferred type of content.

According to reports, there will be more than 144 million podcast listeners each month in the United States by the end of 2025. Couple that with the fact that the global podcasting market is estimated to grow at the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.1% from 2021 to 2028, and you can see why starting a podcast should be a consideration for your content marketing strategy.

Not only do podcasts provide an opportunity to provide valuable content to your community, but they also provide immense opportunities for repurposing them into other types of content to be consumed by your audience. 

For example, one podcast can be turned into multiple blog posts, social media posts, videos for youtube and your blog, and more. So, while many people hesitate to get into podcasting due to the amount of effort it requires, it can actually be a time saver when considering the multiple ways you can use the content!

5. Focus on SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical aspect of your content marketing strategy, and it should not be taken lightly. SEO-friendly content marketing is essential for success.

While creating high-value content is a great first step in the SEO process, you also need to consider other factors like keywords and long-tail keyword phrases to help increase your search engine ranking.

Here are a few steps you can take to develop a more consistent SEO strategy:

• Have a general understanding of SEO and why it’s so important to your content marketing strategy. This includes on-page and off-page SEO factors and the technical aspects of SEO that can help improve rankings
  
• Research keywords relevant to your business and target those words as much as possible throughout your site. This will help people find your website when searching for products or services related to what you offer.
  
• Keep updated with Google’s algorithm changes so you know what current search topics work best. The Google Algorithm updates about 500-600 times a year, and you must stay on top of these updates so you don’t miss out on any opportunities.
  
• Make sure that the content on your site is engaging and relevant—having high-quality content goes a long way towards improving your ranking.

6. Video is a Must

Video marketing has been on the rise for years, and in 2022 it’s become a must for small businesses. Just look at these stats:

• Video will account for 82% of all online traffic.
• Videos are 53x more likely to generate first-page SERP rankings than other SEO tactics. 
• 84% of consumers have been convinced to purchase a product after watching a video.

Compelling, right? This means that you can no longer shy away from video if you want to stand out and move ahead!

Here are a few ways to add video into your content marketing strategy:

1. We mentioned Podcasting earlier. When podcasting, use a tool like Zoom to record a video of the podcast that you can use in your marketing.
   
2. Create short videos that you can use on social media that share tips, provide advice or demonstrate your products or services. You can then share these as Instagram Reels, Pinterest Idea Pins, or TikTok to expand your reach and increase brand visibility.
   
3. Go live on LinkedIn or Facebook to share information relative to your target market and then reshare that video as a blog post on your website, YouTube, and social media.

While videos are a bit more time-consuming, they also offer many opportunities for repurposing them into other types of content, which is a big plus.

7. Understanding that Personalization is the Key to Success

Personalization is about focused marketing initiatives based on consumer data to optimize ROI. Personalizing your content maximizes the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy.

Companies deploying product recommendations and communications triggered by personalization are seeing major boosts in revenue and marketing efficiency.

Here are some interesting and compelling statistics that prove why personalization is more important than ever and should be in your digital marketing strategy for 2022:

• Personalization is the key to better customer relationships! Personalized marketing has a huge impact on your customers and how they perceive you as a brand. For instance, Evergage found that 99% of marketing professionals admitted that personalized marketing helped advance customer relationships.
• Insight from Epsilon showed that 80% of consumers make a purchase or do business with a brand based on personalized experiences.
• The Epsilon study also revealed that 90% of consumers find personalized marketing appealing.
• Adobe discovered that 67% of consumers think it’s important for brands to automatically adjust content based on current context. When brands don’t adjust accordingly, 42% of consumers will get annoyed and stop engaging with the brand altogether.

Personalization is your weapon to stand out in the digital crowd and make your brand shine bright. So, how do you get started?

3 Ways to Increase Personalization in Your Marketing

Let’s take a quick look at three ways you can increase personalization in your marketing.

Collect More Data

The first step to improving your marketing personalization is collecting more data about your prospects and customers. To generate more targeted content for a more personalized experience, you need to understand your communities interests, habits, pain points, etc.

There are many ways to collect data. You collect data through customer purchases, which can tell you about their interests or problems they need solved.

Another effective way to gather more data is through your email opt-in forms. Instead of just asking for name and email, consider asking what we refer to as a ‘qualifier’ question that asks specific questions with multiple-choice fields. This could include products they are interested in, the size of their business, the biggest problems they face, etc. By asking this qualifier question, you gain more insight into what types of content your prospect wants from you, allowing you to personalize their experience further.

Map Out Your Content

Once you know more about your audience, you can begin to map out content based on the segments that you’ve created, and the stage of the sales funnel they are in. For example, if you are a fitness coach and have a new prospect on the list and they indicated they are interested in losing weight, you’ll want to provide content to them that focuses on losing weight. 

Use Personalization Tools

With the data you’ve collected, you can also begin to use personalization tools to further personalize your user’s experience. This includes personalizing fields in your emails like name, interest, birthdate, etc. 

There are also tools that allow you to personalize web pages on your site so that the content seen is more targeted for the visitor. You can even go so far as to include their first name!

When developing a content marketing strategy for your business or organization, consider the elements we discussed above and how you can use them to transform your small business. If you need a little help putting it all together, reach out to us, and let’s talk about how we can help you take your business to new levels in 2022 with better content marketing.