Smart, hungry talent keeps our organization thriving. This spring, we welcome our largest cohort yet to our paid internship, Digital Marketing Fundamentals, a TriMarkU program.
TriMarkU is the agency’s larger training initiative that keeps our staff on the front end of digital trends and innovations. The Digital Marketing Fundamentals program is an entry-level training course where our interns gain valuable industry experience across TriMark’s marketing channels. Supporting a variety of our teams—including Paid Search, Paid Social, Community Management and Organic/SEO—this cohort will work to push our agency (and themselves!) to new heights.
How Does the Digital Marketing Fundamentals Program Work?
For our interns to fully acclimate to agency life, they’ll spend most of their time in our newly-renovated office. The program’s semester-based approach allows each intern to tailor their experience depending on their schedule demands. The group will employ their classroom skills in real-world applications with an enterprise-level client.
In addition to their weekly training sessions, the interns will be empowered to establish relationships with one another and other TriMarkers, become familiar with a professional environment and discover their strengths and career aspirations.
Our Expectations
Our interns aren’t making coffee runs. Instead, we integrate them into professional teams to make an impact on our client’s marketing performance. We aim to nurture a solid understanding of their strengths and goals while inspiring them to find their own path within digital marketing.
Many veteran TriMarkers began their early careers as interns. We hope the real-world, digital marketing experience helps to turn each internship into a full-time position—hopefully at TriMark! By investing our time and resources into this cohort, they’ll be equipped with the tools they’ll need for the rest of their careers.
Meet the Spring 2023 Cohort
Get to know the next generation of marketing professionals below.
Make Your Mark at TriMark Digital
Are you a recent graduate or graduating soon? We’re now accepting applications for our Fall 2023 Intern Class. Explore TriMarkU and apply today to join our performance-marketing powerhouse.
3 Major Takeaways from Google’s “Year in Search 2022”
Amidst economic uncertainty and recovery from COVID-19, consumer decision-making (and searching) habits have changed tremendously. Google’s Year in Search 2022 showed us how more customers are prioritizing brand trustworthiness and peer feedback before making key purchases. Read on to see which search trends reigned supreme and what marketers can do to adapt in 2023.
Value, Reevaluated
With inflation and “rising food prices” (a frequently searched term), many buyers have become hesitant about letting go of their hard-earned cash and are now spending more time in the research stage. This involves looking to others for reviews and recommendations to ensure they are properly informed.
Our Expert Advice: During the lead nurturing stage, you can educate prospective buyers about why you do what you do and what value you offer.
As the Google report puts it, “Value goes beyond price point. It also covers brand trustworthiness as measured by reviews, product popularity and sustainable options.”
Getting consumers to buy your product or service now goes beyond what you offer and instead includes your company’s overall brand identity. One example of this is the increased interest in sustainable brands that offer environmentally friendly products like “cheap electric cars.”
“Consumers are conducting more research before purchasing and want to ensure they invest in products and services that come from a trustworthy and sustainable brand,” says Will Kilby, TriMark Digital Paid Media Strategist Team Lead. “Advertisers need to establish trust at every touchpoint, including ad messaging. Highlighting positive customer feedback and sustainability in brand messaging puts a user’s mind at ease and can carry as much weight as an attractive price point.”
Aid and Allyship
Another major takeaway from Google’s Year in Search was the rise in the desire to help others locally and worldwide. This showed up in a variety of forms, ranging from “how to help students” to “Ukraine charity.” As more news sources kept the public up-to-date on national and global crises, consumers became interested in helping and supporting local non-profits or purchasing from companies that give back to these causes.
Our Expert Advice: Actions speak louder than words. Show prospective consumers how you take action on your mission and causes you care about.
This aid and allyship theme was also seen as the public educated themselves about gender and sexuality, with search terms like “they them pronouns LGBT meaning.” Highlighting inclusivity helped brands stand apart from competitors and show they welcome all.
Revising Priorities
The year 2022 saw many new priorities take center stage. People are seeking products and experiences that will help them relieve stress, including traveling and gaming.
Similarly, in-office jobs took a back seat as more people searched for “from home jobs.” This increased desire for work location flexibility and work-life balance provides an opportunity for companies to promote their openness to new work styles.
Beyond video conference meetings, the virtual world expanded as individuals became interested in virtual and augmented reality technologies. Users began partaking in 3D room design, where they can visualize products in their homes before making a purchase.
Our Expert Advice: “If you can offer an enhanced buyer experience through more experimental techniques, there’s a big increase in demand for that,” says Conor Dalton, TriMark Digital Director of Organic and Data. “Additionally, if you’re in a business where you commonly do consultations, having a very good process to do that virtually is a good idea.”
What This Means for Brands
“Based on these trends, brands will need to make providing long-lasting products or impactful services and experiences a priority, as well as lead nurturing,” says Kilby. “Consumers are looking for products that last and brands they can trust with as little long-term impact on their wallet as possible, which is not always the cheapest upfront option.”
To build a trustworthy brand, be transparent in your paid and organic content about your company’s actions and mission. It’s also helpful to tap into customer feedback for authentic opinions on your products or services. Dalton advises incorporating customer reviews into your SEO strategy by highlighting them on your website and marking them up with the appropriate review schema.
Finally, combine tried-and-true advertising solutions with new insights and AI-powered tools, such as adding a virtual component to your website.
We will likely continue seeing consumers concerned about the economy as we go into 2023. “At the end of the day, consumers are looking for brands that care about them, and about providing a strong value and standing behind their products,” says Kilby. “Any business can drop prices to generate more sales, but with an uncertain economic outlook and consumers staying in the consideration phase longer, well-rounded brand messaging and lead nurturing will be key to staying ahead of the game.”
See our 2023 marketing predictions for more recommendations on how you can have a successful year marketing your brand.
How to Kickstart Team Creativity
Writer’s block comes for us all, but what happens when an entire team of creatives is feeling less than inspired? As marketers, we’re tasked with moving the needle for our clients through impactful strategy and innovative storytelling, so it’s crucial that we have a toolkit of brain refreshers in order to deliver. Help jumpstart your team’s creative juices with some of our strategies below!
Mix Up Your Brainstorm Participants
If members of your team have worked for a particular client or project for a long time, they’ve likely pitched and tested their fair share of ideas. Sometimes, the easiest way to help inspire these long-serving team members is to put them alongside folks who do not work for that client. Invite coworkers, from content writers to account strategists, from other client teams who can offer a fresh perspective during a guided brainstorming session. Simply hearing their ideas may energize your team members, prompting them to consider a new strategic path or put a fresh spin on an old creative strategy. This also provides simulated access to your client’s audience; coworkers unfamiliar with their services and marketing can react authentically and provide feedback that may inform direction.
Start Your Meeting With A Collaborative Activity
Rather than launching directly into your meeting’s agenda of status updates and deliverables, take 5-10 minutes at the start for a little team-building. Divide into small groups and solve an impossible problem; come up with new uses for an everyday item; play a quick game of telephone or charades. Creativity and boredom simply can’t mix, and it’s likely that this small time investment can have big results, including increased team connection and comfort in sharing ideas. Next time you find your meetings or brainstorms have grown dull or unproductive, try shaking up your team’s routine.
Host a “Question-Storm”
Sometimes, a lack of creativity is really a lack of information. Ideating requires a solid foundation of knowledge, especially when it comes to marketing a product or service—how can we convince an audience that something is valuable and purchase-worthy when we don’t know why ourselves? Enter the question-storm. Intended to uncover everything you don’t know, a question storm is all about curiosity. Rather than gathering your team to come up with solutions, you can instead encourage them to create a list of everything they don’t know, want to know or have doubts about in relation to your chosen topic. Take 15 minutes to simply ask, then review them as a team and determine what gaps need to be filled in and which questions have the most potential for creative solutions. You may discover that additional work is needed before creative execution.
Change Your Surroundings
Maybe the most obvious way to address dwindling creativity is to actually surround your team with inspiration! Let’s face it—the traditional office environment isn’t the most conducive to new and exciting ideas. Instead of trying to come up with The Next Big Thing In Marketing from your office, gather your team to work elsewhere. Set up outside on a beautiful day, or push tables together at a local coffee shop. Small brainstorms can happen on walks around the block, and public libraries always have rooms for larger working sessions. This doesn’t have to be something you do often, but encouraging your team to make even small shifts in their work environment can lead to increased creativity.
Connect With Other Creatives
All of our strategies for kickstarting creativity have one thing in common: collaboration. And whether you and your team work together in person or remotely, maintaining connection is integral to ongoing creative success. Read our tips on staying connected in a hybrid workspace.
TriMark’s Psychics Weigh In: Our Marketing Predictions for 2023
Digital marketing is a consumer-centric industry, which means it constantly evolves with consumers’ changing interests and needs. This year, we anticipate several notable shifts in the way businesses and audiences interact as new tools and technologies allow for real-time conversations, social media becomes a key search platform for younger content consumers, and innovations in data engineering grow ever more crucial for impactful marketing strategies. Read on for more of our 2023 marketing predictions!
Paid Media Spends Will Diversify
“With new privacy restrictions emerging, paid media spends will continue to diversify to new platforms—meaning you’ll have more places to spend your money, and more wisely. We’ll also likely see tactics like Display and Video advertising move to platforms that offer cookieless tracking solutions. This makes it a priority for brands and marketers to ensure that they are investing into the most effective and measurable channels.”
—Laasya Vulimiri, Associate Director of Paid Media
Paid media spends will continue to diversify to new platforms.
Long-Tail Keywords Take the Driver’s Seat
“Long-tail, high-intent keywords will be mission-critical for SEO success in 2023 thanks to Google’s auto-complete functionality. Using automated intelligence, Google can predict a user’s intended search and complete the phrase they’ve started to type. As auto-complete gets smarter, longer-tail keywords will have more value. To adapt, marketers should consider these longer, high-intent terms just as (if not more) heavily as high-volume searches.”
—Conor Dalton, Director of Organic and Data
Real-Time Convos Win Over Customers
“Conversational marketing, or two-way conversations with customers in real time, will allow companies to convert customers faster by building trust, improving customer experience and offering better personalization. Brands will need better messenger capabilities on social, accessible live chats, faster response times—anything to get closer to a real-time connection to prospects that can help meet expectations and respond to needs. Conversational marketing kills customer indecisiveness.”
—Jael Rodriguez, Associate Director of Community Management
Data Scientists Uncover Key Learnings Around the Customer Journey
“Last-point attribution has historically been the default way of measuring conversion, but there are far more user touchpoints to consider in today’s digital landscape. The good news is that continued innovation in data engineering and cloud technology is making it possible to measure multi-point attribution through customer journey analytics. Leveraging these tactics in 2023 will empower brands with actionable data at every stage of the customer journey to reduce friction and streamline a path to conversion.”
—Kyle Sammons, Senior Data Analyst
CTV Trumps Linear—Officially
“ConnectedTV will not be optional, especially for larger enterprise-level businesses with growth goals. With the introduction of ads in key streaming platforms like Netflix, HBOMax and Disney+, as well as innovation in the space (like Augmented Product Placement), we will start to see CTV overtake Linear as the preferred TV advertising medium. The trackability of CTV is one of its most vital differentiators, giving businesses and marketers the ability to tie together different data points for a more accurate measure of success.”
—Jonathan Hoy, Senior Paid Media Strategist
ConnectedTV will not be optional for larger enterprise-level businesses.
Content Creators Will Repurpose Messaging on New Platforms
“Brands will need to double down on content efforts in 2023 to stay competitive and keep mindshare. But that doesn’t mean scrapping everything you’ve already created. Revisit how you’ve communicated in the past and figure out how to say it a different way—try a different angle or positioning from the customer’s vantage point. Also, try delivering your message on a different channel or medium. Create a video. Turn your long-form blog into a listicle. Build customer testimonials based on the topic. Create a case study as an infographic. Repurpose, reinvent, relaunch.”
“We all turn to the web to find answers to questions, tutorials and more. But we’re seeing Gen Zers turn more to TikTok and Instagram for these things than traditional search networks like Google. Often, they’d rather watch a 30-second video than read an article about the same topic. Given this shift in behavior, we expect social media platforms to utilize their algorithms and adjust content delivery methods to step into more of a Search Engine role.”
—Jess Sherman, Paid Social Analyst
We expect social media platforms to step into more of a Search Engine role.
“Influencer” Marketing Will Require a More Authentic Approach
“Social networks are making it easier for brands to find creators who align with their audience’s values and interests. This is a departure from traditional influencer marketing because it’s less about broadcasting a message and more about the exchange between community members and building an authentic relationship with a consumer base. With the right creators, brands can make more authentic connections that drive stronger engagement, purchases and loyalty.”
—Jordan Nowlin, Director of Paid Social
Shorter Videos Live Longer
“Multi-minute videos will fade away as OTT continues to provide brands with a more affordable way to reach targeted groups. As brands compete to capture audiences quickly and uniquely, we’ll see a surge in punchy, 15- or 30-second ads and pre-rolls (a throw to traditional broadcast commercial lengths).”
—Brandon Clarke, Creative Director
We’ll see a surge in punchy, 15- or 30-second ads and pre-rolls.
What Does 2023 Look Like For You?
Looking to start your year off right? No matter what business you run or the marketing strategies you employ, we recommend starting with one ingredient: authenticity. From there, you can build an effective strategy that puts your brand front and center.
Google’s Most Misunderstood Metric is Here to Stay
Key Points
Common definitions for bounce rate typically include only single-page sessions. However, the actual definition has always been sessions that trigger only a single request to the Analytics server.
This means other actions (e.g., clicking a link, filling a form, making a purchase) in addition to viewing another page can negate a session from being a bounce if these actions are tracked as events.
Google does not use bounce rate in its ranking algorithm, although elements that influence positive bounce rate performance do influence organic visibility in search engines.
GA4 is live, and data will stop flowing to Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. Bounce rate was originally due to be dropped in favor of a new metric, engagement rate, but it will now stay with revised parameters that clarify and enhance its value.
Bounce rate was never dull. It was just misunderstood.
Most website metrics are easy to learn. Bounce rate, however, has always been an exception. Even when people understood its counterintuitive nature (lower is better), its context and value were either overblown or underutilized. On top of that, most marketers have been misinformed as to exactly what bounce rate is, and you’ve got a KPI that you think is important but is hard to put to work for you.
GA4 is here, and while the original plan was for bounce rate to go away, it is staying. The metric can now be added to reports AND it has revised specs, which takes it beyond just a nostalgia metric. Now, bounce rate is calibrated to truly deliver its intended value.
So, let’s right the wrongs of 17 fuzzy years and demystify bounce rate once and for all.
What is Bounce Rate (Really)?
Bounce rate is the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server. This is how it has been classically defined by Google Support for Universal Analytics.
Bounce rate definitions typically only get it partially correct. Let’s look at some examples of definitions from the top results in Google:
There is a misconception that ANY single-page session counts as a bounce. This is not true. A request is triggered to the Analytics server for more than just a page view.
For example, if event tracking is set up on a page and is triggered for clicks, scrolls, or other engagements like video plays, this sends a request to the Analytics server, and this session is no longer a bounce.
So I Can Lower my Bounce Rate Simply by Adding Events?
Technically, yes. But that’s not the point.
Insights Hidden Behind Bounces
The key engagement metrics Avg. Session Duration and Avg. Time on Page both sample data from sessions that are not counted as bounces. Therefore, when seeking to understand your users and data is excluded when the users do, in fact, have meaningful engagement, you miss valuable insights.
Typically, to remedy this issue, we’ve added GA Event tracking to better define and capture real moments of engagement (e.g., scroll events). This helps us understand, track, optimize and report on moments of real value for your users. It’s like recalibrating your Google Analytics report to give you much better insights into user behavior.
Why is Bounce Rate Important?
Understanding bounce rates can tell you if your marketing strategy is effective and if your visitors are engaging with your content.
The key is understanding your target user and breaking down your bounce rate in a way that provides meaning.
Bounce rate is worth focusing on because:
If someone bounces, they don’t convert. So, if you stop them from bouncing, you increase the likelihood of a conversion.
Everything points to bounce rate not being a ranking factor in Google, but the elements that affect bounce rate performance strongly correlate with influencing rankings.
Most importantly, a high bounce rate indicates a page or pages on your site are underdelivering your users’ expectations concerning UX and content. Addressing the factors underlying this disconnect between your audience and the current experience you’re delivering allows you to better serve them.
What is a Good Bounce Rate?
That depends on your industry. As always, context is key, and sitewide bounce rate versus the bounce rate for a particular page can be two very different things. Other variables, like industry and channel, also influence what a good or bad bounce rate might look like.
Here are some ballpark bounce rate benchmarks to help you understand how well you may be doing:
It depends. It’s often said that having a high bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing because users could get everything they’re looking for within a single page view. However, particularly when we’re looking at the bounce rate of a single page, it all comes back to understanding and tracking moments of meaningful user engagement. If you’re clear on your user goals and they’re not being met, then yes, a high bounce rate is bad.
How to Assess Your Bounce Rate Accurately
It’s easy to get overwhelmed and intimidated when assessing and optimizing your bounce rate, but if you know where to start, it’s much easier.
To more directly tie Google Analytics metrics (including bounce rate) to your user journeys, try looking at the numbers by:
Audience segment
Channel
Content (e.g., service page vs. a blog post)
How Is Bounce Rate Different than Exit Rate?
Exit rate is a percentage showing when a particular page was the last in the user’s session (i.e., the page on which they exited the website). Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions starting with a particular page where only a single response was sent to the Google Analytics server.
Does Bounce Rate Affect SEO Performance?
Bounce rate itself does not, but what the number represents does (e.g., the engagement of users on your site for certain search results indicating quality content and a great user experience).
While bounce rate might not be directly factored in Google’s algorithm, it’s indicative of a user finding value in your web page. If a user leaves without any significant interaction, it could be interpreted by Google that your content isn’t a valuable result for the query. This could cause your position in the search results to decrease.
Is Bounce Rate Going Away?
That was the plan, but due to popular demand, it’s here to stay. Google announced on July 11, 2022, their intention to keep it. It is not as primarily positioned as before, but it is available to be added as a metric.
What is the Updated Definition of Bounce Rate in GA4?
In GA4, bounce rate reflects the percentage of sessions in which a user visits your website and does not review your content for more than 10 seconds, trigger any other events, or visit additional pages or screens.
What Replaces Bounce Rate in GA4?
Google has introduced a new metric in GA4, engagement rate. Engagement rate is the percentage of users who visit your website, review content for more than 10 seconds, trigger any events or visit additional pages or screens. To calculate the engagement rate, divide the number of engaged sessions by the total sessions within a set date range.
How GA4’s Engagement Rate vs. UA’s Bounce Rate Provides Better Opportunities
The introduction of the engagement rate and the refined parameters for bounce rate provides more accurate insights into your users’ behavior. Instances that were previously counted as bounces but where engagement did in fact occur (e.g. when someone reads a long-form article but doesn’t navigate to another page or submit a form) will now be registered correctly.
As marketers, this immediately provides us with better fuel for our strategies instead of having to add another layer to our Analytics setup to get accurate metrics.
How to Increase Engagement Rate
Where to Start
First, look at Exit Pages in GA to determine where to focus your efforts. Where are your users bouncing?
Analyze User Behavior
Use a heatmap tool like Hotjar to identify dead zones and add in-page hooks.
Focus on Speed
Next, view Page Timings to see how fast your website’s load time is. Your pages may be slow (particularly on mobile) and users may be leaving. Use PageSpeed Insights to identify ways to improve your loading speed and Core Web Vitals.
Some quick fixes include compressing images, upgrading your hosting and removing unused plugins and scripts.
Formatting and Flow
See if there are any improvements you could make to the page’s formatting, Break up text and utilize chunking to make your content more skimmable. Use subheadings and bulleted lists, bold keywords, include images, ask questions, and ensure all pages have actionable conclusions.
Write simply.
Allow your content room to breathe.
Don’t bring your font below size 15, which also benefits your site’s ADA compliance.
CTAs
Use calls-to-action to harness user intention and make the next steps clear. Make conversion opportunities on your page obvious and align their content to the same messaging that initially piqued the users’ interest.
Watch the Fold
Ensure the key content and messaging appear above the fold. This hooks users and lets them immediately locate the information they are seeking.
Leverage Video and Visuals
Use images and videos to engage your audiences, such as explainer videos, product demos, How-Tos, and customer testimonials. A richer, more engaging form of content will, in turn, influence your visibility in search results.
Target high-opportunity keywords with commercial intent. When users find you while they’re in the “I want to buy” mode, they are more likely to be meaningfully engaged and convert.
Optimize for Searcher Satisfaction
Getting a user to find and visit your site from search results is just the beginning. By understanding what information the user is seeking and delivering it in an engaging way, you are more likely to see higher engagement and more conversions.
Explore Live Chat Options
Have real live chat support if it’s relevant. Chatbots are acceptable in some scenarios, provided the chosen tool is intuitive and set up to deliver helpful content or escalate the inquiry to a real person when relevant.
The Bottom Line: Is Bounce Rate Still Relevant?
If producing valuable and engaging content to delight your audience and satisfy their search intent is still important for your success, then whether your preference is to use engagement rate or bounce rate, it absolutely is still relevant.
Looking For a Data-Driven Partner to Drive Real Growth?
If you’re looking for an agency that knows how to fine-tune every Google metric to grow your business, reach out and speak with a member of our team today.
Content Marketing 101: Everything You Need to Know to Create an Effective Content Strategy
One sentence could be the difference between someone staying on your site or social page or clicking the dreaded back button and forgetting you exist.
It sounds dramatic, but with short attention spans and quick trigger fingers for the backspace key, creating topical, timely brand messaging can make a huge difference in impact. Below, we’ll cover the basics of what content marketing is, how you can get started with content strategy and what types of content are out there. Let’s get started!
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach developed around the creation and promotion of online content, like blogs, infographics or video posts. Often, this content involves promoting thought leadership in the brand’s category. This attracts users to your site, exploring topics that are relevant to the product or service you’re selling. Thought leadership sells your brand and expertise without an aggressive sales approach.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
Without content marketing, you likely wouldn’t have as much business. Think about it: without email, social media or blog strategies to bolster your expertise and direct readers to your site, the odds of your customers organically locating your company would be much lower.
Content also establishes credibility for your brand. It shows you’ve got the chops to write and design high-quality content that reflects what you’re producing or selling.
How Do You Develop an Effective Content Strategy?
Developing your content strategy should be as simple as examining your business culture and goals and lining that up with why your audience should pay attention. From this, you can make practical choices on content types that match your brand and audience, establishing trust within your audience that can help at each part of the sales cycle.
Know Your Brand and Goals
You’ve likely been researching what other brands are doing to get the lay of the land. You may love the sassy tone of a brand you follow, but that doesn’t mean yours needs to mimic it. If there’s something else you see another brand doing that you love, make a note of it. That sass may not suit your brand, but what tone works with your positioning? How are other brands driving their audiences through the sales funnel? Pay attention and bring your own marketing goals to the forefront when determining how to use that inspiration to make your company’s messaging stand out.
Know Your Audience
After determining where your brand stands among its competition, knowing what messages your audience will respond to is your next step. Define your audience, dividing them into personas as needed and using any data you have. Writing for your audience is your first step in virtually any asset you create. Keeping them at the front of your mind with content creation allows you to make choices backed by data throughout the entire process, from writing a rough draft to posting your finished asset.
Create Marketing Assets for Your Audience
Knowing your audience means knowing the assets your audience will love. With all your research and prior planning in place, you’re ready to get to the heart of content strategy: creating the assets. Whether this means social-friendly short-form infographics or long-form content like customer testimonials or blogs, follow the data you’ve got and refine from there.
Distribute Those Assets Through the Right Channels
Keep in mind how your new content strategy will fit in with your team’s existing marketing channels. Often, content marketing is one piece in your integrated marketing strategy, adding more depth to those other channels. So, when distributing your new assets, make sure you’re using them well. Will a video post make the most impact as a direct upload on your site or as part of a social media post? Whether you use direct mail, email, social media or your own website, be strategic and timely. Post regularly and use a content calendar to track what you’re posting and when.
Most content marketing assets can (and should!) be used in multiple channels. A multichannel approach may require a little tweaking to customize content between formats, but this ensures your messaging is consistent across platforms. Plus, you’ll be able to tell what types of content perform well on each channel.
Analyze That Data!
Once your brand-new content assets are live, it’s tempting to dig into the data immediately. If you’re focusing on social media, go ahead and dive in on a post-by-post basis. However, depending on your marketing channel of choice, you may be surprised by the data you’ll see over time. Search-optimized long-form content can continue to perform well over time, creating continual engagement. While this isn’t as exciting as a huge spike of traffic on your post, it’s a great reason to have a multichannel content strategy in place. Your social stats will be faster, serving as a good contrast to the slow-growth performance organic content provides.
Depending on what your metrics reveal, you may need to tweak your approach or update the content over time. Listen to your audience through that data—social engagement, website traffic sources, bounce rate and time on page are great metrics to monitor. These will tell you what you need to revisit to refine your content strategy.
What Are Popular Content Marketing Assets?
Blogs
Blog strategies have been a huge part of content marketing since blogs became popular around 2000. Long-form content continues to pay off for many marketing teams thanks to the innovations of SEO teams. With paid and organic search, ranking well in search engines for particular terms or phrases means getting eyes—and precious click-throughs to the rest of your site—on your blog.
Whitepapers
For more traditionally-minded companies, whitepapers can be worth their weight in gold. They’re useful for showing your product or service in detail, which makes them great tools for the later stages of the sales funnel for B2B companies.
Ebooks
Ebooks are great for offering a deep dive into your company’s expertise and creating a genuine connection with your audience, letting your knowledge take center stage without a sales-heavy tone. Gating ebooks (or placing them behind a lead capture form) also makes them a powerful lead-generation tool.
Videos
Videos are impactful throughout the sales funnel, serving as an awareness, nurture or lead conversion tool, depending on their use. You can use a quick video on paid social posts to introduce your brand to new eyes or make an in-depth video on a customer testimonial to convince a late-stage sales funnel customer to purchase. With the popularity of video on social media, especially among Gen Z and Millennials, it’s a great way to establish your brand voice. Videos are also incredibly versatile, working on their own across channels or in tandem with a social post or email.
Infographics
The humble, versatile infographic is a marketing classic for a reason. Infographics work well in many marketing channels, and their easy-read, design-first formatting makes them particularly engaging. Visual marketing can help present complex concepts easily and in a sharable format that’s great for social media.
Case Studies
Case studies give a clearer picture of what working with your company would look like, allowing you to show off your successes backed by data and a great client or customer experience. It’s a way of telling a story about your company with a happy ending for you and your client. Case studies help prospects understand your unique approach, seeing what you’ll provide and what they could achieve.
Content Marketing Wrap-Up Tips
Don’t invest where it doesn’t make sense. For example, you don’t need a TikTok social strategy if you’re mainly looking to attract stakeholders in the C-suite. Go where your audience takes you.
Content strategy isn’t a one-person endeavor. Bring in your SEO team, designers, UX experts and more, depending on your topic. Make it simpler by consulting experts to help steer your decision-making.
Decide on your voice and tone before posting and keep it consistent. This is doubly important if you have more than one writer or designer producing content.
Your marketing channels aren’t silos independent of each other. Keep your messaging on target no matter where you’re posting.
Content Marketing Strategies—Simplified.
What are your next steps? Depending on your content needs, expanding your knowledge on email, social media or video marketing are good places to start. Solidify where you’re ready to focus and launch your brand into content marketing greatness, one asset at a time.
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