4 Tips for Revenue-Generating Content

1. Optimize Content with Emerging Search Trends in Mind – Things are changing fast in the world of SEO. Search engine algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with an increased focus on analyzing the top of voice of piece, the images on the page, video, load-time, and many other factors. There is also the fact that people are increasingly using voice search queries instead of text search queries increasingly more often, which differ dramatically in length (voice search queries often are more than twenty words, while text ones tend to be 3 to 4 words on average). So, taking voice search trends as an example, writing FAQ pages in the format of questions and answers becomes a more useful way for increase your online relevance.
2. Identify and Allocate Your Resources Intelligently – You only have so much time and money to invest in marketing. It’s important that you ask yourself questions such as:
   a. Who is in charge of producing and maintaining your content?
   b. What do you want your publishing workflow to look like?
   c. What tools and resources will you, or whoever you hire to do content marketing, need access to to be successful?
3. Know Your Customer – Marketing of all stripes is about reaching the right people with your appeals and calls to action. The more specific you are about who your customers are, the better your marketing can be, and this is especially true with content marketing. This is content marketing 101. Demographics such as age, gender, average household income, location, and job title, as well more cultural and behavioral factors such as media preferences, fears, purchasing frictions, and so on all help to uncover key insights about how to effectively appeal to your target market. This information often serves as a creative catalyst in the development of your content strategy, as well as in the formulation of specific campaigns.
4. Design a Customer Journey – Once you have a general idea of what you want with your content marketing as well as a clear idea of who your target audience is, thinking concretely about how your website plays a role in their journey helps you further clarify what is needed and fill in any gaps in their journey. As customers progress through the world and interact with your brand, they are drawn through stages of being unfamiliar with what you do and what you are about to becoming more familiar. As they progress, different questions and appeals become more relevant. This is rarely a linear progress, but the classic image of a sales funnel still does help with conceptualizing this journey, to a degree. Your content marketing strategy should be based on a conceptualized map of how typical customers may engage with your site and brand, taking into account key factors and triggers to shape appeals and messaging that provides maximum value and gets them moving on to the next step. [Example of a Customer Journey Map]