Five marketing content strategy tips for the New Year
It’s a new year and what better way to start things off than with tips to enhance communications with your members. And the best place to start is with marketing content strategy. Your content is a building block for consumer relationships, it encourages actions, and it can build your brand identity.
Consider these five strategies to take your marketing content to the next level this year and well into the future.
- Plan out a year of content messaging on a communications calendar.
Building a communications strategy for the year may seem tedious, but it helps to make sure everyone is on the same page. You want to make sure all your marketing portrays the same overall feeling and message. This is especially helpful if you have different writers for different marketing delivery methods (i.e. direct mail, newsletter, email, social media, etc.) Make sure you include all your staff in the communications strategy, so you can deliver a unified message to every member.
- Take the time to create useful and interesting content that your members will want to read.
It’s easy to say, but not always easy to do. Sometimes the desire to continuously stay in front of your members tends to overshadow its usability purposes and it becomes quantity over quality.
So, what are some hot content topics?
- Start off the new year by answering questions your front line staff hear most often. Take the issues head on and let members know you care.
- Identify common problems, create solutions and boast about your new innovations.
- Let members know about promotions and events and how they will benefit.
Keep content relative to the overall communications strategy, but don’t be afraid to shake things up now and again, especially if there is a problem, solution or trend that is affecting many of your members]. And don’t forget to keep your content relatively short and easy to read.
- Get your members to market for you.
People love to share content that triggers emotions. By providing content that not only helps your members but can also help their families and friends, your information can spread like wild fire. Humor is especially contagious in social media. But be careful, both negative and positive comments can come from even the best of intentions.
- Blanket the essence of the message, not the message itself.
There are many ways you communicate with your members…in person, SMS, email, social media, etc. You want to make each interaction count and you also want to encourage members to want you to reach them in multiple ways. While you want to sound like a unified voice no matter the delivery method, sending the same message across multiple channels tends to work against you. If a member is on your Facebook page, Twitter feed and receives SMS messages, and gets the same message on all 3, it quickly becomes redundant.
Balance what, where, and when you post. Even if the message is similar, make each touch special and encourage different actions.
- Test for best results and re-evaluate often.
Finally, testing when, where and what is communicated will help paint a picture of your audience and help you tell a success story. Spend time alternating times and days for delivery and analyze where you have the best engagement. It is possible that Friday afternoon is best for the eNewsletter but Wednesday morning is best for Tweets. But you will only find that out by testing different scenarios.
Then analyze your data often. It will help you reach the most members when and where they want to be reached. If engagement begins to dip, start the testing phase again. The consumer world changes constantly, and by studying the trends in your data, you can keep your members continuously engaged.
By incorporating these marketing content strategies, you can connect with your members on different levels with a more unified voice. If you are at a loss for what to say, many solutions providers like Transamerica Financial Services Group can provide content about products, services, and solutions that can engage your members.
