Search, Affiliate, Email or Social Media…Let Content Rule

There are numerous benchmarks that can be set for all online marketing platforms, but if you’re not giving the end user (not a ‘bot but a REAL person) what they’re looking for, your hard work and endeavour is merely a waste of time.

So, before your next campaign launch, whichever platform you target, remember;

Affiliate Marketing:

What you tell your affiliates will be what they tell their site users. Your messaging is absolutely key in driving qualified interest from your affiliates, and revenue from their site users.

Keep your affiliate database bang up to date with your latest offerings;

• Reduced your shipping costs? Tell your affiliates
• New range of products/services? Tell your affiliates
• New CPL opportunity for a competition? Tell your affiliates

I could go on… It’s a case of communicating the BENEFITS to your affiliates. Not only will this drive their ambition to promote your products, it will build you a great relationship with your key affiliates. Communication is a core affiliate value, and the content your provide will drive that relationship.

Email Marketing

Planning your campaigns around a calendar of events (whether that be seasonal offerings, new promotions, providing information) is critical to the success of your email marketing campaign(s).

Giving your readership information which you know will be of interest to them will build the relationship with your existing customers/clients and steer their mouse click towards “Forward to a Friend” rather than “Unsubscribe“.

Your campaigns shouldn’t be a supermarket sweep of “what can we put to fill this weeks email?“. The information should be collected and structured in advance. A mundane message summary of “Dear customer, nothing really to tell you this week, but do please click here” will be a tremendous turn off. I will not work.

Build your email content around your customer’s interest. That’s why they’ve given you permission to market to them. Give them what they’re asking for. Concise and relevant information.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

Two things to think about here…. the content you provide your potential visitor within Google, Bing or any other search engine, and the information that they view when they decide to click.

Check the validity of your search listing Title and Description… it may well be packed full of keywords, but in a similar fashion to your paid search structure, does it offer an element of “call to action” and at the same time spark interest? Whilst your meta and site content have to retain optimisation, they have to make sense to the ‘bot and the reader. There’s no point in having the interest of one, without the other.

Secondly, give your customers what they are looking for. Relevant content on the revelant landing page. They’re trawled the net to find you, the last thing they want to do now is search within your site for what they are really looking for. If that happens, the “Back” button is just as close as your “click here” link.

There’s a plethora of free tools available to you to quickly view how your site looks within search listings for your core key phrases. If you can’t find the software, give me a shout and I’ll pop through some recommendations.

Get this messaging right, the right content and you’ll see a massive response to your site “bounce rates” and traffic.

Paid Search

Similarly, two areas of focus here, the ‘ad’ and the ‘landing page’. If you thought it tricky condensing your message to 140 characters on Twitter, Adwords gives you just 95 split across 3 rows and just the single use of an exclamation mark! Tell your audience what they want to hear. If you’re a retailer, focus on your biggest selling ranges and give the searcher an idea of costs and availability in order to save them time and save you money. Keep your ads updated and relevant. If this is your first attempt at “product” based rather than “shop based” advertising you will see a tremendous response in CTR (Click Thru Rate) if the information you provide answers the searcher’s initial queries.. “do you have the product I want, at the price I want to pay?”.

Social Media

The latest edition to the Digital Marketing repertoire… and one which is continuously evolving. Here is your opportunity to talk “instantly” with your audience. So please, please, please, keep it relevant. As a regular user of twitter myself I find myself grimacing at poorly constructed “marketing messages” telling me to click on a shortened nonsensical URL with no idea of why I should be following their command.

You can look foolish very quickly and within the social networking community, word travels faster than you can follow.

You know your products and services… assume that your followers want to know more about you and your business rather than what you had for breakfast or what the weather is currently like. Tweak your tweets so that the content gives your followers a reason to follow. Don’t get too excited about having x number of followers, that’s the easy part, don’t even use that as a KPI for your business. Monitor click thrus to see whether your messaging is engaging your followers. Without that, you are simply wasting your time.

Summary

Don’t get carried away by the substantial number of affiliates in your database, email recipients for your campaign, page views or followers if they do not provide the key numbers that formulate success – high margin revenues… trackable ROI.

Don’t get carried away offering to little to a lot, or too much to a few. Build your content around what your end user wants to read. Keep that in mind for every piece of outgoing marketing you find yourself involved with.

Your business stakeholders will thank you, and so will your customers.