The foundation of the content strategyfor the majority of firms implementing an inbound growth approach is usually made up of consistent blog entries.
However, blogging is not the only form of content that a successful inbound strategy requires.
Advanced content marketingoffers and pieces are also crucial.
In order to pique or maintain the audience's attention and awareness, advanced content marketingrefers to the systematic distribution of online content including videos, audio, blogs, and infographics across a variety of platforms.
These various forms of marketing content draw in, hold the attention of, and please their target markets by providing them with useful, high-quality information.
When advanced content is effective, it develops leads' trust and moves them closer to making a purchase.
What types of material and formats fall under the category of advanced content, and how can you position them to meet your target audience's demands and optimize your content marketingstrategy?
Let's examine the most effective advanced content formats that have been tried and proven, as well as some original suggestions for varying your material to ensure it appeals to the correct audience at the right time and place.
What Is Advanced Marketing Content?
Inbound marketing is built on advanced content. It is created to specifically address the demands of your target audiences and is then optimized using keyword research to make sure those audiences can quickly locate it when they require it.
You can design and offer better content if you know what drives search engineusers to your website.
At Weidert Group, we refer to content that provides value and encourages consumers to entrust us with their contact information as "advanced content," which in turn generates conversions.
In other words, we recognize the requirement of providing something of value in exchange if we're asking people to give their names and emails.
By encouraging consumers to swap their contact information for tools or knowledge that will help them overcome their difficulties, advanced content adds value and promotes conversions.
A lengthy form article like an eBook or white paper that is provided as a PDF download, a video that is integrated into blog content, or a long-form pillar page are all possible options.
Anyhow, authoritative, industry-leading expertise together with respect for your target audience must be displayed in advanced content. It demonstrates your thorough comprehension of their difficulties and demonstrates your proficiency in resolving their issues.
Advanced Content Marketing Basic Principles
Consider The Psychology Behind Your Content
You must first understand why you are creating this content before you even begin to draft a detailed brief or plan.
Your material is a resource that may be used to further your objectives (e.g. increase conversions, drive more traffic to your website, become a thought leader in your space, etc.).
But what task would it assist your audience in finishing? How can you strategically influence people's decisions and inspire them?
You need to look beyond goals, personas, and even data-driven research to find the psychological "why."
Make Your Content Unique And Emotion-driven
It's easy to lose touch with your personality while attempting to rank for the same keywords or trends as everyone else (brand or individual). Because of this, many blog postings have a similar tone.
The finest content marketers understand how to create original content while putting a priority on businessand marketing objectives.
In actuality, it is beneficial to consider your writing as more of a discussion between you and your readers (the reader).
When consumers encounter reliability (83%), integrity (79%), and honesty (77%), they feel most aligned with their favorite brands, according to a study by Deloitte on the value of emotion-driven engagement. Consumers also believe they have a relationship with brands, according to 62% of them.
Engagement, loyalty, and retention are significantly influenced by emotional relationships. The emotions that underlie purpose and purchasing decisions are completely ignored when trying to persuade readers with cold, hard statistics.
Inject Storytelling Into Your Data-driven Narrative
Storytelling is a great approach to evoke feelings.
Think about how a data-driven narrative all too frequently neglects excellent storytelling.
Think about the following to get to the point:
- What worries your audience the most?
- What do they hope to accomplish or do?
- What causes them to be skeptical of information and why?
- What sort of information do they find interesting, and why?
Always address the demands or problems of your audience as you develop your story. They will have an understanding of, a connection with, and faith in your solutions as a result of this personalized encounter.
If you don't comprehend the purpose behind your article, you can't do this.
Understand The Motivation Behind Your Content
Let's get meta and examine what drives your target audience as well as how your content creator is addressing problems and offering tailored answers.
My own experience, research, and interactions have led me to believe that my target audience is looking for specific advice on how towrite better content.
You most likely have years of experience in the content marketing field, a constant stream of clients, or you work for a well-known company, and you consistently produce quality material.
You care about pleasing your customers and producing insightful blogs. Not only because you get paid to do it, but also because you love to write, care about connecting with others, and want to break down difficult concepts.
But you occasionally find it difficult to move beyond some obstacles, and you generally want to keep getting better at what you do.
You are way past the point where you need simple advice. To feel secure in your work every time, you're seeking specific examples on how to enhance your material.
The bulk of tutorials on how to improve your content marketing focus on the bare minimum, which is not useful, even if this shouldn't be difficult.
You're eager to get practical counsel and frustrated by the dearth of it. About right, then?
Because of this, this post will provide you with a ton of examples in the next parts that you won't find in most content marketing manuals.
But up until now, our topics have been narrative and psychology. Why not just get to the examples already?
Because without that important emotional connection we established previously, the advice below is meaningless. You must master the tale and structure while also bearing the following advice in mind. They do not conflict with one another.
Drive Your Points Home With Relatable Examples
A lot of content marketers will make a statement or generalization before leaving the reader unsatisfied. Where is the main point, illustration, or helpful guidance?
Yes, blogs must be skimmable (this is basic so we won't go into here). Even so, you shouldn't be if your reader is slackor pressed for time.
Explain The “Why” Behind The “What”
Never pass up an opportunity to elaborate on your position. That might make the reader curious and encourage them to go elsewhere for the "why."
For instance, if you write, "X is especially true because of Y," you must explain why Y is significant.
Consider this before and after as an example.
Before:“It's clear that the user experience[insert app name] facilitates is hugely valuable, particularly in a mid-pandemic world."
After:“It's clear that the user experience [insert app] facilitates is hugely valuable, particularly in a mid-pandemic world where people have extra time, a desire to learn something new, and an impulse to connect with others in this unparalleled time of isolation."
The result: During a pandemic, the majority of people can relate to feeling alone and wanting a connection. Now that you've clarified why you've also established an emotional connection with your audience.
This gives your material a human touch. It's what enables you to transcend the position of a faceless corporation attempting to sell goods in order to turn a profit. It gives you substance. You can tell that you understand because you also experience it.
Nobody desires to experience being sold to. Everyone desires to feel heard and seen.
You should aim to make your material relatable and genuine, much like how sales superstars perfect the skill of engaging with their prospects on a human level.
Show Tell To Prove Authenticity
Take my word for it no longer works in today's society. Not when brand loyalty and social proof are the two factors that have the most impact on consumer behavior and purchase decisions.
According to a recent Deloitte report, you must lead with purpose and put the human experience front and center if you want to maintain authenticity in the digital era. They include:
“„Purpose answers an all-important question, ‘Why does a company exist?’—and the answer can serve as the beacon for all organizational decision-making.
Make careful to give specific examples of how you are achieving your objectives to back up your claims of authenticity. If you have permission, center a genuine customer story to add social proof to these statistics and assertions and to customize your data.
Here are some recent comments I received after editing a writer's work to help you accomplish precisely that. As a side note, I make it a point to demonstrate to content writers the reasons for the changes I have made or the additional editing I would like them to perform.
This has consistently been valued and has significantly raised their game:
“„I've just finished going through and comparing your edits with mine there, Erica. As always - thank you so much for your time and feedback. The time and effort you're putting into helping me improve my writing is substantial, and I appreciate it.
Everyone is fallible, and working together helps us all become better writers.
Consider fresh information, factors, and trends as you write your content, just like you would after publishing a blog post or landing page and optimize it accordingly.
How To Declutter Your Copy And Avoid Redundancy
Although it may sound elementary, even experienced content writers have trouble avoiding wordiness and repetition.
This is not anecdotal evidence: wordy sentences appear in almost every single blog post.
Perhaps as you gain expertise, you occasionally fail to heed your own teaching and advice. A deadline is pressing, or you're rushing and decide to forgo the self-edit.
Deadlines for publications are a threat to all of us. But if you notice that you're beginning to favor quantity over quality, stop.
Establish a plan to refresh and concentrate after determining why your sentences are averaging 20+ words.
Create A Process For Self-accountability To Stay On Track
To avoid rambling, have a thorough outline before you begin. When you have a thorough outline, the copy essentially writes itself.
But if you tend to write without an outline and as you conduct research, you should catch yourself at the conclusion. Prior to sending, give your draft some time to sit and then go over it again.
In the end, your message must be straightforward, understandable, engaging, and skimmable. Wordiness and complexity serve no useful purpose and surely don't give you the advantage intellectually.
The purpose of a blog post is not to write a dissertation, an argumentative essay, a process description, or anything else that requires a longer piece of writing.
Concentrate on the following essential copywritingrules to simplify your copy:
Use Active Not Passive Voice To Empower Your Reader To Take Action
Active language encourages the reader to act and is easier to skim.
Why? Considering that we are giving them control.
We want the reader to feel as though they can take control and make it happen for themselves rather than just being told that something might happen to them.
This should ultimately result in the reader clicking a CTA or internal link, strengthening the relationship and moving them one step closer to becoming a customer.
For instance:
Passive voice:“If you don’t have a mathematics or computer science degree, gaining professional qualifications like theseis likely to boost your careerprospects.
Active voice:“If you don’t have a mathematics or computer science degree, consider pursuing relevant professional qualificationsto boost your career prospects."
The result: The language is more direct and more likely to motivate and excite the reader.
Another example:
Passive voice: “To truly optimize the time of your sales team, utilizing a data-driven marketing automation approach is key.”
Active voice:“To truly optimize your sales team’s time, it’s key to utilize a data-driven marketing automation approach.”
The result: It is more readable, clearer, and gives the intended audience—in this case, sales managers—exact instructions (i.e. learn from data and automate repeatable tasks).
Active voice gives the reader the ability to take control of the situation rather than offering a solution that sounds like half-baked advice.
How Does Advanced Content Work In An Inbound Strategy?
It's critical to comprehend how your buyer personas can change in terms of their awareness, knowledge, and challenges over time.
As prospects and leads move from the top to the bottom of the funnel, different content formats and levels of depth attract, engage, and delight a variety of prospects and leads.
How does advanced content immediately benefit you as well as your prospects? Advanced content must provide value to your prospects. Your choice of whether to fence the material will frequently determine the solution.
The most popular method for limiting access to advanced content is to direct users to an online form and ask them to enter certain details in order to utilize the tool or piece of content.
You've made it possible for that material to promote conversions by gating it. Naturally, the secret is to ensure that leads to find your material valuable both before and after they pass the checkpoint.
While online forms are the most popular method for gating content, other methods such as passwords, a visitor's level of activity (measured by cookies or IP addresses), or account sign-ups also function (as in eCommerce).
However, not all advanced content is restricted access. And the reason for it is that some in-depth stuff is best left unlocked. You can convince visitors of the value of your material by granting ungated access to certain advanced content.
This will increase the likelihood that they'll offer contact information when they come across a restricted item.
The universal definition of advanced content, whether gated or left accessible, is that it moves site visitors farther down your marketing funnel by turning them into leads.
The amount of conversions a piece of advanced content generates each month can be used to gauge its value.
20 Types Of Advance Content Marketing
- Tip sheets are short, to-the-point documents that offer advice, shortcuts, or best practices.
- Checklists tell you how to follow a certain process to finish a job.
- Infographics work best when you have a lot of data or information to share.
- Diagrams can help people see how things work or how complicated systems work.
- Glossaries are a great way to teach people about technical terms at an early age.
- Case studiesare customer success stories that show how your businesshelped a customer.
- eBooks are short, easy-to-read guides that help prospects learn about a topic.
- White papers describe a problem and a solution that are specific to an industry. They are detailed, informative, and often include research results.
- Surveys and/or research reports are a great way to get prospects interested in "the latest" news and should help make a case for your product or service.
- How-to guides can be short or long, but they should always explain how to solve a problem or finish a task in a clear way.
- Video content can explain how to solve pain points, show products, and services, or show something that prospects might be interested in.
- Multimedia online courses can be made up of a series of lessons all about the same subject.
- Webinars are usually live eventswhere a subject matter expert (SME) talks about a topic and people can ask questions. They are often part of a series.
- Podcasts are audio files that can be about anything from industry news and frequently asked questions (FAQs) to interviews with experts.
- Users can use Templates to make useful documents that can help them solve problems.
- Worksheets often help people work through a thought process to make problems easier or to encourage a systematic way of solving problems.
- Pillar pages are in-depth web pages with long-form content on a central topic and links to related subtopics. The option to download a PDF copy adds value and conversion potential.
- Quizzes and calculators that you can interact with can be a great mix of visual appeal, interactivity, and information.
- Advanced topics that are most likely to move leads toward the bottom of the funnel can be the focus of workshops and break-out sessions.
- Kits can put together multiple offers in a smart way to make them more appealing.
Advanced Content Marketing Strategy (Step-By-Step) | A Look Into Neil Patel's Brain
What Is The Relationship Between SEO And Advance Content Marketing?
Advanced content marketing is the strategic distribution of online content like videos, audio, blogs, and infographics through different channels to get people interested or keep them interested.
SEOand content marketing are interdependent. SEOhas some requirements that can be met with content marketing.
SEO needs content to be optimized, and content marketing meets that need by making sure the content is high-quality, has all the targeted keywords, and is written for the audience.
SEO works best when you keep getting quality backlinks. If you have good content, well-known sites will naturally link back to you.
SEO isn't just about keywords and links; it's also about having the right metadata, meta tags, and a well-planned sitemap.
Content that is well structured will have the right tags in the right places and will be full of keywords that can be easily crawled and accessed by the target audience.
In order to do advanced content marketing, you need to make new, high-quality content on a regular basis.
This helps SEO because the content gets indexed and ranks high in the SERP. If you keep up with content marketing, your SEO will also be top-notch.
As you can see from what's been said so far, your SEO campaignwon't work unless you add an advanced content marketing strategy to it.
The content you make won't be useful unless people search for it and find it, and to be found, you need an SEO plan that works.
People Also Ask
What Are The 7 Steps Of Content Marketing?
- Define your goals.
- Record your performance metrics.
- Gather your data.
- Decide on your content types.
- Create content.
- Distribution.
- Follow-up for SEO.
What Is A Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing is a marketing strategy that uses relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media to attract, engage, and keep an audience. This method shows that you are an expert, helps people remember your brand, and keeps your business in people's minds when they need to buy what you sell.
What Are Content Pillars?
A content pillar is a large, informative piece of content on a specific topic or theme that can be broken up into many smaller sections, pieces, and other materials.
Conclusion
To feel more confident and make sure every piece of content is helping you reach your goals, remember these advanced content marketing tips:
- Focus on making your reader feel something when you write (this stems from truly understanding the motivation and psychology behind your content and your audience)
- Use real-life examples to make your points stick, and always explain the "why" behind the "what" (doing so will lift your content above the fluff and regurgitation in the SERPs)
- Set up a self-accountability system to make sure you give each piece of content the self-editing and reading through it deserves.
- Clear up your copy by always going back to basic copywriting rules that we sometimes forget.