The Impact of Content Marketing on Your Brand

Now more than ever, consumers desire a more meaningful connection with the brands they follow. Your audiences crave behind the scenes videos covering meaningful origin and philanthropic stories, the colorful, entertaining brand voice on social media, and highly personalized written content that feels truly authentic. There is no better way to do that than investing in a content marketing strategy. From everyday people to celebrities to brands both large and small, everyone is realizing the power that content has over driving action along the customer journey. If your brand is not investing in thoughtful content today, read on to learn more about why every brand should be incorporating this into their marketing strategies.  

Why Content Marketing?

Whether you yourself are the brand or your business is the brand, content marketing is important to invest in – especially in the digital era where content is constantly consumed across multiple platforms for both personal and professional reasons. 

Here are some of the key reasons to believe in content marketing:

It’s lucrative

Content marketing can boost conversions leading to higher sales or traffic to your website, all the while signaling to google that the domain has high authority and increasing your rank in search engines. More content + more exposure = higher ROI. Invest in high quality content and your audience will invest in you.  

It’s a relationship builder

While content marketing may ultimately lead to higher sales, it shouldn’t be  about selling, but rather helping. By taking this approach, content marketing can help you increase loyalty thus building trust and creating a sense of community surrounding your brand. Make sure you are tailoring your content to your audience’s biggest questions and what they value. 

Your competitors are using it

97% of businesses use content marketing, and that includes 73% of marketers.. Don’t fall behind and let your competitors get the upper hand. Use multiple different types of content to be seen as a thought leader among similar brands and meet business goals at each stage of the customer journey. 

Choosing Your Content

The process of choosing which content types to lean towards looks a little different for every brand. There are a vast number of content types like social media posts, infographics, blogs, podcasts, videos, and paid content marketing with reputable publishers. It’s important to start by assessing what makes the most sense for your brand.

Take a look at the infographic below to begin aligning your content marketing goals with your overarching brand goals.

Defining Your audience

Your audience should play a large role in determining your content. Start by narrowing down your audience’s potential topics of interest and looking at which platforms your audience is conducting the most research or spending the most time engaging with. 

Developing your message strategy

It’s important to set content goals to measure how well your content is performing. This can help you decide which pieces of content or messaging themes are performing well to refine your strategic approach moving forward. 

Aligning brand goals with content formats

As you pinpoint your target audience and set content goals to develop a sound messaging strategy, you need to identify your brand goals. Pinpoint the primary KPIs you’re looking to measure to determine which types of content best serve your purpose. 

Overcoming Tricky Hurdles

While there are many reasons for brands to invest in content marketing, it is important to understand that there are a few hurdles to overcome to see the ROI brands desire. 

Benefits aren’t immediate

If you’re thinking about tapping into content marketing with expectations of immediate success such as high engagement and conversions, you need to temper your expectations. Building a content strategy is a time consuming period marked by trial and error. It takes great time and resources to discover what makes sense for your brand and for your audience in particular. Don’t rush the process. 

Maintaining originality

With 97% of businesses already using content marketing, it’s clear that the industry is highly competitive. This can make it difficult to differentiate your brand from your competitors. Your competitors are often creating similar types of content on the same platforms and channels, trying to capture the attention of the same types of consumers. Make sure you aren’t spending too much time trying to “keep up with the Joneses” and are instead focusing on creating content that creatively showcases how your brand can make the consumers’ lives better. Tap into your creative juices based on consumer insights to find ways to make your content standout.

A shortage of ideas

Constantly coming up with new content ideas can leave marketers feeling burned out. But while the instinct may be that new content is better and more exciting to your audience, it’s important to think smarter not harder. Find ways to revamp your existing content, and find ways to make it more valuable – both to your audience and Google.  

Overall, content marketing is a great investment for your brand. It’s lucrative, builds that connection you’re looking for with your audience, and allows you the space and opportunity to grow your brand like never before. So begin exploring content marketing efforts today – whether you’re handling in-house or outsourcing through a trusted partner.To learn more about content marketing, be sure to check out:

Driving 12K Leads for a Luxury Home Appliance Brand

Brief

A luxury home ice maker brand partnered with Coegi to create a B2B2C strategy that would establish relationships with custom builders, designers, and homeowners, driving in-store visits to authorized brand dealers and growing their sales pipeline.

Highlights

12,000
Leads Generated


68%
Lift in Dealer Visits

 

Challenge

Consumers who were in-market for home appliances were easy to reach and wanted the client’s products. However, they could not buy directly from the brand. We needed to reach kitchen designers and renovators to close the awareness gap between consumers and professionals. 

Our team had three key questions: 

  • How can we reach this niche audience beyond traditional B2B channels?
  • How do we evaluate if we effectively reached this audience?
  • How can Coegi set up the client for long-term success with this audience?

This home designer and builder audience had proven difficult to reach online. So, we needed to expand beyond traditional B2B channels, such as LinkedIn, to drive lead generation and build a long-term CRM growth strategy for the brand. 

Solution

Building Awareness With B2B Audiences

Digital media platforms offered limited reach to build awareness among our very niche group of trade professionals. Instead, we partnered with key trade publications to leverage their email syndication lists. 

Prior to activating any digital media, Coegi worked with three leading industry publications for a three week email-blast campaign prompting website visitation. This allowed us to build a fresh, highly-qualified audience list primed through sequential messaging. 

Driving Action From In-Market B2C Audiences

We took an audience-first approach focusing on consumers already in the consideration stage for relevant products, and drove three core audience segments to find the brand’s B2B dealers: 

  • Influencers: Custom builders and designers seeking a luxury ice maker producer for clients
  • Explorers: In-market consumer audiences already considering the brand 
  • Kitchen Buyers & Remodelers: In-market audiences with a history of purchasing luxury home goods but lacked brand awareness 

Coegi used Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to reach users actively searching for home renovation ideas and products. This was accomplished using a blend of contextual, interest, lookalike and retargeting audiences. We also used display retargeting and a paid search strategy to own branded search terms and secure top-of-page placement at final stages of the consumer journey. 

Implementing a Full-Funnel Measurement Strategy

With email serving as the awareness driver, we were able to focus on measuring core actions, such as “Dealer Locator” button clicks and contact form submissions on their website. These actions helped us evaluate if we had reached the B2B audience and then implement sequential messaging and flighting to drive conversions.

The Results

By combining the audience quality of industry publications with digital reach and measurement, this B2B2C marketing campaign drove outstanding results. It generated 68% growth of in-person dealership visits and 12,000 B2B leads to establish a first-party CRM database. 

Key Learnings

  • Digital technology and tools that may not be top of mind for B2B marketers can be used creatively to solve problems
  • Understanding who your audience trusts up front leads to smart partnerships that take the guesswork out of your strategy

How to Build a Content Amplification Strategy Using Publisher and Influencer Partnerships

Custom content marketing is key to achieving long-term brand success. But, content creation can be expensive and time-consuming. A content amplification strategy allows brands to do more with less, maximizing the return on investment. 

In this article, you’ll learn how to create an impactful content amplification strategy that expands reach and extends content shelf life.

Why You Need a Content Amplification Strategy

Content amplification can build an authoritative voice for brands in any industry, from CPG to finance to B2B. For more complex industries, it is an opportunity to establish thought leadership and position a brand as a trustworthy educational resource

Alternatively, content can be all about entertaining the consumer – driving brand affinity and engagement. Whether you’re amplifying successful content, refreshing pre-existing content or partnering with a trusted third party to leverage their resources and authority – it all comes down to finding the ideal intersection between brand goals and consumer value 

Building a Holistic Content Marketing Plan

To begin crafting a strategic content marketing plan that satisfies both the brand and its consumers, follow these four steps. 

#1 – Establish strategic alignment on content goals and production strategy

Begin by putting together a comprehensive brief with the client that addresses: 

  • The brand’s core business and marketing objectives 
  • The brand’s content creation plans for the year to support these goals 

Once you understand the upcoming content pipeline, find ways to incorporate major initiatives, such as custom research studies, company highlight videos, or downloadable white papers, into the paid content marketing strategy. 

#2 – Analyze the existing content library

Next, look at the brand’s current content arsenal. What assets can be easily refreshed and repurposed? This decreases net new creative production needs, while making the most of high-value assets. To identify the best content pieces without bias, start by analyzing pre-existing organic metrics. 

  • What content formats are driving the highest reach and engagement on social media? 
  • What long-form content pieces are generating the most downloads, backlinks, or shares on your website? 

After understanding what great pieces already exist, you can refresh, amplify, and distribute them to more people within their audience groups. 

#3 – Partner with publishers for net new content opportunities

After understanding what content is currently at your disposal, identify gaps to fill by tapping into strategic publisher partnerships. 

  • Where is there competitive white space for the brand to own their message? 
  • Which channels are the brand’s competitors underutilizing? 
  • Where is the target audience most active and reachable? 

Leverage publishers to help create the most engaging and interactive assets possible. Some creative content formats we have explored include immersive articles, Instagram ‘meme’ Reels, podcast segments, animated videos, recipe blogs, co-branded national polls, and e-newsletter sponsorships – just to name a few. 

#4 – Ensure content provides authentic value

Identify the key messages, whether content families or thematic pillars, to find a valuable brand story. Also consider what content formats best communicate different types of information, as well as different target audience segments. For instance, a research survey with heavy statistical data may be best suited for an infographic, whereas a webinar may be better suited for a sizzle reel video.  

Remember these four guiding principles to create authentic marketing content:

As you are creating a custom content plan, you should also be formulating your content amplification strategy. Approaching these in tandem will help you determine what types of assets are needed for both owned and amplified channels and streamline creative production. 

Identifying Optimal Publisher Partnerships

To level up content production and audience reach, connect with reputable publishers to create and amplify custom marketing content. Our teams work closely to streamline communication and access the best added-value opportunities for clients by leveraging relationships with editorial partners.

These publishers could be vertical-specific sites, high-authority news organizations, or relevant internet content and entertainment communities. It’s beneficial to align with their editorial calendars to get greater engagement and stronger placements, while also considering factors like seasonality for the brand. 

In the publisher vetting and RFI process, we look at four key areas to determine the best partnerships:

  1. Audience: Does our audience have a high index and contextual relevance with this publisher’s content? 
  2. Content Quality: Are the publisher’s creative chops high quality, engaging, and suitable for repurposing across multiple channels? 
  3. Message Alignment: Does this publication’s mission and historical content align with the brand’s key messages and themes? 
  4. Distribution: Will this publisher provide adequate reach? Are there paid promotion and distribution opportunities across high-touch and owned channels? 

Typically, it’s best practice to diversify across a few different publishers to ensure you have adequate reach across your target audience. However, there are some instances where it makes sense to go all-in with one publisher if it strongly aligns with brand goals, or if your budget is limited. 

Repurposing Custom Content Across Channels

Content marketing is typically a pay-to-play space, at least in the initial stages of your brand partnership. Nearly every publisher has minimum spend requirements. Strategically repurposing content across channels (without simply copy and pasting) is critical to maximize that investment. 

For example, a publisher can help transform an in-depth white paper with proprietary content into an infographic or animated stat video. By making complex content more digestible, you can reach users earlier in the consumer journey, while still translating the key value proposition. 

After commissioning custom content, there are two highly effective ways to repurpose it: using derivative assets and tapping into influencer marketing. Let’s dive into each of these in more detail.

Using Derivative Assets to Extend Value and Reach

What are derivative assets? Derivative assets are micro content, such as ad units derived from the main “anchor content” and used to drive to the main “anchor content”. Examples of derivative assets include: 

  • Creating a native display unit that links to an organic blog post or sponsored article
  • Boosting an organic social media post on a brand’s page 
  • Using paid search engine marketing to promote a white paper 
  • Building organic and paid social media drivers that link to a branded e-book
  • Producing a sizzle reel from a long-form webinar

Derivative assets extend your anchor pieces, tailoring them to different audiences, placements, and stages in the consumer journey. This approach creates a more comprehensive content strategy and supports creative efficiency.  A good best practice is to sponsor pre-existing organic content, allowing you to test the content before dedicating advertising dollars. This way, you already know which content is likely to drive the greatest paid media results.

Amplifying Content with Influencer Marketing Partnerships

Influencer marketing is gaining more and more attention in the realm of content amplification. However, you HAVE to ensure the content is authentic to the creator’s individual brand and unique followership. An influencer simply pushing out your brand’s ad is not always going to feel organic.  

Publishers often have in-house influencer talent which brands can tap to gain additional reach outside of the publication’s readership. Take PopSugar for example. They have networks of highly-vetted influencers in the food, lifestyle, beauty, and fashion spaces which brands can leverage. Coegi also has an in-house influencer marketing team to help brands identify and partner with creators to create and promote branded content. 

Read our 5 Essential Influencer Marketing Tips article for more.

Key Takeaways for a Successful Content Amplification Strategy

Custom content and sponsored publisher placements have a myriad of positive effects – visibility, credibility, reach, engagement, and more. To reap these benefits, remember to focus on creating and amplifying content that provides true value to the consumer

Save and use this quick checklist to audit the quality of your content marketing assets:

  • Supports core business goals 
  • Translates key brand message through storytelling 
  • Offers authentic consumer value
  • Aligns with publisher editorial calendar or your brand’s seasonality 
  • Is able to be reused in multiple formats and across a variety of channels 

Ready to leverage Coegi’s expert media team to create your brand’s content amplification strategy?

Contact us today for a discovery call.

Coegi Partners

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