We are nearing 2024 and content marketing continues to be an extremely effective strategy for brands looking to increase website traffic, generate leads, and boost sales. As we move into 2024, content marketing is only going to keep growing in importance for organizations who want to reach modern audiences.
To succeed with content marketing in 2024, you’ll need an intelligent strategy informed by the latest trends, data and best practices. This blog will explore what will work with content marketing next year so you can refine your approach and achieve explosive growth. Let’s dive in!
Understand Your Audience Personas
One thing that never changes about great marketing is that it starts with deep audience insight. Make sure you have clearly defined buyer personas outlining your target audience’s goals, challenges, interests and consumption habits. Update these regularly to keep pace with changing behaviours and trends amongst customers and prospects.
Align Content With Buyer Journey Stages
With detailed personas, map out the typical buyer’s journey they go through when interacting with your brand. Identify key stages where they need education, validation or motivation to keep progressing towards a purchase. Craft content that speaks directly to what they care about during each stage e.g. awareness, consideration, evaluation.
Content that moves audiences logically towards conversions will be essential for content marketing success in 2024. Audit what content gaps exist across the journey to guide upcoming content creation efforts.
Prioritise Video Content
It’s no secret – online video continues exploding with over 80% of internet traffic expected to come from video by 2022. Leveraging video content marketing will be more important than ever in 2024. Focus on creating useful, engaging video content around topics and questions your customers care about.
Consider collaborating with influencers in your niche to tap into their audiences. Optimize videos for both YouTube and your owned channels, enabling discovery by both search and existing audiences.Upload subtitles too to enhance accessibility. Video provides so many creative storytelling avenues, be sure to incorporate it within your strategy for maximum impact next year.
Win With Long-Form Written Content
While video rises in popularity, long-form written content like blogs and guides is still hugely effective at driving website traffic and conversions. Lengthy content over 1,500 words showcases your subject expertise, builds trust and ranks well in search engines. Identify keyword-driven topics where you can create truly definitive guides and resources that attract and inform audiences.
Infuse written content with visual elements as well – photos, graphs, flow charts etc. Maintaining a blog with regular in-depth posts that draw readers in keeps you top of mind as an industry leader. Written content has major longevity too with evergreen potential to convert and inform for years.
Optimize For Voice Search Queries
Voice search usage continues accelerating with adoption of devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Position yourself for this by optimizing content to answer spoken audience questions. Identify rising conversational queries and topics by checking Google Trends and planning documents. Then create content addressing these issues in natural language that people would use in speech.
Voice search moves fast with shorter and less formal queries. Feature these actual questions prominently in headlines, opening paragraphs and section titles that speak conversationally. The specific words people say matter more than ever. Include questions in your buyer personas too and constantly listen to query trends.
Craft Localized Content
More searches than ever now include local geo-modifiers like city names and zip codes. So you need a localized content strategy focused on ranking content for geographic-based search queries. Identify which regions you serve customers in then build locally flavored, relevant content for those markets.
This includes unique landing pages and microsites for each region. Feature the city or state name prominently on those pages and domain name if possible. Use keywords with the geo-target location blended throughout content. Also highlight physical business features they care about like store locations or service areas. Local content builds authority signaling you as the best in a particular zone.
Appeal With Interactive Content
Content that engages audiences with an experience keeps them interested longer, boosting conversion potential. Interactive content comes in many formats from quizzes to calculators, configurators and even interactive videos. These compel readers to actively participate, creating more memorable engagement.
Infuse your blog posts and landing pages with interactive elements tied to what content would help personas overcome their challenges or achieve goals. Sitewide interactives also work well for lead generation offering visitors something of high value in exchange for contact details you can nurture leads with after.
Promote Content The Right Way
You can have the greatest content ever created but it does no good sitting idle with no one seeing it. Powerful, orchestrated promotion across organic, paid and earned channels is essential to content success today. Don’t just publish and pray – actually get eyeballs on content with smart distribution.
Share natively to owned channels like social media, email, and website homepages regularly. Create dedicated emails solely about new content launches. Guest post content previews to niche partners. Seed content with influencers. Pay to amplify high-performing organic social posts. Strategically promote each asset for maximum visibility, shares and links.
Analyse Performance And Optimise
With content promotion rolling, closely analyse how all your created assets are performing. Review metrics like pageviews, time on site/page, inbound links and conversion rates in analytics. See what content types and topics resonate best as well as gaps to improve.
Keep testing new formats, domains, headlines and key messaging to discover what optimisations improve performance. Then build on these lessons with future content plays. Continually reviewing your strategy against emerging data ensures you stay agile, informed and successful.
Also Read:Selecting the Best Google Ads Strategy For Your Business
Conclusion
There you have an array of powerful content marketing techniques set to drive results in 2024. From leveraging video and voice to localisation and promotion – many factors go into effective strategy today. Just remember that impactful content always starts and ends with truly understanding exactly WHO you serve. What do they want? WHAT OUTCOME are they really seeking? Speak to those real needs and the rest will follow!
