Content marketing is important in the present perspective of digital marketing. We have already discussed how content marketing is beneficial in achieving your business objectives. The biggest benefit of using content marketing techniques is that you can gain the trust of your customers.
It consequently helps in increasing the retention rate of old customers. Therefore, most business owners have started using content marketing techniques.
According to the report generated by the Content marketing institute, 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.
Repeat customers- a way to make your business stable in cutthroat competition. All companies want to retain their customers because they are willing to spend for your products and services, again and again.
Moreover, getting a hold of your previous customers means staying at the top of your competitors. Veteran business owners can understand it better.
A Buyer’s Journey Is Far Beyond Than Just a Purchase
Buyers’ journey can be described as the stages followed by a customer to purchase products or services. Broadly, the buyers’ journey is divided into three main categories:
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
These three stages just tell you how to attract customers to make a purchase. But, our main objective should not be getting sales only; it should be providing a memorable experience to the customers.
You should put your main focus on creating loyal and long terms customers by creating the best customer experience. Instead of funneling, you should consider the customer journey as a flywheel. The flywheel drives future growth by repeating the cycle of the customer’s journey.
By producing relevant, engaging, and unique content for each stage of the buyer’s journey, you can gain their trust. Your content will act as fuel for the force required to retain the customer at each stage and keep continuing the cycle.
Now, it is clear that content marketing is linked with customer retention! All marketers should know the different content marketing techniques to retain customers.
Content Marketing Strategies Required For Customer Retention
Making a sale is like forming a base for your business. But, if you want to sustain in the cutthroat competition, then you should ensure the post-purchase experience of the customer is memorable, adorable, and amazing.
You cannot grow your business high unless you start to receive old customers. Content marketing is one of the techniques to gain customers' trust and increase their retention rate.
Along with content marketing, there are various other factors that you need to consider. But, here, we will be going to discuss content marketing strategies for customer retention.
Consistently Produce Relevant Content
Content consistency is very important for achieving the growth and success of your business. But not just any content. Make sure your content carries a unique style and pitch across all publishing channels.
All big brands know the power of producing helpful content at every customer touchpoint. Content consistently will help you achieve the following: Credibility, Trust, and Reputation.
Did you know that consistently producing high-quality content is more powerful to capture a targeted audience than any other technique?
How to maintain consistency when you are grasped by so many other tasks?
Well, here is a trick.
List Down Topics In Advance
Coming up with stupendous and outstanding ideas is not a cakewalk. So, you should start listing down your ideas in advance so that you do not feel stressed out at the last moment.
Whenever you get an idea, you should start writing it down. I would like to recommend you create a separate note section on your phone where you can mention all your random, but unique and powerful ideas.
This simple trick will help you to create the perfect content that would help you to stay ahead in the game. Moreover, it will help you to come up with the content that your audience wants to digest.
Decide Your Content Type
Once you have plenty of ideas, then it is time to create the content. But before that, you need to choose the right type of content you want to share.
Creating content is not just limited to creating blogs and articles; it also includes generating videos, sharing images, creating social media posts, and so on. Choose the right content that can display your ideas better.
For example, content to entertain would go better on social media posts, especially on Instagram. On the other hand, content to inform would go better with a blog post and video creation.
Create a Content Calendar
To keep track of content consistency, you should create a content calendar. You can create this calendar by using Google Sheets. Create a few headings like Sr. No., Content Main Idea, Content-Type, Content Publishing Platform, and Publishing Date.
There you go!
With this simple spreadsheet, you can easily maintain consistency in content publication.
Use Scheduling Tools to Easy-Peasy Your Work
Make scheduling tools your best friends to take your content marketing strategy to the next level. These tools help you to create a post in advance and schedule it to post later on. The scheduling tools will automatically post your content at the selected time.
You should have to create a maximum number of posts in your free time and schedule to post them later on. You should choose the time for scheduling your post when your audience is active to bring your post in front of your audience’s eyes. LinkedIn has its own post-scheduling tool.
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Hootsuite
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Buffer
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Sprout Social
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Sendible
These are some of the tools that help to schedule your posts on different social media platforms.
Keep Checking In on Your Results
After publishing your content, you should find out the number of people who are engaging with your post. The more engagement, the better it is. Otherwise, you need to find out where the problem lies and do a little twist and tweak in your strategy.
After that, create content again and post it again.
Build Community On Social Media Platforms
People from different demographics, belonging to different age groups, different religions, and cultures use social media. In simple terms, most people around the world are present on social media platforms.
So, content marketing on these platforms is quite obvious. All social media platforms provide an opportunity to build your communities where you connect with LIKE-MINDED people.
You can create a community around your niche, and start connecting with people who are interested in your topic.
Regularly posting funny, attractive, informative images and videos along with descriptive captions will let you keep your audience engaged.
Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or so, you should produce creative content that makes your audience listen to you.
If you are getting replies and comments, then it means people are showing interest in your posts and want to learn more about your products/services or whatever you are sharing.
Well, if your targeted audience is not interacting with your posts, don’t become disheartened. Twist and tweak your content, and try to make it more informative and attractive. You can collect ideas from top influencers who are doing good in your type of niche.
Also, you should give some time to yourself because people take time to build trust and start interacting with posts from a new person. Some simple tips for creating a perfect post for social media platforms that resonate with your targeted audience:
- [ ]Regularly check posts created by the top influencers in your field.
- [ ]Note down important points that make their posts outstanding.
- [ ]Regularly read the latest news in your field so that you can provide the latest information to your audience.
- [ ]Add interested people to your group to increase your community.
- [ ]Create a perfect post on the latest information by using the ideas you have noted down by observing top influencers.
Create Content for Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
Have you purchased anything without doing any research? Most purchases start with detailed research work, especially online research. This journey starting from research to making a purchase is known as the buyers’ journey.
There are three stages in the Buyers’ Journey: Awareness, Consideration, & Decision.
It is important to create content for every stage of the buyers’ journey so that you do not lose the targeted audience at any point. By providing adequate content for every stage, you can direct them to sales.
Content Ideas for Every Stage
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For the Awareness Stage
At this point, you should create informative content. You should provide the best answers to questions your targeted audience has been searching for. Content formats for the awareness stage are:
- [ ]Blogs post
- [ ]How-To videos
- [ ]Social media posts
- [ ]Ebook
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For the Consideration Stage
When your targeted audiences start moving to the consideration stage, then it means that you are successful in capturing their attention. At this stage, you have to create content with detailed product/service-related information.
When the targeted audience has moved to the consideration stage, they are looking for the top level of educational content. To produce content for the consideration stage, deep-level research is required. The type of content you need to produce at this stage are:
- [ ]Website content and Web Blogs
- [ ]Product comparison charts
- [ ]Case studies
- [ ]Whitepapers
- [ ]Original research or reports
- [ ]Product videos
- [ ]Instructional, product-specific blog posts
- [ ]Product Documentation
- [ ]Landing pages
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For the Decision Stage
When people find your content in the consideration stage insightful, then they decide to move on to the next stage- The Decision Stage. At this stage, people are quite close to making the purchase.
You should put in all your efforts and not let your targeted audience leave your website without buying your products/services. Content formations that you need to provide at this stage are:
- [ ]Free Trial
- [ ]Free Consultation From Experts
- [ ]Huge Discount
People want to get the premium services at the best price, or they want to have a free trial before actually buying the products or services. Thus, you need to create copies for a free trial, free consultation, coupons, discounts, and so on.
These are some examples of different forms of content for different touchpoints with customers. If you are going to post your content other than your website, then you should make sure that platform is worthy of publishing your worthy content.
Publish content where your audience is present!
Ensure Smooth Onboarding for Customer Through Emails
When someone uses your product or service for the first time, then it is an important milestone for businesses and the customer journey as well. Onboarding your customers needs a lot of focus, fine strategy, and attention to detail.
Always keep in mind that your competitors are equally vying for attention. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to look for unique strategies.
One of the best ways to bring new customers for your products/services is by providing a smooth onboarding process to the customers. To do this, you can send promotional and marketing emails to your customers with a link to your website/e-store.
This technique will increase the chances of bringing your targeted customers to your website.
Go Where Your Customers Are
What if you publish your content where your audience is not present? You may be able to increase website traffic, but not able to get leads. Don’t let your hard work go in vain.
Make sure you publish your creative content in the right place. For example, if you want to do guest blogging, then search niche-related websites that are already receiving a huge volume of traffic that can be your customers.
Let’s understand this with an example; if you want to sell skincare products, then create guest blogs around skincare product benefits, then post them on the website that has an audience who are interested in skincare products or who want to know how to take care of skin.
Moreover, you should make your strong presence by providing valuable content on all the platforms where your audience is present. Omnipresence is necessary for marketers to generate higher profits with their marketing strategies.
Enjoy Customer Retention After Implementing These Strategies!
Content retention is the essence of business success. Out of a myriad of techniques, content marketing is the best way to keep your customer stuck around to your business. To make your content marketing a successful campaign for your business, you should follow certain rules.
Planning, maintaining consistency in content creation, and publishing content where your targeted audience is some of the rules that your need to follow. Within a few days or months, you will start receiving unexpected results.