Staying “on message” across channels is one of the most difficult challenges facing marketers today, but it can yield great rewards in making your marketing strategy an effective one. Think of creating a delicious dessert that draws the customer in with anticipation and expectation.. Similarly, each marketing channel that delivers consistent content provides a seamless experience — anticipated and expected — for your audience.
Satisfying your audience’s consistent content cravings with a well-planned recipe can provide your business with the foundation for a cross-channel campaign. Key messages and calls to action should be reflected in both written copy and visual assets. Each asset should follow a style guide and reinforce main copy points.
The main ingredients for a content campaign have traditionally included written content, blogs, newsletters and a focus on database growth. Recently, visual content has become the icing on the cake. Therefore, as competition for audience attention continues to increase, eye appeal has truly become buy appeal.
Digital channels, including social and search, continue to favor visual content. With these high stakes come high rewards for marketers who can deliver great visuals paired with a great story. “This may also mean that content will be more unique, short and pack a punch to grab audience attention,” according to Brook Bentley at Northern Nevada Business Weekly.
Integrating content messaging has never been more critical for success. For this reason, here are five steps to creating a consistent content experience for your audience across all of your content channels.
1. Identify Key Messages
Master your content marketing goals by first identifying key objectives and communication messages. Additionally, determine what it is you want to achieve with your campaign and what action you want your audience to take. Without these key ingredients, your campaign will never properly bake.
2. Understand Your Audience
Most marketers believe that they know their audiences. But looking past their target demographics, do they know what it is that their audiences want? Avoid the trap of assumptions and know what your audience wants from you. In addition, every social media post is like a mini focus group. You can benefit from the insights that can be gained by studying audience behaviors.
3. Create A Single Voice
As I included in a previous blog story, your voice isn’t just what you say, but also how you say it, across all of your channels. Creating a style guide for your writing style, visual branding and a call to action builds a clear message that transcends channels and platforms. It is also helpful to identify a champion for your voice to eliminate potential errors and missteps.
4. Echo Your Message
With so many distribution outlets to consider, how does a marketer choose where to focus resources? Regardless of where you decide to distribute your content, the message should be consistent. It’s safe to assume that your audience will interact with your brand on various channels. Reinforcing the messaging can increase retention and lead to action.
5. Analyze And Repeat
The fun part really begins once your content is out there. Monitoring engagement (or lack of it) and measuring results can lead to a more efficient process. Let’s face it: ever-changing behaviors, emerging trends and modified algorithms make it tough to nail the winning recipe. Always be optimizing, evaluating and then repeating what’s working until it expires.
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