Content marketing is key to running a successful digital marketing campaign because content is king on the internet. Here are some strategies to build a highly tailored content marketing plan for your software enterprise.
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Ever since the dawn of the digital age, marketing has moved from conventional forms like TV or newspaper ads to the digital realm. Things like social media marketing and email marketing are commonplace now, and for a good reason! For one, digital marketing is more cost-effective than conventional marketing. And second, it’s more targeted and, thus, gives better results (ROI) to businesses.
But what most people forget is that content is at the heart of all things digital marketing. You can’t expect social media marketing, email marketing, or any other form of digital marketing to work if you aren’t spewing out valuable content for your readers consistently. And that’s the foremost reason you’re reading this blog — because your software company isn’t reaching its full potential (and won’t) if you don’t have a solid content marketing plan. In this blog, we’ll teach you how to craft the perfect content marketing strategy for your software firm.
KEY POINTS
Define clear goals
Most companies think content marketing is all about publishing as much content as possible, not caring if it’s serving any value to potential customers. This is why having clear goals before you start is important. For example, if you’re a new software firm, you’ll need content aimed at increasing your company’s awareness in the niche.
Similarly, a well-established software enterprise would already know where its leads are and what kind of content is needed to bring new customers to its doorstep. We suggest using the SMART framework, which means your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-sensitive.
A website blog is more powerful than you think
Having a website blog is one of the crucial aspects of content marketing. This is the place where you’ll be posting long-form articles. Again, before jumping in, think about who your target audience is and what kind of content they’d find valuable. For example, you could post an article on how procurement software can make vendor management easy for a small company.
The point here is not only to engage with the audience but also to appear as an expert in your field. When you establish yourself as an expert in software or a particular sub-segment of it, you’ll automatically be the go-to place of hundreds of potential customers. But promoting your website blog can be time-consuming if you don’t couple it with social media marketing or email marketing. You can use these free technology email templates and use an online design tool like PosterMyWall to promote your content using dynamic digital marketing collateral.
Make your content personal
Personalized content is the key to making the audience open up to you. Why? Because when you target customer pain points, say how hard it is to maintain your business’s account books on spreadsheets or the common mistakes the procurement department makes in booking orders, your audience will understand that you understand their pain and are on their side.
However, you probably won’t have a singular target audience but rather different shades and segments of them. Therefore, you must segment your audiences into multiple categories so that you know exactly what kind of content each segment wants and the pain points you should touch on when engaging with each of them.
Email marketing can do wonders for your company
Most marketers think email marketing has grown obsolete, but that couldn’t be more wrong! The truth is it’s difficult to execute a successful email campaign, but it all comes down to expanding your subscriber list over time and engaging with your subscribers.
The first thing to do is have a compelling subject line. People won’t open your emails if they don’t have catchy or hooking subject lines. That doesn’t mean you should be overly sales-y — that’s surely a turnoff. Next, use visuals and call-to-action (CTA) buttons throughout the email. No one wants to wade through long blocks of text. Instead, they expect to understand your message at a glance.
Content marketing can’t be complete without social media. Social media platforms serve as a tool to propagate your content and find new audiences. But before you harness the power of social media, you should know which platforms to join. You don’t want to squander energy marketing on every social platform out there.
The best way to figure that out is by asking where your target audience is hanging out. For example, a recruitment company would find its target audience on LinkedIn because it’s a place for companies and employees. However, for most businesses, including a software companies, this could be Facebook or Instagram simply because these two are the most widely-used platforms today.
After figuring out which social media platforms are right for you, it’s time to start promoting your website blog content or YouTube videos on social media. The entire purpose of this exercise is to get traction from the audience and redirect them to your website, which is the point of sale.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way out of this. Gaining momentum on social media can be tedious and time-consuming. Just keep posting regularly, and make sure you make use of catchy captions and hashtags. Publish on your social media pages and on other groups and pages.
A few concluding thoughts
After extensively working with dozens of software companies, we’ve learned that every enterprise is different. They have unique USPs and target audiences, so there’s no universal formula that works for everyone. Instead, you’ll have to experiment with a number of strategies to know what works in your case.
Also, you must tailor each strategy to your specific case to get the best results. And lastly, don’t forget to test each strategy and fine-tune it. You can use social media metrics tools like Hootsuite for social media analytics or SEMrush to see if you’re incorporating the right keywords in your content and social media posts as a part of your SEO strategy.