There are some business truisms that support all online marketing strategies.
To state them aloud might seem silly. But if I don’t take a second to pull back the curtain on why we do what we do in marketing, then you’re left with a bunch of jumbled tactics.
Can you build your business with a handful of marketing tactics? Yes and no. The biggest struggle in sorting out marketing tactics is not being able to clearly see where the pieces fit together.
For example, if I was building a home. I’d start with the foundation and build from there.
But if someone came to me and said, “I’ve decided not to build a home because the bathroom tiles aren’t available in sky blue,” I’d think they were crazy.
Logic tells us the tiles don’t matter until you’ve built the foundation and finished dozens of other important building tasks.
(And why do the tiles have to be sky blue anyway? Any other color would also serve the function of protecting your bathroom walls.)
So let’s bring it back to content strategy.
The purposes of strategically using content online are to:
- Increase organic traffic
- Generate leads
- Lower customer acquisition costs
Simple enough.
So one strategy is to write a bunch of content and hope people find it. (This strategy may have worked when I got online back in 1994 but it doesn’t work today.)
Or, you can start by finding out what people are already searching for… and then placing your content in front of them.
This is a better strategy because you already know what your starving crowd is craving… and actively searching for.
All you have to do is be the best choice available to them.
(Btw, “best” can also be defined as “easiest to find” or “easiest to use.” So don’t worry about putting out absolutely perfect content. Just get it out there.)
To find out what people are searching for, you can use your favorite SEO tool.
All of the major SEO tools have amazing (and usually free) training videos. So, pop some popcorn and soak up the knowledge.
(I can tell you from experience that not all industries are as generous with their training materials so take advantage of them.)
Once you know what people are searching for, the next question to ask yourself is, “Why are they searching for this topic?”
More about what people’s online search behavior tells you about how likely they are to buy is here.