The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation for Digital Marketing
If digital marketing were a monolith, content creation would be a breeze. Instead, it’s an exceedingly broad field that involves the promotion of products or services across any number of digital channels. And, when each marketing channel has its own quirks and best practices, content creation can get overwhelming.
In this guide, we’re breaking it all down for you. From emails and organic traffic to blog posts and paid advertising, here’s what you need to know about content creation for digital marketing across the spectrum.
Why digital marketing matters
Just as we’ve seen a shift from brick-and-mortar to online sales, so too has marketing moved more and more from traditional to digital channels over the last decade. Today, 72% of overall marketing budgets are allocated to digital marketing.
Part of the reason for the shift is that marketers are simply meeting audiences where they are—online. But here are some other factors that give digital marketing an edge:
- Digital marketing has a lower barrier to entry. Whereas a billboard or TV commercial will run you thousands, you could (hypothetically) allocate as little as $5 to a digital ad campaign. Meanwhile, content marketing (such as blog posts, video, and podcasts) is free to distribute and limited only by your time and your talent for nailing the right tone.
- Targeting is more precise via digital channels. Knowing your audience is Marketing 101, and digital marketing channels allow you to get granular with audience segmentation. While a print ad could target a particular group based on a presumed hobby or age range (think of special interest or teen magazines), digital channels let you dig into precise location, age, past purchases on your site, and more.
- Localization is easier and more accurate with digital marketing. Beyond simple translation, localization adapts idioms, currencies, payment methods, user interfaces, and more to ensure content resonates with a local audience. Thanks to the targeting capabilities of digital marketing, you can create different ads or subdomains based on region or language preferences.
- Digital marketing results are quantifiable. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing allows you to track metrics in real time, including clicks, shares, impressions, and time spent on your site. You can use attribution modeling to identify exactly where your sales are coming from, what devices visitors are using, and any behavioral patterns leading to a purchase, allowing you to quickly pivot your strategy based on what’s working and what’s not.
Thanks to superior cost-effectiveness, targeting, and attribution, digital marketing should be an integral part of any marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at some of the most widely leveraged digital marketing channels.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Your website is the shop window for prospective customers searching for information about your business. But even the snazziest of sites won’t do you much good if it’s hidden in the depths of the internet. That’s where SEO comes in.
What is SEO, exactly, and why do you need it? Simply put, SEO involves optimizing your web content to make your site more visible to search engines. The higher your search engine ranking, or SERP, the higher you’ll appear in search results.
Overall, SEO is all about the quality and readability of your site, and the right SEO strategy involves a mix of the following elements:
- The appropriate use of keywords, metadata, and alt tags
- Backlinking
- Accessibility
- Responsive design
- Fast loading time
SEO is a long game: While it’s a sustainable source of traffic, it can be slow to show results. It’s also beholden to algorithm changes, which means it requires frequent tweaking and maintenance. Yet, despite the patience required, SEO is an essential part of digital marketing that can impact your recognizability, your reputation, and your revenue.
Social media marketing
Ah, social media—it’s the channel we all love to hate. Yes, it’s an addictive time suck that keeps us scrolling way past our bedtimes, but it also has the power to gain brands immense recognition and engagement! Nearly 60% of the global population and 93% of internet users are on social media, so finding ways to make social media work for you can make or break your digital marketing strategy.
With such a wide variety of social media platforms out there, maximizing engagement isn’t one size fits all. However, there are a few things to keep in mind no matter where you’re sharing content, from long-form LinkedIn posts to visually-rich Instagram stories:
- Know your audience. Each platform caters to its own demographic. (Facebook users and TikTok users are not the same.) Understand who you’re trying to reach on each platform, and tweak your content accordingly.
- Looks matter. With the rise of Instagram and TikTok, visuals have never mattered more when it comes to social media design best practices. Choose quality, original photos; use bold typography that stands out; and incorporate engaging video.
- Share useful content. Don’t forget to center your audience in your social media posts, whether by sharing how-to videos or listicles of helpful tips and tricks.
- Link away. Whether you’re looking to promote a thought leadership piece or increase sales, be sure to link your audience to the right page to fulfill your social media marketing goals.
- Analyze engagement. We recommend investing in a social media analytics tool to home in on your audience and fine-tune your strategy. After all, how else will you improve?
Love it or hate it, coming up with engaging social media posts is an important part of content creation for digital marketing, so it’s time to give in. Just don’t stay up too late doom scrolling.
Blogging
Blogging has always been ground zero for content marketing, but with the meteoric rise of social media, is blogging dead? Well, we certainly hope not, or else what are we even doing here?
While social media is great for engagement in the wild, blog posts bring traffic directly to your website. Moreover, blog posts can be an important piece of sales collateral. They serve as an opportunity to establish your business as a thought leader, and they can raise your SERP in the process.
But blogging takes some serious planning. You’ll need to consider SEO (see above), posting cadence (around one to three times per week), and length (500 to 1,500 words). Of course, content needs to be compelling and informative, with a mix of articles on current trends and evergreen topics that readers can keep going back to. Don’t worry, though: We’ve laid it all out in our blog content guide to planning, writing, and launching for success.
Since blog posts don’t simply garner attention on their own, where to distribute your content after publishing a blog post is equally important. Options include social media platforms, community forums, and content syndication platforms.
Blogging is one of the more time-intensive forms of content creation for digital marketing, but do it right, and the payoff will match your efforts.
Email marketing
In a world of social media, multimedia, and SEO, email marketing sounds a little old school. But going back to basics works: In 2022, marketers reported earning $36 back for every $1 spent on email marketing.
So, how do you write emails that convert? As always, you’ll need to use the right tone for the right audience, but you’ll also want to focus on attention-grabbing email subject lines and preview text. Consider personalizing emails and including video, both of which can be powerful value adds. Finally, use direct calls to action—as simple and blunt as “click here”—to drive traffic where you want it to go.
Often, though, a single email isn’t enough to get users to take action. That’s where email drip campaigns come in. A drip campaign involves a series of related, automated emails sent at specific times based on a user’s action (or inaction). Emails could be triggered by a ticket purchase, an abandoned shopping cart, or simply a visit to your website. The point is that the emails are personalized to the user to achieve a desired effect.
Whether sending out a single mass email or launching a full-fledged drip campaign, persuasive email marketing relies on the quality of content. So, take your time to nail the tone; craft concise, punchy copy; and personalize your content to build the trust that customers crave.
Digital advertising
Up until this point, we’ve discussed ways to drive awareness, traffic, and revenue organically, but paid advertising is an equally important part of digital marketing. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads, specifically, allow you to stand out in a sea of search results regardless of your search engine ranking.
What are PPC ads, though, and are they right for your business? You’ve no doubt clicked on them before without even noticing, since they appear as the top few results in any Google Search. The advertiser pays the search engine a small fee each time a user clicks on their ad, and—in turn—traffic is directed to the advertiser’s website.
Creating content for PPC ads is all about choosing the right search terms to elicit clicks, so there’s a fair amount of research required. The result, though, is that PPC visitors are 50% more likely to make a purchase than organic website visitors, so pay-per-click can really pay off.
Choosing your channels wisely
Depending on your budget and resources, not all businesses will be able to leverage all digital marketing channels, and that’s okay! Focus first on the channels where you have the most expertise, and then experiment with others as time and money allow. Ultimately, you’ll find the right combination of digital marketing channels that provide you with the most bang for your buck.
No matter which channels you choose, digital marketing content creation requires time, research, and quality writing and design. Ready to get some help to create content that converts? Get in touch with us at [email protected].