Does your district have a giving attitude going into the
holiday season?
Do you want to tap into the exciting world of content
marketing?
Using content
marketing to form a trusting relationship with your target audience is a
powerful way to motivate your students, parents, staff and community to
engage with your schools and school district.
In this article you will discover ways you can create a more giving marketing approach using
useful, engaging content.
Your Blog is Your
Foundation
In the book
Born to Blog,
authors Mark W. Schaefer and Stanford A. Smith present that
blogs help attract a loyal following and
generate new, engaging customers.
A blog should be the cornerstone of your content marketing
strategy.
Born to Blog states that
blogs are the content engine that’s driving
the social web and businesses digital marketing initiative (p. 1).
Your blog must provide useful information that educates and helps your readers. Blogs are not a platform to brag that your
football team won the district championship. A blog should be your way to give useful,
sought after information to your audience.
For example, instead of writing about football awards, write
an educational article about concussion in football. This type of useful
information is what your audience is craving.
Schaefer and Smith
offer six common traits of successful bloggers:
1. Find Your Voice
– clarifying your niche makes your focus clear
2. Tenacity – don’t
give up. It takes time to find your voice.
3. Focus on Passions
– your words will be full of energy if you write about what you love.
4. Flexibility –
be willing to change to find your voice
5. Consistency –
your reader needs to be looking forward to hearing from you.
6. Courage – put
yourself out there. Write and hit publish.
Video Killed the
Print Guy
Video has always been a powerful platform. YouTube revolutionized how people consume and
interact with information. Facebook
recently allowed their users to upload video directly on their platform, which
is one the best ways to get your content in front of viewers, and produces very
high engagement returns. And now with
Periscope and Blab, it is time for your
district to get serious about their video strategy.
And speaking of strategy, different videos are needed as your
customers work their way through your marketing funnel. In Gary Lipkowitz’s
article, Plain Talk About Video for
Marketing Executives, he walks marketing professionals through video
marketing uses relevant to content marketing.
Here are Lipkowitz’s thoughts
for each part of the sales funnel:
1. Top of Funnel
– advertising (not exactly content marketing) drives your audience to your
content. Posting videos on Facebook,
LinkedIn and YouTube gives you the “fuel” to drive your viewers to the next
step in the sales funnel, which might be blog content or a specific landing
page offering premium content.
2. Mid Funnel –
educational content is what content marketing is all about. This should be your sweet spot to win-over
your customers. Lipkowitz suggests posting your videos on your blog, your
landing pages and inside your email marketing.
If you are educating with your videos, your audience won’t think you are
invading their space and trying to sell. They will look forward to your videos
instead of hiding from your sale’s pitches.
3. Bottom of the
Funnel – Lipkowitz states that when your customers or your community reach
this part of the sales funnel they are very interested in the “who” rather than
the “what” or the “how”. When two
competitors are close on quality, trust can be a big deciding factor on which
company or school district they choose. Video is an excellent medium to brag
about the “who”.
4. PR and
Communications – Lipkowitz’s last category has to do with communicating and
moving your customers quicker through the sales process. Sometimes you have to remind your audience to
take action. Great video does a excellent
job moving your customers to action.
What Other Content
Might Look Like
Your district or company needs to find the right mix of content to appeal to your different audiences and
where they might be in the sales cycle.
Finding the right mix is key to developing the perfect content marketing
strategy.
Here are five
examples of other content you might consider:
1. Online Newsletters
– sprinkle in blog posts with links to drive engagement
2. Webinars –
hosting an educational, online town hall is a great way to educate the public
3. eBooks – we
take all of our blog content and create monthly online magazines. This is the “Netflix
Binge Blogging Approach”.
4. Infographics –
tell your stats in a visual, creative way.
5. Microsites –
important programs need their own website and content.
The Magic that Helps
Us Convert
One of the best investments we have made in the last couple
months in regard to our content marketing strategy is purchasing a plan through
Lead Pages. They are a landing page
management system with engaging templates to create quality landing pages.
By having a centralized online location to offer premium
content, we are able to build valuable email lists. Our
emails lists give us the power to send targeted messages to groups who are
interested in certain topics and programs.
By having someone sign-up to get valuable content, they give us
permission to send other content and invite them to events.
Two Ways We Have Used
Landing Pages This Past Month
1. Gifted and
Talented Parent Tour
By using a landing page, we were able to target specific
parents who might be interested in our specialized program.
Through the landing page, parents signed up
to attend a tour of our program while giving us their email address for further
correspondence.
We were able to follow-up with these parents sending them
educational content as well as inviting them to other events to push them along
the sales funnel in hopes of joining our district.
2. Build Our Newsletter
List
Lead magnets can be a very powerful tool to convince parents
to engage with our content.
To collect
more email addresses from our parents and the community, we offered the first
three issues of our blog magazine if they provided us an email address.
The key was to offer them something of
value in exchange for their email address.
Conclusion
Content marketing is not easy. If it were, more people would be doing
it. If you make the commitment and work
hard, content marketing provides a great return on your investment.
Even if you don’t have time to implement all of these
suggestions, focusing on one or two will help improve your marketing. As you get more comfortable you can grow your
content marketing strategic plan.
What do you think? Have you tried content marketing? What were the
results? What tips do you have to share? Please leave your
thoughts in the comments below.
