6 Content Marketing Secrets The Pros Don’t Want You to Know

Many businesses use content marketing to grow, but they aren’t getting the results they could be having. Why is this? Simply because they don’t know some of the secrets the biggest publications use to maximize content campaigns.

Knowing the strategies used by the biggest companies helps drive the most traffic, optimizes how you spend your time, and helps you outrank competitors.

That’s why today I’ll be sharing some high-level content marketing strategies that will allow you to reap these benefits.

Let’s dive in!

1) You must use a buyer persona

Do you have a documented buyer persona you reference before producing content? If not, you’re making a big mistake. You can’t simply target everybody or shoot in the dark. That’s a recipe to see no results.

That’s why all of the largest and most successful content marketers use a buyers persona. In fact, 71% of businesses that have a documented persona exceed revenue goals.

This is a document that outlines their ideal user demographics, psychographics, interests, and other traits. Having this written down allows them to ensure every topic, keyword, and element of their content will attract the correct individual.

You don’t need NASA-level data to create a buyer persona, either. I recommend by beginning brainstorming who you would like to target if you’re beginning. Think about the target audience’s age, income, location, and why they would need your product or service.

After you’ve collected data with tools like Google Analytics, you can gradually refine your persona to be more accurate. Furthermore, I’d recommend sending out surveys to ask users questions about their wants and needs to create a more detailed persona.

2) It takes 15-17 months to see an ROI

Content marketing is for the long haul. It will turn your business into a content hub where users will go to learn about a specific subject. You’ll never have to advertise to get clients or customers again once it hits a critical mass. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Of course. However, it isn’t quick. The biggest companies know that content marketing takes upward to 15-17 months to begin having an ROI. This is simply the nature of building an audience, ranking in the search engines, and making a name for yourself.

This is why I recommend businesses to shift their focus to a long time horizon in terms of how long they will produce content for. You will want to publish content on a regular basis, whether that’s a couple of times per week or every day.

3) Use Google Search Console to instantly increase traffic

Every marketer is aware of Google Search Console. But, did you know that it can be used as a secret keyword research tool? Yep. Once it’s collected data on your pages, you can see the exact queries that users are entering into Google to find your content. Often you will notice that you aren’t targeting these directly.

To begin ranking for these keywords, pull up Search Console and navigate to “Performance” and the “Pages” tab.

Click any individual page and then the “Queries” tab. It will display all of the search terms which you should export or take note of to add to your content.

Once you’ve updated content to include these new search terms, ensure that you submit the article and reindex it through Search Console afterward.

4) Video’s rank better than written content

Have you ever searched for something on Google and saw videos near the top of the results? You’re not alone. This is because videos tend to rank better than written content.

Have you also noticed that some of the biggest marketers like Neil Patel are practically producing only videos? You should follow in their footsteps.

One of the simplest ways to begin publishing video content is to make slide casts. These are slideshows that you narrate, requiring very little editing skills or fancy equipment. It’s the perfect way to start video marketing.

You can also pick up professional and beautiful slideshow themes for free from websites like SlidesCarnival.

5) Podcasting is on the rise and you shouldn’t miss the wave

Another form of content that is quickly becoming more popular than written articles is podcasts. This is most likely because of the convenience. You can listen to a podcast episode while you drive, study, work or do practically anything versus videos and articles that require your full attention.

Look at all of the biggest brands like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Singlegrain. They all produce podcasts.

There’s perhaps no simpler piece of content to produce than a podcast, too. All you need is a mic, topic, and you’re good to go!

Podcasts can be recorded off a phone or laptop to begin if you don’t have studio equipment. Episodes can then be uploaded to a variety of platforms like:

1. Soundcloud
2. Blubrry
3. Libsyn

6) Repurposing improves results tenfold

You’ve produced a piece of content. Great. Now what? Time to repurpose it into different formats. If you study the largest content marketers, you’ll notice that they take one piece of content and promote it across all platforms.

Let’s say that you write a blog post, for example. You should then turn it into a video, podcast episode, infographics, and repost it on sites like Medium.

Doing this allows you to get the most bang for your buck per piece of content. Instead of it sitting idle on your website, it’s now across many channels reaching more people and driving increased performance.

Wrapping up today’s content marketing tips

Content marketing is one of the most effective strategies to grow a business in. However, you don’t want to make the common mistakes holding back the average website.

The largest companies using content to scale know that it all begins with a good buyer persona. Map out who you want to come to your website in terms of demographics and psychographics.

Then, patience is the key. Content marketing upwards to 15-17 months to start paying off, so you need to stay in it for the long term.

Make sure you’re using Google Search Console to find keywords to rank for after you’ve been publishing content for a while, as well.

Videos and podcasts are on the rise, so don’t neglect those forms of content while repurposing them into various formats.

Author Bio:

Carmine Mastropierro is a copywriter who was written for Neil Patel, GoDaddy, Marketo, and other popular publications. He helps businesses generate traffic and leads through copywriting services.