3 ways to crack content marketing in 2020

Throw a stick in a pub full of marketers and there’s an excellent chance that the one you’ll hit has heard the old cliché that ‘content is king’.

But it’s actually true that without content, you’ve got as much chance of marketing effectively on- and offline as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has of winning the decathlon at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Content is a bit of a bland and boring industry term, which is a shame because it actually covers all of the exciting words and images that engage customers with your brand – and convince them that they should choose you to solve their most pernickety problems, rather than your competitor.

Without content, you’re marketing in a void, which is as pointless as walking into an empty cave and whispering what’s so special about your company to yourself while banging your head on the wall.

Convinced you need content yet? Whew! These three ways to crack content marketing in 2020 will keep you on the right track.

• Optimise website content for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock since the 1990s, you’ll know that without SEO, your website won’t rank prominently on powerful search engines like Google, customers won’t find it and it’ll be a waste of time and money.

However, tweaking your website architecture so that it’s easy for humans and search spiders to navigate, formatting each page to provide an excellent user experience, including a smattering of relevant keywords and inserting wonderful words and images all contributes to earning superstar SEO status. To get started, read this beginner’s SEO guide from Moz.

• Get to grips with Email marketing

Email marketing is a digital strand that’s avoided by some marketers because in the past it’s suffered from the negative stigma associated with spam.

However, carefully planned email campaigns which have just the right mix of graphic imagery and persuasive prose can still be very effective in nurturing sales leads and guiding them subtly towards making a purchase.

For more advice, browse these Econsultancy email marketing tips – you won’t regret it.

• Invest in pro copywriting

Copywriting is an oft-neglected marketing skill and many businesses labour under the misapprehension that it’s not actually a specialism, therefore anyone can turn their hand to it successfully.

However, according to writing guru Josh Bernoff, bad writing costs US businesses around $400 billion per year because of the time wasted trying to untangle mangled words to find their true meaning.

So if you don’t have the skillset, trust a professional copywriting agency like Maratopia with your written content and you’ll soon see the difference it makes for crystal clear customer communications.

Follow this content marketing hattrick in 2020 and your brand will be scoring marketing goals by the bucketload – you can thank us later!

So ends our list, but please share your own content marketing tips in the comments section.