INBOUND 2021 Takeaways Part 1 of 3: Content Strategy Priorities
The SpotOn team excitedly participated in the 2021 HubSpot Inbound virtual conference. We are so hopeful we’ll be in Boston next year as a team taking it all in. Nonetheless, the event was chock full of learnings, best practices and ideas to take back to all of our stand out clients.
Picking a handful of tips to share was way too hard for one post so we decided to break our top takes from Inbound 2021 into a 3 part monthly series. We’ll start with Content Strategy Musts and Priorities, follow with Lead Gen Lessons in November and end the year with Inspiration for Business Success.
Last month we covered the top 5 content marketing questions and now we’re going to double down with 3 priorities in your content strategy as heard loud and clear in Inbound sessions.
Video, video and more video.
The chief video strategist for Vidyard explained video is no longer a nice to have, it’s a must-have tool for sales and marketing. And the leaders of Canvas+Co gave these best practices for video creation:
Use in-feed and in-story ads as a great advertising space.
Be aware when shooting video that a vertical format is for in-stories and a square format is for feeds on Instagram.
Plan for sound off but enhance for audio - so use those closed captions or superimpose text in the video. Find ways to use text as part of the creative execution.
Open with a high-impact visual and front load your key message as 50% of the message should happen in the first few seconds.
Bottom line, video needs to be a part of your content marketing strategy and you have a lot of great tools on the market to support you like Canva, Squarespace video studio and we’ve partnered with CROOW to produce in-studio, turnkey video production at an incredibly reasonable cost.
2. Modernize your SEO strategy.
Search engines, primarily Google, are advancing so fast. We are always learning and exploring how to make machines happy, but what we love about Google’s evolution is that the more you keep humans attracted to your content, the machines will be too. That means you should have a human approach first. While keywords can help guide and show trends, you want to lead content creation with a meaningful connection to your target audience. You don’t want to hurt yourself so keep up with foundational technical SEO, but don’t let old-school thinking change your brand’s tone, and message that means the most.
So how can you take action and up your content game to please your target audience (and Google’s AI)?
Understand your audience. Whether it’s building personas for your ideal customer who’d problem you are solving or surveying your current customers to better understand their needs and pain points and the type of content they are consuming and where.
Take a look at your brand positioning. Are you differentiating enough from your competitors and offering your customers what they are looking for? What’s going to make you stand out the most and give your customers something they can’t refuse?
Be useful and relevant. Think of content that will surprise, delight, inspire, guide, help. Whether it’s case studies, testimonials, how-to videos, behind the scenes, branded graphics- create content that matters to them.
Source: Dale Bertrand, Fire&Spark
Once you have your audience and content dialed in, where else is your audience spending time? Are there other groups, brands, associations, etc. that you can build reciprocal relationships with to share in each other’s goals and amplify your content organically? Link building can seem daunting at first, the thought of building media lists and putting together outreach emails can feel overwhelming. However, when you can build partnerships with other brands with a similar audience and mission it can be much more beneficial and rewarding - in your industry and on search results pages.
3. What’s Working in Email Marketing
While email may be a tactic you’ve been using for a long time in your marketing stack, with so much that has changed in the past year and a half, brands are trying just about everything.
So what’s working now in B2B and B2C (what’s worth testing!):
Promotional emails coming from names vs. brand
Brackets, parentheses and asterisks in the subject line
Fake mistake (Oops/Uh-oh in the subject line)
Vs. in the Subject line
“....” at the end of a subject line
Lists in the subject/content - a tried and true way to make info easy to digest and engage with
Friendly From email addresses that match topic of the subject line - established relevance and allows for more sending volume
The bottom line . . . always be testing, learn from all industries and try anything and look at data often. Also, don’t forget to clean and segment your lists and personalize when you can.
Get in the marketing mindset and prioritize connection with your audience that can crossover your video, SEO, email, and social content. Utilizing a tool like HubSpot allows us to connect all of our tools and distribution efforts with workflows and follow our audiences through data. A sophisticated CRM and marketing software allows you to elevate your content strategy. The SpotOn team looks forward to picking up the pace for you. Get in touch >