Here at BlueMelon, we love content marketing and we recommend it to our clients, because it works. Great content builds trust, nurtures relationships, generates engagement and keeps you front of mind with your community.

It’s the role of clever content marketing campaigns to bridge that gap between intention and interest. For example: You’re interested in learning about SEO and you’re spending some of your downtime learning about it online. You search on YouTube for instructional videos and you find one provider who’s got a whole bunch of really helpful videos. You like the speaker, they seem friendly and they explain things in a way that’s easy for you to understand.

Over a few months, you head back to the same YouTube channel when you’re struggling with a particular concept or technique and you watch the relevant video. You click through to their website and submit your email to get a free PDF resource with some helpful keywords. Then you start receiving their emails every week, with helpful bite-size tips. You’re implementing them and seeing some good results! Then a big project comes your way at work. Your boss says you need to get this new product onto the first page of Google, yesterday. You’ve got a budget to make it happen. Who do you call? Some random SEO company? Or the one you’ve come to know and trust through their content?

In this blog, we’ll dissect five of the most important considerations for developing effective content marketing campaigns that bridge the gap between interest and intention.

1. Get Clear about your campaign objective

Here at BlueMelon we believe that the first step to getting what you want is to get very specific about what it is that you want. When you know exactly where you want to go, to the path to get there often paves itself. So since campaigns are tactical, you need to have a specific objective in mind. Whilst your BAU content might have a high-level objective – eg. “To be Australia’s most loved and trusted _______ brand.” Your content marketing campaign objective will need to be a little bit more pointy. eg. “To build an email waitlist of #### for our new product.”  Be specific. Make it tangible. Then keep your eye on the prize.

2. Map out your customer’s journey

So you have your pointy, specific, measurable campaign objective? Nice. So you know where you want to get your customer to go, then it’s time to have a look at where they’ve been. Understanding your customer’s journey will give you a much clearer picture of their mental and emotional state and help identify the motivations and triggers for your content marketing to guide them to the right destination. 

3. Innovate

If you’ve followed steps one and two, by now you and your team will be super immersed in your customer’s world.  Congratulations. You’ve reached a powerful place to generate solutions from. So strike while the iron’s hot. Resist the temptation to jump straight to the channel, medium or format that your competition used, or to the one that you always use. Those might be viable options, maybe the best options. You can park them. Now it’s time to brainstorm and generate alternatives. Could you do a competition on social to get people excited? Could you do a video instead of a blog post? Have you seen something inspiring that could be adapted to your industry or product? It may feel like you’re opening a can of worms, but it doesn’t have to. 

4. Test and iterate

Here at BlueMelon, we are big fans of the human design approach. You won’t ever have to play devil’s advocate with us, because we play it with ourselves. That’s why wherever possible, we like to test things. Testing can be done with A/B… CDEFG versions and a small budget. Or if it’s a digital product or service that requires development work, you can build a prototype. Even something as simple as bringing a fresh set of eyes to a piece of content marketing, especially if it’s something new that you haven’t tried before. Use the tests to inform your next steps. Then tweak, iterate and refine until you are happy to go live.

5. Optimise & engage

You’re live! Woohoo! But don’t walk away from your campaign now. Watch how it unfolds. How are people engaging? Is there a hole in your process? If your content marketing campaign is on social, don’t overlook community management. Respond to comments and questions quickly. If your community is telling you something, take it on board. Perhaps there’s a recurring question that warrants its own post, blog or video? Show your audience that you are listening and that you care. Everybody wants to be acknowledged. Demonstrating responsiveness builds trust.

We hope that these tips help you to create successful content marketing campaigns that speak to your customer’s pain and passion points. Can you think of a content marketing campaign that has worked for you? We’d love to know. #letsconnect