A Practical Guide to Content Marketing in 2022

An Excerpt from the book "Content Marketing For Everyone" by Irhose Apori

“It’s not enough to rely on the implicit value proposition of your product or service. To be exceptional, you have to offer your audience something that no one else can”.

- Anonymous

What if there were a better way to showcase your product than by placing it in a digital show glass?  A way that inspired and captivated your audience, turning them into brand evangelists?

In this book, I’ll share some effective open-secrets, otherwise known as “pro tips”, that’ll change your approach to marketing for good!

These secrets are more than tips, but I call them tips to trick you into memorizing them. Pretty nifty right? Let’s indulge!

1. Understand Your Niche

Understanding your niche, as obvious as it seems, is something that is easily glossed over by business owners. People who tend to get into business without proper planning are the culprits in this case. To understand your niche, there are a couple of things you should do.

Research. Conduct research on your niche. Visit web forums like Quora and Reddit to find out what people are saying about your industry. Discover what people want to know about your niche. Read articles, news pieces, etc. 

Your objective is to be a market leader in your chosen sector, so the research never ends.

Conduct interviews. Conduct intelligent interviews. Don’t perceive it as too much work. Get out there (online) and find your target audience. Differentiate your potential customers (those who pay) from your consumers (those who use). 

Depending on your business framework, your customer could be your consumer. You can conduct a market analysis at this point with specific objectives. The goal is to attain a well-grounded and well-rounded view of your ecosystem.

Take certification courses where necessary. Take certification courses to improve your knowledge base, gain credibility, and diversify your mental resources. For instance, you can take a short course on content writing or SEO to get a grasp of how digital marketing is done these days.

2. Set Objectives And KPIs

As someone who runs a business, if you do not have objectives then your business is probably racing in the wrong direction. Create clear and concise objectives to direct your efforts and to ensure you make judicious use of your resources. 

Your objectives may be monthly, quarterly, and/or yearly, with specific deliverables slated for each period.

What’s The Purpose Of Objectives?

Let’s take a break to define some terms. 

Objective. An objective is a precise mark you plan to hit. It’s a goal you want to achieve. It’s the end that directs your process. Objectives give you a sense of direction. And when you complete them, you feel like you’re progressing. 

Objectives are important and indispensable tools for the progress of any business. You can set an objective at any point in your process. Whether it’s how much work you plan to get done at the end of the day or what you want to achieve from using a particular tool, an objective is a compass. 

KPI. A Key Performance Index (KPI) is a type of objective. KPIs are definitive objectives used to measure the success of campaigns. It’s the practice of using metrics and data to determine the effectiveness of a marketing campaign (or any campaign). 

Think of KPIs as success markers for any campaign you embark on. The extent to which you hit your goals will determine the effectiveness of your campaign.

Let’s say as a social media marketer, your objectives are to get better engagement and gain more influence. To measure those objectives, you’ll need KPIs. 

For instance, you may set out to gain 2000 more followers and get at least 1000 likes per picture posted on IG, over a period of 12 weeks. These KPIs are easily relevant to the objective, specific (2000 followers, 1000 likes), measurable (using IG metrics to analyze your numbers), attainable (gaining 2000 more followers), and time-bound (over a period of 12 weeks). I guess you could say your KPIs are SMART. 

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Attainable

R - Relevant

T - Time-bound

Get serious, set objectives, develop KPIs!

3. Copy From Other Niches

I know this seems weird, but it’s the absolute right way to start. When launching your content marketing campaign, humble yourself and learn from others. I’ll teach you how to copy right (¬‿¬). 

Say you have a clothing line — You sell great tees and trousers — and you want to find a way to market your brand through content; perhaps by starting from a catchy tagline. The first thing you should do is check what your leading competitors are doing; this will give you context and register a frame of reference. Next, you proceed to learn about another niche that is similar to yours — such as the footwear industry.

You can simply lift words from multiple taglines and tweak them to fit your brand and you’re good to go! You already have a proven and tested tagline. You’ve saved yourself hours of brainstorming.

This is a strategy for starters though, as you grow, you’ll develop a style based on your value proposition and all copies you produce will stem from the foundation of your value proposition. Bear in mind that no marketing strategy, no matter how good, is a substitute for a Unique Selling Point (USP).

4. Content Amplification And Repurposing

Content amplification involves repurposing content to make it fit to publish on different platforms so as to optimize the value of the original piece of content. In addition to repurposing content, you share it across your media channels (paid and earned). It’s like magic! You take a piece of great scoring content (I’ll cover a bit more about content scoring soon) and turn it into a gift that keeps on giving. 

Take, for instance, you make a blog post titled “The next big thing in content marketing”. Amplifying this article will look a lot like this: 

1. You tweak the name a bit, add a little more stuff and pitch it to Business2Community, HubSpot, etc.

2. Distill the important bits into an infographic meant for Instagram, Pinterest, and Whatsapp,

3. Create a carousel with tips on making high converting content — for Instagram, LinkedIn, and Whatsapp.

4. Make a thread on Twitter outlining the dos and don’ts of content writing

5. Piece together everything and create an ebook like this one!

6. Finally, share, share, share.

Of course, you’d need to ensure everything links back to the original article on your website.

There’s more to content amplification. You could add videos, webinars, courses, etc. The goal is to keep a good piece of content running in its prime for as long as possible.

One great content amplification campaign is the current world record holder for the longest-running advertising campaign.

A Little Story

In the 1980s, Absolut Vodka wasn’t performing so well and sales weren’t really good.

How did the brand end up dominating the industry? It launched a series of artistic promotional campaigns to grab the attention of the world.

After the launch of the campaign, the brand collaborated with various artists who depicted Absolut bottles in unique and creative ways. The campaign was so successful that 1,500 separate ads were launched over the course of 25 years!

Absolut had 2.5% of the vodka market and sold 10,000 cases before the campaign. As a result of the campaign, Absolut imported 4.5 million cases per year in the late 2000s and had 50% of imported vodka in the US.

Through the years, the bottle's profile has been used to mimic, for instance, a ski slope, a swimming pool shaped like a bottle for the Los Angeles market, and a Central Park bottle for the New York market. Absolut ads in Philadelphia showed Ben Franklin wearing bottle-shaped spectacles.

Absolut Vodka absolutely rocked by repurposing the same content to fit different markets and audiences. A 25-year campaign, now that’s something!

This article is an excerpt from my book "Content Marketing For Everyone". Click on the green button below to read the full book.

Content Marketing Strategy Infographic for 2022