How to Generate Creative Marketing Ideas for 2022

How to Generate Creative Marketing Ideas for 2022

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It’s never too late to think about marketing plans for the year ahead. We place a lot of importance on the first of January and the idea of a fresh calendar, but you don’t have to feel restricted by the date.

As a business owner, you should always be thinking about ways to plan for the year ahead. And if the start of the year was too hectic for you to even consider making plans, then you should be focused on catching up now. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But by coming up with a few marketing plans for February and beyond, you won’t have to return to work and feel instantly overwhelmed. Here are some of our tips and suggestions for creative marketing campaigns for 2022.

Set goals and review

The first step for creating successful marketing campaigns is to think about what has worked well in the past. Look back at previous goals you may have set for yourself and assess if you managed to achieve them.

Next, you should consider scheduling regular reviews throughout the year so that you can revisit your wider business goals and assess how well your marketing plans are helping you to achieve these goals. Keeping a close eye on your goals will help you to determine what is working in your business and what needs to be updated.

Generate feedback

If you want to really connect with your customers in 2022, it’s time to start asking for real feedback. Reach out to your customers via email and ask them to leave you a review or provide feedback on a recent purchase. You could offer a discount in exchange for their thoughts and views.

This is an excellent way to start the year as it will help to shape your offering for the year ahead. If something isn’t working, it will become abundantly clear from the feedback. It’s also an effective way to let your customers know that you really care about their input.

Repurpose old content

The start of the year is always busy, so don’t be afraid to make life easier for yourself. Repurposing content that you have already created is one of the simplest ways to breathe new life into marketing campaigns.

We recently shared our thoughts on how repurposing old content is one of the best ways to get more value from your marketing budget. You don’t have to work harder in 2022, just work smarter.

Launch something new

New year, new product is always an effective marketing campaign. February is a short but boring month, so don’t be afraid to bring some cheer to your customers’ inboxes with some good news for once.

If you need help launching a new product in 2022, we’re here to help. From press releases to engaging email campaigns that turn heads and get results, we do it all and more. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help.

5 things to do before you publish any content

5 things to do before you publish any content

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Publishing fresh content on your website is one of the best ways to boost your visibility, improve SEO and connect with your ideal target customers. But if you don’t optimise your content for search and social, there is a good chance that your content will never land in front of the right people.

There are several simple steps you can take before you hit publish that can increase the chances that your content will get noticed and help to move you towards your business goals. So, the next time you’re ready to hit “publish” on a piece of content, make sure you run through this simple checklist.

Optimise for keywords

Have you carried out keyword research? This essential step will help you to confirm that the content you are creating fulfils a specific need. Company updates might not need keyword research, but informative or transactional blogs need to be backed up with the right research.

Try to include your main target keyword in the following places:

  • The title
  • The URL, or slug
  • In at least one H2 tag
  • In the content (aim for 1-2% keyword density)

Don’t stuff the keyword if it isn’t natural – particularly if you’re optimising for a geographical keyword – but try to include exact match keywords and variations throughout the content.

Check your title

Is your article title doing the hard work of tempting individuals to want to read more? If your title is bland, boring or run of the mill, don’t be surprised if individuals don’t click on or share your content.

You can use the CoSchedule Headline Analyser to determine how well you have optimised your title for things like emotional impact. This tool will also help you to construct more effective and impactful titles in the future.

Add a CTA

Every article should have a call to action at the end, otherwise, you risk capturing the reader’s attention and then letting them go without guiding them into the next step. Your CTA doesn’t always have to be a direct sale, it could direct readers to your newsletter, encourage them to follow you on social media, or even direct them to another blog post.

Add a suitable image

Articles with images get 94% more views than articles without images. And images of real people are the most effective. This information should be enough to remind you to add an image to every single post. You can find free, royalty-free images on sites like Unsplash and Pexels. Try adding multiple photos throughout your post to make it even more engaging and shareable.

Read it aloud

If you aren’t sure if your article is making an impact, try reading it aloud before you hit publish. This will help you to catch awkward phrasing, very long sentences, and silly mistakes. Reading aloud will also help you to ensure you are writing in your own tone of voice. So, if you hit a sentence that sounds awkward when you read it, this could be a sign that you aren’t using your tone of voice. Think about what you want to say and how you would say it, and then rephrase any awkward phrases accordingly.

Need help making your content work harder? White PR & Marketing is here to help. We can help you to spruce up your content strategy to ensure everything you publish is working as hard as possible.

How To Write Quality Content that Your Audience Loves

How To Write Quality Content that Your Audience Loves

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Engaging your audience with content is harder than it might seem. Think about the last time you engaged with content from a brand. What made you seek out their content? Did you click on it from social media or search for it on Google?

Writing quality content is all about putting the reader first. When you know who you are speaking to and what they need from you, it becomes far easier to craft content that will be useful to them. Here are some more essential tips for writing quality content that your audience will love:

Read more

How we build a bespoke content marketing strategy just for you

How We Build a Bespoke Content Marketing Strategy Just for You

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It’s all too easy to look at another successful company and decide to copy its content strategy. It’s working for them, so why can’t it work for you?

While this would make life so much easier for your marketing team or agency, it won’t deliver the best possible results. Why? Because your content strategy should always be unique to your business.

If you’re offering something unique to a unique set of customers, then you’re going to need a unique strategy to reach them.

Building a content strategy is about so much more than creating a list of blog titles. These are the steps we take to build a content marketing strategy for our clients.

Understanding your company

It all starts with getting to grips with your company and your long-term goals. What does success look like to you? And how will a content strategy help you get there?

Once we’ve answered these questions, we delve deep into your offering, so we understand what you’re selling. You’d be surprised how many marketers forget this important step. You can’t build a successful content strategy if you don’t keep the end goal in mind.

Understanding your customers

Next, we get to grips with your ideal target customer. Where do they spend their time online? What problem do you solve for them? And how are you currently reaching them?

At this stage, we’ll start to get a better idea of what content needs to be in your content strategy. For example, some audiences prefer blogs, while others gravitate towards video. And some will find you on Google, while others will expect you to find them on social media.

Defining the customer journey

Now we understand the product and who we are selling it to. Next, we have to join the dots between the two and define the user journey.

How we map your user journey will depend on the stage you are at in your business.

  • In the startup stage, you have a solid offering but no customers yet. You’ll need a complete customer journey created from scratch.
  • In the success stage, you’ll have a few sales under your belt, and you’ll be ready to scale up. Your customer journey already exists, but we need to define it to understand how to make it work harder.
  • And in the scale stage, you’re ready to turn the dial up to 11 and see how far you can take your company. You might need to add additional paths to your customer journey to be able to grow.

Keyword research

There’s not much sense in creating content if no one is searching for it. Keyword research gives us insight into your ideal customer’s motivations and their pain points. Every content strategy should include regular keyword research, as search trends are changing all the time.

Blog topic research

Finally, it’s time for blog topic research. At this stage, we define the broad topic areas that we should cover and then create blog titles within these areas. By organising blogs into content hubs, you can introduce an internal linking strategy that helps to increase engagement and provide additional context.

Ready to supercharge your content marketing strategy? Get in touch to arrange a consultation with the White PR & Marketing team today!

Top Content Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond

Top Content Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond

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Following the latest content marketing trends can help you to connect with your ideal target audience. It can be tempting to want to stand out from the crowd, but if something is trending, it’s usually because people love it. And if a form of content marketing is popular, it means that your audience wants more of it.

I’m a huge fan of trendspotting, as it helps me guide my clients and inform their marketing strategy. When you’ve got a trendspotter on your side, you can spend less time worrying about the trends and more time growing your business. So here are some of the top content marketing trends I recommend paying attention to in 2021 and beyond.

Content is now part of the customer journey

There’s no escaping the fact that customer’s turn to your content to help shape purchasing decisions. It’s part of the customer journey, so instead of keeping these streams separate, allow them to work together.

In its simplest form, it could mean linking between product/ service pages and your blog. And these links should go both ways. Blogs help to provide more context and may even help to sway a decision in your favour.

Streaming is growing in popularity

Streaming has been around for a while now, as the marketing world has shifted to video as its main form of content marketing. Live streaming is coming into its own, and it’s here to stay.

I recommend that you use this opportunity to connect with your ideal audience by hosting a live Q&A session or webinar. This will allow you to interact with customers directly and learn more about their wants and needs. Customers want to know who they are buying from, so it pays to put yourself out there as the face of your business.

Communities continue to strengthen

Some of the most successful brands have a cult-like following. While you might not get as much interaction on your mail social media profiles as you once did, customers are more willing to join a community if they feel they can get something out of it.

These communities are becoming deeper and more complex, with consumer-to-consumer and brand-to-consumer conversations taking place within them. Growing a community around your brand will allow you to tap into customer insights like never before. You can then feed this information into your content marketing strategy to help deliver more of what your customers love.

Repurposing content helps you increase your reach

If you don’t have the time or resources to ramp up your content marketing output, you might feel like you’re being left behind. But there’s an easier way to increase output without investing a lot of time and money into new content creation.

Repurposing content is one of the biggest trends for 2021. Think of it as a recycle and reuse initiative for your marketing strategy. Repurposing content helps you to keep up with the increasing demand for quality content. And as long as it’s done well, it allows you to increase your reach and, ultimately, your conversions.

For example, if you run an amazing live stream webinar, that shouldn’t be the end of that piece of content. It’s time to repackage it into a blog post, video snippets and quote images to help drive traffic and awareness.

Examples of repurposing content:

Repurposing your content can mean many different things, including:

  • Turning a blog into a video
  • Turning a blog into a podcast episode
  • Taking quotes from a blog and turning them into social media graphics
  • Turning a blog into a press release
  • Turning a tweet into an Instagram image
  • Sharing a blog to Medium or LinkedIn
  • Turning a blog series into an eBook
  • Refreshing old content for a new audience
  • Turn a blog into a free printable download

As you can see, a lot of these content ideas start life as one format but can easily be adapted to a new style. In the case of sharing your blogs to Medium or LinkedIn, you can make minimal changes to make the content relevant to a new platform.

From a single blog post, you could create a video, a podcast, social media graphics and a press release. This will allow your audience to enjoy and discover your content in many different ways, thereby amplifying your reach.

Need help getting your content marketing back on track? I’m here to help! Contact me today to learn how I can help you grow your business!

Drop me an email to book your FREE 15 min discovery call.

Understanding Your Customer

The Importance of Digital Marketing: Understanding Your Customer

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Business owners are always looking for new ways to attract consumers and grow their customer base. A great way to do this is by focusing on digital marketing. Digital marketing entails many components that include advertising through search engines, social media, video content creation and more.

The goal of these strategies is to create eye-catching messages that will appeal to the target audience. But who exactly is your target audience, where do they spend their time, and what do they value? When creating digital marketing campaigns, you have to know who you are talking to before you can possibly know what to say.

The importance of understanding your customer

The fundamental purpose of marketing is to attract consumers to your brand, so messaging needs to be on target and relevant. Your customers aren’t an anonymous mass; they are individuals with problems that you can solve. You no longer have to think in terms of mass marketing terms, as digital marketing allows you to take a more individual approach.

A great way to improve your marketing is through research. Of course, the type of research you conduct will depend on the size and scope of your business. Put in time and effort into understanding who your customers are and you will be able to produce better content with a higher likelihood of success.

Remember, what works today might not work tomorrow, so continuous research will help to keep your marketing messages relevant and on-brand.

How to understand your customers better through surveys, focus groups, and interviews

Surveys, focus groups, or interviews can help you understand what current and potential customers want from your products or services and how they perceive your brand so far.

Asking questions is the simplest way to understand who you are trying to reach and how you can better serve their needs. For example, you can speak to existing customers to find out more about how they use your products or services, or you can talk to potential customers. Social media and sites like Quora are an excellent choice for speaking directly to potential customers.

Understanding the customer journey through data analysis

Nervous about running a focus group? Don’t worry, there are other ways to gather this insight. Speaking to people isn’t the only way you can gather insight into customer behaviour. Your website and social media channels will contain plenty of wisdom if you’re happy to start digging.

Google Analytics contains a wealth of information about the customer journey, including which content your customers find most valuable and which content they skim over.

You can also upgrade your UX research by adding a tool like Hotjar to your website. This will offer more insight into how users interact with your website.

The data you collect will help guide your future decisions, which can help you to make sure you’re focussing on the right channels. It can also help you to spot any potential disconnect. For example, customers might be very engaged on social media but drop off when they land on your website. This could indicate that your website content isn’t matching their expectations.

In part two of this blog post series, we’ll look closer into the types of marketing channels available and how you can craft messages for these platforms based on your customer personas.

Ready to start understanding your target audience but need a little guidance? DM me to learn how I can help you grow your business.

Why Press Releases are Still Relevant in the Digital Age

Why Press Releases are Still Relevant in the Digital Age

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When correctly used, a press release can have a significant impact on multiple marketing channels. It can help build brand awareness, boost your social media presence and direct high-quality links to your website.

Many small businesses shy away from the press release as they aren’t sure how to work them into their marketing strategy. In this guide, I’ll share my top tips for making press releases work for you.

What is a press release?

A press release is a short, informative document issued by an organisation about its products and services. A press release can help you to build brand awareness, launch a new product, or highlight changes to your business, including business growth.

If you’ve ever seen a feature in a local paper about a small business and wondered how they landed this opportunity, chances are it was through a simple press release. Unfortunately, journalists are far too busy to seek out these stories and often rely on timely press releases as a source of inspiration.

What can I create a press release for?

Anything.

No, really! It can be about anything.

But it’s a great idea to create a press release that aligns with your company’s values. It should speak to the people who work for and support your business.

For instance, if one of your core values is sustainability, then it might be worth writing about how you’re reducing wastage in the office by using reusable coffee cups instead of paper ones or investing in solar panels. Sharing this news will show prospective clients what they are signing up to and let prospective employees know that you aren’t just throwing buzzwords around for attention.

Press-release worthy updates to share

Hit a business milestone? Share this news with a snapshot of where you’ve been – and where you’re headed.

Have you added a new service to your company? Or have you hired a superstar member of staff that will propel your business skywards? Then, get that in a press release.

Won an award for your work? Creating a press release isn’t bragging, and trust me when I say everyone else is doing it!

Are you launching a new product? If you’d share this update with your mailing list or your social media channels, it’s worthy of a press release.

Are you partnering with another company for a project or charity initiative? You guessed it; it’s time to write a press release. If it feels newsworthy, it probably is. And you won’t lose anything by creating a press release.

What to include in every press release

Press releases should follow a specific format to help journalists extract the information they need. You won’t “stand out” by marching to your own drum; you’ll lose out on coverage because journalists don’t get what they need from your release. Make sure you include:

  • A snappy title and introduction
  • Press contact
  • Location
  • Information in order of importance
  • Quotes
  • Boilerplate information about your company

Need help creating press releases that capture attention? I can help. From identifying news-worthy content to crafting press releases that get results, get in touch with White PR & Marketing today!

Guide To Outsourcing Your Blog

The Complete Guide To Outsourcing Your Blog

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So many business owners fall in the same trap with their content strategy. They squeeze in their blog around other commitments, but soon, the work starts to pile up. Their blog is pushed to the bottom of their to-do list, along with “get in shape” and “go to the dentist”. After months of neglect, their website traffic starts to decline and the enquiries dry up.

Sound familiar?

Your blog might feel like nothing more than a monthly drain on your time and energy, but it is also a highly valuable marketing tool.

A consistent blogging strategy can help you to:

  • Increase your website traffic from search engines
  • Connect with your ideal target audience
  • Generate leads and sales
  • Boost your profile and visibility

But if you never have the time to dedicate to your blog, what can a business owner do? Unless you’re willing to sacrifice early mornings, late nights, and weekends to crafting content, busy business owners will struggle to keep up with a regular blogging schedule.

One option is to outsource your blogging to a professional marketing agency. It might sound daunting, but asking the experts to weigh in on your blogging strategy can actually be a positive move. They can bring a fresh pair of eyes and a whole new perspective to your blog.

If you’re thinking about outsourcing your blog, follow these steps to make sure you get the results you’re after.

Define your tone of voice

It’s tempting to share your existing blog posts to demonstrate your tone of voice, but it’s far better if you can articulate it. This will help to avoid any confusion.

Decide if your blog is:

  • Casual or formal
  • Serious or funny
  • Enthusiastic or matter-of-fact
  • Edgy or conservative

Try to whittle the tone of voice down to just three descriptions. For example, this blog would be informative, friendly and casual. A law blog might be formal, serious and matter-of-fact. A fashion blog might be edgy, casual and enthusiastic.

Create your brand guidelines

Before you hand over the reins, think about how you want your blog to appear. This will help to make sure the final deliverables meet and exceed your expectations.

  • How long do you want the blog to be?
  • Do you prefer large blocks of text or easy-to-digest snippets?
  • How often should there be a subheading?
  • Do you prefer bullet point lists over long reams of text?
  • Should there be images included throughout or just as a featured image?
  • How do you refer to your business name? (For example, all caps?)
  • How many internal and external links should be included?
  • Is meta information required?

Share your keyword research

If you have a content strategy based on keyword research, now is the time to share it. If you aren’t providing the blog topic titles, then you should provide keywords that you would like to focus on.

An external company might not know how you want to grow and expand your business, so make sure this is clear. If you haven’t done the keyword research, or it’s out of date, find out if your content writer can arrange this.

Agree the blog titles

If you aren’t providing titles, make sure you approve the suggestions in advance so everyone is happy. This will help to avoid confusion down the line. This can also help to minimise back and forth with your content writer.

Don’t be afraid to ask for edits

If something doesn’t sit right with you, it’s far better to ask for edits than to tinker with it yourself. Professional writers thrive on feedback, so if there is anything they need to know for future articles, it’s much better to just tell them. Otherwise, you could be making the same edits every month.

Lockdown Easing Etiquette

Lockdown Easing Etiquette: How to Resume Meetings

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With vaccine appointments moving forward at breakneck speed, and lockdown restrictions starting to ease, business owners are thinking about how and when they will return to normal.

Many of us have been working from home for over a year, turning kitchen tables and spare bedrooms into temporary office setups. Meetings have been replaced with awkward zoom interactions. Collaborations have been replaced with awkward zoom interactions. Even after-work drinks have been replaced with awkward zoom interactions.

So if there is anything business owners will be looking forward to this year, it is the return to IRL meetings. We may have complained about them a few years ago, but the chance to travel to a different part of the country to drink coffee with another human sounds pretty extravagant right now!

We might be eager to return to something that resembles normal, but it might not be that simple. While we all went into lockdown together, we will all emerge at different speeds. Some people will be waiting to be fully vaccinated and taking their reintroduction to society very slowly, while others will move out of lockdown faster and with more confidence.

If you’re getting ready to start scheduling IRL meetings with your clients or customers, here are some tips to make sure things go smoothly.

Be flexible on the location

Even if indoor mixing is allowed from the 17th of May, some people won’t be comfortable with this yet. Try to stay flexible on the meeting location and make sure everyone in attendance is happy with the situation. Choosing an outdoor location with plenty of space to keep your distance may be advisable for the foreseeable future.

If you are meeting indoors, make sure it is a space with good ventilation and let visitors know about your cleaning protocols. If anyone in attendance is wearing a mask, it would be polite for everyone to follow their lead and wear one.

Ask if you aren’t sure

When you meet people for the first time, ask if they are comfortable shaking hands. You might want to hug everyone in sight, but this might not be the best look for a business meeting. Some people won’t feel completely comfortable shaking hands for a while, so it’s better to ask than risk offending anyone.

Be open about precautions

Are you vaccinated?

Do you take regular Lateral Flow tests? (You can order them here.)

Do you check your temperature?

Remember that some people have been shielding for over a year and will be very cautious about their reintroduction to the world. Get comfortable talking about any precautions you are taking to help put others at ease.

Anyone can have a hidden disability that puts them at higher risk, and they might not be comfortable talking about it in a business setting. By opening up about any precautions you are taking, you will make it easier for those you work with to take meetings without discussing their entire medical history.

Choose independent

If you’re planning to meet in a coffee shop or restaurant, try to choose an independent business. Indie businesses have been hit the hardest in the past year and will appreciate your business.

Be prepared for more Zoom calls

Some people prefer Zoom calls to real-life meetings. This could be for a number of reasons, including hidden disabilities or issues with travel. It might not be your preferred way of meeting with individuals, but it makes the business world more accessible for everyone. We can expect Zoom meetings to become a permanent fixture as we move forward. So try not to push for a real-life meeting if a Zoom call will suffice.

If you’ve put marketing on the back burner for the past year, you might be ready to move forward with a little more confidence. I can help you put your marketing plans back on track and start scheduling meetings for the summer and beyond. Get in touch to find out how I can help you plot a path to success through cost-effective marketing and PR services.

repurposing content

Get more value out of your website content with this simple step

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There’s no denying that content marketing is a valuable tool to promote your business. Publishing content helps to establish you as a thought-leader, it helps to increase your website authority and it allows you to speak directly to your target audience.

Many small business owners fall into the trap of being too busy to market themselves. If you’re anything like me, you want to devote all of your time to your customers and your own business marketing hardly gets a look in. The best solution to this all-too-common problem is to work smarter, not harder.

By adjusting the way you think about the content you produce, you can make your content work much harder. And this means less time spent marketing your business and more time spent keeping your customers happy.

What is content marketing?

We may be getting ahead of ourselves here. You might not even be aware that the content you are producing for your business has a name. Content marketing can take many different forms, including blogs, guides, FAQs, social media content, press releases, infographics, photographs and more.

Content marketing helps to engage current and potential customers. At every stage in the purchase journey, there should be content available that speaks directly to your target customer. You can read more about customer motivation here.

Remember that you’re the expert in your business, and your customers likely have questions about what you are offering. Your knowledge and insight are incredibly valuable to your customers. When you learn how to package up this content and share it online, this is known as content marketing.

Many business owners are content marketing experts without even knowing it. What they often lack is the joined-up thinking that will help them to increase their reach without increasing their workload.

The simple step that most content marketers skip

Once you have crafted an excellent piece of content, you want to share it with the world. So you hit “publish” on your blog and then wait for the world to find it. You might share it on social media once and then assume that it is “old news”.

If you have a well-optimised website, the piece of content could be picked up by search engines and you might have a stream of traffic within a few months. But this is only a fraction of the potential audience.

If you want to get serious about your content marketing, you need to learn this one step that many content marketers will skip. Repurposing your content for different platforms will help to boost your reach and amplify your message further.

The result?

Far more of your potential customers will see and interact with the piece than if you simply leave it to languish on your blog.

What is repurposing content?

Repurposing your content can mean many different things, including:

  • Turning a blog into a video
  • Turning a blog into a podcast episode
  • Taking quotes from a blog and turning them into social media graphics
  • Turning a blog into a press release
  • Turning a tweet into an Instagram image
  • Sharing a blog to Medium or LinkedIn
  • Turning a blog series into an eBook
  • Refreshing old content for a new audience
  • Turn a blog into a free printable download

As you can see, a lot of these content ideas start life as one format but can easily be adapted to a new style. In the case of sharing your blogs to Medium or LinkedIn, you can make minimal changes to make the content relevant to a new platform.

From a single blog post, you could create a video, a podcast, social media graphics and a press release. This will allow your audience to enjoy and discover your content in many different ways, thereby amplifying your reach.

Why bother with these extra steps?

According to the rule of 7, a customer needs to see your company an average of 7 times before they will make a purchase. A single blog post might not cut through the noise, but a blog, video, social media graphic and free printable download will have a greater impact.

Repurposing your content also allows you to grow your email marketing list. A website visitor is unlikely to hand over their contact details to read a blog, but they might be more inclined to share this information if they can get something out of it.

If you publish checklist-style articles, you could create a free printable that can only be accessed by handing over contact information. And once you have an email address, you can trigger an email journey that lets the customer know exactly what you do and how you can help them.

How to get started repurposing content

Not every piece of content needs to be repurposed. Look at your analytics to determine which content is most popular with your audience. You can also see which content gets the most traction when shared on social media.

If you need help identifying opportunities to repurpose your content, I’d love to help. From creating a meaningful content calendar to kick-starting your content marketing campaigns. I can assist with all areas of PR, content marketing, social media marketing and more.

Drop me an email to book your FREE 15 min discovery call.