It’s typical for content marketing and advertising teams to be separated. Both have different functions and purposes. But even with differing priorities, both are looking to target and engage the company’s target audience. Whether it’s a blog post or a video, a standard banner ad or a pre-roll asset, these tactics are made with engagement in mind. Collaborating to create consistent messaging between your content marketing plans and advertising can be a winning strategy.
A harmonious content and advertising strategy will eliminate any confusion in the marketplace. When your strategies are one-in-the-same, individuals will begin to form certain expectations from your brand. This can be anything from how they feel after an ad they see or what they gain from reading a piece of content on your site. Creating harmony, however, is easier said than done. Below are three ways to align your content with your ads.
1. Know and Predict Your Audiences’ Needs
Your brand can’t be everything to everyone. It’s important to have a distinguished voice, tone, and point of view. Your product offerings and/or services should be distinctive, creating a specific need for your brand in the crowded marketplace. This can look like providing a solution to an individual’s problem or making their life easier in some way. Doing so further affirms your brand and demonstrates that you truly know your audience and their various needs.
Through audience targeting, you can pinpoint what your intended audience is searching for and how to best engage with them. While contextual and third-party targeting was the norm, the depreciation of the cookie has led to newer solutions. One of these solutions is predictive audiences — targeting that relies on first-party data and AI learnings rather than third-party cookies. With predictive audiences, you can build out segments based on buyer behaviors, content engagement, purchasing habits, and audience preferences.
The power of using something like predictive audiences is that you can create messages through content marketing and sales media that truly resonate. You’ll know by looking at the data which of your ads are performing and how to optimize them. And you can see which of your email newsletters received the highest click through rate, so you can continue to create similar campaign messaging. With this, you can also better anticipate your target audiences’ future needs and provide more effective messaging.
2. Stay on Brand
It’s easy to get distracted and go off course. You may see a compelling advertising campaign from a competitor that is performing well. This may lead you to pivoting what you’re currently working on to create something similar. While a pivot is sometimes necessary, copying or mimicking another brand isn’t going to establish your brand. In fact, it could cause confusion and lead once loyal consumers to switch to the competitor.
Staying on brand for everything you do is essential for brand awareness, memorability, and recognition. Brand consistency is more than keeping the same logo and colors. It’s also how you speak to your audiences and how you want them to feel through your messaging — whether that’s a blog post or a media banner. If you’re targeting millennials, using over-the-top verbiage isn’t going to work. Instead, you should use language that mimics how they would speak to their own friends.
Creating brand guidelines can help support your brand consistency efforts. These guidelines can be created in collaboration with the content and advertising teams, establishing uniformity across all deliverables. Dunkin’ is a great example of successful branding. The brand’s lightheartedness was seen in the recent “The DunKings” Super Bowl commercial featuring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Tom Brady. This humorous approach matches their social media content, playing up to the brand’s high-spirited, punchy vibe.
3. Promote What’s Working
Another way to create harmony across your efforts is to promote what is working. Take a look at your current blog and social media posts. Pick out your top performing pieces and identify if there are any similarities between them to help inform future content and media planning. Then, put paid spend behind these top-performing pieces to amplify them even more. If you’re generating organic leads from a blog post then putting some paid advertising behind it will get it in front of more eyeballs.
When putting paid spend behind a piece of content, think about which platform makes the most sense. Facebook is one of the safest choices for paid ads, but there is a lot of competition on this social media site. TikTok is popular with a younger generation and will attract a different type of audience than LinkedIn. Again, think back to your specific target audience and lean on the data to make an informed decision.
Along with the platform selection, you’ll also want to create a compelling call-to-action. This is what will entice viewers to actually click on the piece. Depending on the platform — Instagram, Facebook, Google Ads, etc. — you will have different options. Regardless, a good rule of thumb is to keep it simple and use action words in order to create a sense of urgency. This is also where creativity can come into play. Rather than “sign up now,” consider using “take the leap” or “make the first move.”
Takeaways
Creating harmony between your content marketing and advertising strategy will only amplify your brand. Aligning the two will allow for more targeted, impactful messaging that will resonate with your target audience.
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