When planning out your marketing journey, you've probably thought about using Content Marketing or using Pay Per Click (PPC). But have you ever thought about combining your content marketing with PPC?
You don't need to exclusively use one method or the other, you can use your efforts to create a "hybrid" digital marketing campaign.
You can use your Content Marketing to create high-quality, relevant content to give your search engine ranking a boost. This helps to build your authority within your industry and strengthen your brand awareness.
Combining this with your PPC advertising allows you to capitalise on the one while the other is still being optimised.
What should I be focusing on first?
First of all, you need to have great content on your website. You don't want people clicking on your ads only to immediately leave your site if they don't like what they see on there.
This can be something that you'll find tricky in the beginning, after all, what constitutes "great" content? Quite simply, cheat. Find content that someone else has written and put your own unique spin on it. Take a look at the topics being written by others in your industry, is there any way you can change them to be more in line with your business, or is there any way you can improve on the content that's out there? Just remember, do not just re-create the content word-for-word, this is plagiarism and Google will penalise your website for it. Use the content and titles to help generate your own ideas.
Your Pay Per Click campaigns can use the same approach. What are your competitors doing? Look at their headlines and body text to see what kind of phrasing they're using and take it from there.
Don't forget - if you're unsure whether something will work for your business, use A/B testing. Try it and see if it works compared to what you already have in place.
Remember - If you're paying for advertising, you want a way to make your money back. You need to have people carrying out an action on your website, whether that's filling out a detail capturing form, or selling them a product / service. Keep your end goal in mind when building your campaigns.
Should I promote my content using PPC?
Depending on your budget, this can be a good way of getting your great content in front of your potential customers. But what's the best way of doing this?
After writing your blog posts, make sure you put links to them on your social media. If you find a particular post is gaining traction, it might be worth boosting this post so it reaches an even wider audience.
You can run these campaigns sequentially.
Firstly, run a campaign targeted towards people who have liked your page. This ensures that people who are already in your niche are then aware of the content you are putting out.
Secondly, run a campaign targeted to your followers and their friends. This is good because people who like your page probably have friends with the same interests. This isn't a guarantee though, so you may see a reduction in the level of engagement.
Thirdly, you can run a campaign that runs on exact targeting information to get your post in front of people who are interested. To do this, you need to find your Audience Insights data and then use this to see what your audience is interested in before targeting others with the same interests.
Summing Up
Before reading this post, you might not have considered how you could get your message out using both content marketing and PPC. However, by using PPC to enhance your content marketing, you may find that you're able to reach a larger audience than you will be using just one or the other.
