How can you win the game of throne of content marketing?

Content marketing is an incredible method for showcasing your products or services. Dissimilar to different types of marketing strategies, content marketing is a drawn-out methodology. Content marketing is a great way to build trust with your customers and create a deeper relationship with them. Content marketing may help you to stand out as an industry leader and help you to reach the top position.

Get the right people on your team

You need to have the right people on your team, which means you’ll need a project manager, a copywriter, a designer, and a developer. These people must be able to work together efficiently and effectively. You need someone who can take the lead and pull everyone together under one clear strategy.

You also must have a shared vision of what you want the result to be. No matter how amazing your content is, if it’s targeting the wrong audience or not aligned with your brand voice, it won’t help you reach your goals.

Don’t be too quick to interrupt your target audience

If you still have a TV commercial mentality, ask yourself: when was the last time you watched commercials without fast-forwarding or skipping them? The reality is that a lot of folks watch Game of Thrones on demand—and we don’t just mean the HBO Go service.

According to Nielson, 95 percent of the 18.4 million people who streamed GOT in 2014 recorded it at home and watched it later. While many factors explain why people don’t watch TV live anymore (e.g., time-shifting, on-demand content, binge-watching), one reason often overlooked is advertising avoidance (i.e., DVRs). The vast majority of DVR users fast forward through commercials—a number that has risen to 78 percent in recent years. This presents a huge challenge for companies that rely on traditional advertising tactics to reach their target audiences.

Imagine if someone interrupted you every 10 minutes while you were watching your favorite show. What would your reaction be? Probably something like Ugh! I can’t believe they did that! They ruined my favorite part! Now I have to go back and see what was happening before they interrupted me… this is so annoying! It would not be true to say that every person whose are watching will think in the same way. Not. Some might enjoy the interruption because it matches their interests, but most will probably feel annoyed with the person or company responsible for interrupting their viewing experience by delivering an irrelevant message at an inconvenient time—especially since they can easily skip or block these messages regardless of where they appear (on cable or online).

Ensure the quality of the content is significant and valuable to your audience.

This is one of the cornerstones of content marketing. If your content is irrelevant or useless to your target audience, then it won’t matter how amazing it is, or how expensively you’ve produced it—your audience won’t care about it.

Let’s take a look at some examples from Game of Thrones:

• The Three-Eyed Raven: In the show, Bran Stark has been taught by the Three-Eyed Raven to harness the gifts that come with his new supernatural powers. Apart from being a plot device in this case (Bran’s powers are crucial to turning the tide in several battles), these lessons are relevant and useful to Bran because they allow him to develop his abilities and become a more powerful person within Westeros’ world.
• Cersei Lannister: As Queen Regent, Cersei Lannister is interested in maintaining power and wealth for herself as well as her family. When she commissions an artist to paint a map of Westeros on the floor of the Red Keep, Cersei sees this project as an opportunity for artistic expression that will show her refined taste and give her visitors something interesting to look at when they pay her court.

The right message to the ideal individual through the right medium.

There’s a lot of noise out there, so you need to discover the right channels and then get your marketing message in front of the right people at the right time. You can do that by creating relevant content and sharing it through the channels that are used most frequently by your target audience. You also need to tailor your content to each channel. So while a Facebook post might work best as a video clip, an Instagram post will do better with an eye-catching image or GIF (maybe even one that incorporates moving text). And data you collect throughout this process can help you identify where else you should share your content, which is how well-executed content marketing campaigns reach wide audiences.

For example, let’s say you want to market a new DNA test for pets that can determine their ancestral lineages (because why not?). While third-party retailers and pet stores are obvious places to sell it, you could also market it on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, where potential customers would share photos of their pets along with “fun facts” about them based on information from their DNA tests. Data collected from these users could help inform other content marketing strategies for this product in other verticals (for example, perhaps more men than women buy this DNA test kit after seeing friends’ posts about it on social media).

Use data to figure out how you can best connect to your audience (a.k.a. use analytics)

Analytics are important. They tell you how well your content is performing and what you can do to improve it. You’ll find that the analytics for a lot of popular social media platforms are pretty robust, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more.

Even if you don’t have access to these platforms (or your audience isn’t found there), there are other ways to measure how well your content is performing. For example:

• Are people visiting your website? How did they find out about it?
• What type of content seems to get more attention on your website? Is it blog posts or whitepapers?

With this data, you can figure out what works best for you and make sure the right people are seeing it.

When you are trying to get an edge, don’t try and do it alone (a.k.a. cross-channel marketing)

Cross-channel marketing is key to gaining that extra edge. When you engage with your audience across different channels, you’re able to increase customer engagement and build brand awareness. This can help boost sales and reduce churn.

If it seems like an uphill battle to get started, don’t be so frugal with the resources at your disposal! One of the best ways to achieve higher conversion rates is by having a network of people working together towards a common goal. If a single person tries to do it all on their own (for example, just using Facebook), they could end up missing out on valuable leads.

When Joffrey took the throne after Robert Baratheon’s death in season 1, he was finally able to show his true colors: he was a spoiled brat who was used to getting his way. If you approach content marketing without any strategy, or if you don’t use the right people for the job (or worse yet—no people), chances are you’ll fall short of your goals as well.

You need strong content to win new customers and keep them loyal (a.k.a content marketing)

According to Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Officer of the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is an essential promotional approach zeroed in on the creation and distribution of significant, important, and reliable content to draw in and hold a characterized audience — and, at last, to drive profitable customer activity. In other words: without good content, you will have no one to fight for your cause.

Creating excellent content for your brand is the only way you can generate leads and make customers stick with your brand for longer periods.

Don’t just repurpose content for your audience — customize it!

Your content can be as strong as your most powerful dragons, but if you don’t target the right audience, it won’t do much good.

When you’re writing content for a new audience, don’t forget that you aren’t just starting from scratch. There will likely be some underlying similarities between your current and potential audiences. In this case, repurpose existing content to fit this new group of people! When customizing your messaging for a different audience, include the following:

• Ask yourself what value your offer (or product) provides to them.
• Try to make the content relevant and engaging for that specific audience.
• Use analytics services like Google Analytics or Google Trends to help visualize your potential customer base.

Define your goals and measure the results of your campaigns.

Targets are nothing without measurements. To make content marketing work for you, it’s important to set specific goals and then analyze the results of your campaigns about those goals (and be prepared to adjust them when necessary). You need a clear idea of what you hope to achieve or else how will you know if your strategy is working?

The first step is figuring out exactly who your target audience is.
Who do you want to reach?
What do they want?
What will help them achieve their aims and overcome their problems?
For your campaign to resonate with people, you have to understand them.

Next, identify who your competitors are, and give thought to how they are using content marketing. Are they successful at it? How can you stand out from what they’re doing so that the audience sees the value in choosing you over them (or even better: seeing value in choosing both)?

Once all this has been done and a plan has been put into place, it’s time to define some measurable targets for success—without them, you or anyone else on your team (or even yourself) can’t assess how well the campaign is working.

You’ll need to find a way to stand out from the junk.

If you’ve been following this series, then you already know what it takes to stand out from your competitors. It’s all about knowing your audience and engaging with them in a way that will make you memorable. If you can keep your audience interested and coming back for more, they’re far more likely to become loyal allies than if they encounter content that looks like every other piece of content online. By keeping your audience engaged and happy, you’ll be well on your way to creating an army of followers who are ready and willing to help spread the word about your brand—and the more people who hear about it, the faster it will grow!

Content marketing needs strategic planning and commitment to be successful.

While the strategic benefits of content marketing are clear, it’s important to keep in mind that content marketing needs strategic planning and commitment to be successful. It takes a lot of time and resources to start seeing any real results.

To get started with content marketing, you need a plan. This means establishing an objective; targeting a specific audience and determining how you will measure success; creating buyer personas, which are semi-fictional representations of your target audience; identifying the goals and needs of your target audience, and providing them with the value that meets these needs; determining what type of content will best help you achieve your goals and reach your target audience; finally, having a system for distributing this content to your audience.

Once everything is set up, the most important thing is to create consistently high-quality content that caters to both your goals as well as those of your audience. If this isn’t done from the beginning then it can be difficult to establish credibility with consumers or build trust with them.

But it doesn’t just take one piece of great content for people to sit up and notice you — it takes multiple pieces published over time for consumers to even realize what exactly makes you different from your competitors.

The key is patience! Content creation takes time and consistency, so if results aren’t immediate don’t panic — just keep going!

Content marketing allows you to turn into a loyal customer base and boost your business, just like a good strategy on Game of Thrones keeps the crown on your head and your enemies at bay

For the uninitiated, Game of Thrones is based on a series of books called “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R.R. Martin that begins with the book “A Game of Thrones.” The series follows many characters (and their families) as they battle for control over Westeros and its Iron Throne. It’s important to note that there are no good (or evil) characters in this story—all of them are just trying to win the game, so to speak. To do this, they must come up with a strategy and execute it flawlessly; otherwise, their enemies will overtake them or kill them completely.

Similarly, content marketing strategy is all about creating content that’s relevant and valuable to attract customers who will engage with your business on an ongoing basis—and eventually buy from you. A good content marketing strategy will help you retain those customers because they’ll trust you as an expert in your industry; as a bonus, it’ll also position you as a thought leader among your peers!