Industry: Printing, design
Content: Blog posts, infographics, product/event press releases
Highlights: Targeted blog content sees 77% increase in traffic
Style and tone undoubtedly vary when you’re approaching a seasoned marketing director vs. a fresh-out-of-college marketing coordinator. Their needs are different – and the content that catches one’s attention may fly under the other’s radar.
Enter: buyer personas.
For one client in the printing industry, blog content wasn’t attracting the company’s target audience. This was apparent through high bounce and exit rates, as well as low conversion rates.
Here’s how the Brafton team worked with them to develop a blog that met the needs of their audience, and in return, boosted traffic, decreased bounce rates and increased the average pageviews per session.
Strategy
- Create different audience personas to address their customers’ unique challenges at the various stages of the buying funnel.
- Conduct keyword analysis to determine where their competitors ranked around specific products.
- Cater content to formats that traditionally perform well within specific demographics.
Brafton Content
- 5 monthly blog posts
- Quarterly infographic
- Quarterly press release
Results
- 74% increase in blog users
- 61% increase in blog sessions
- 30% improvement in bounce rate
- 4.65 pages/session
Inside the content strategy: How to get on your audience’s radar
The best place to start: Keyword analysis
You might be thinking, “keyword strategies are outdated.” But, before you reject them altogether, try approaching keywords with user intent in mind. This can prove successful in gauging your search competition.
For this printing client, Content Strategist Morgan Simpson conducted keyword analysis to determine where their competitors ranked against them for their best selling products.
“A unique quality about this account is that their competitors aren’t completely their competitors,” Morgan explained. “For example, one well-known competitor does printing, but they sell a ton of other products, so in regard to ranking, it’s not a fair comparison. Competitors that are a bit more aligned product-wise maybe don’t have the technology and value propositions our client does, so we make sure the content highlights these, without being too sales-y.”
Director of Consultancy Natalie Grogan said conducting competitor analysis opens the door to two different types of competitors: the marketplace and those who Google perceives as competitors. To kick off a content strategy, it’s important to make sure your website’s keyword strategy aligns with your actual competition. Read more on competitive analysis here.
How audience targeting makes writing blog content easier
“This company’s target audience and primary buyers are not millennials, but their target buyers are either trying to sell to millennials, or train them,” Morgan said. “So, we approach the content from that angle.”
When it comes to creating content with a target demographic in mind, Brafton Writer Sabrina Dorronsoro says she find it easiest to break down audience personas based on age range.
“A younger demographic tends to prefer list formats that are easy to read in a hurry,” she said. “They also generally want to feel like your company is talking to them directly. So, the tone lends itself to that with second person and more lax language. An older demographic tends to like authoritative voices. So in those instances my writing is more formal and more focused on direct, well-polished thought leadership.”
The content that resonates best? Pieces that:
- Answer questions that the target audience asks in search.
- Include links and descriptions around specific products that provide a solution to the questions being asked.
- Provide solutions for mid- to high-level managers with blogs around training, budgeting tips and event planning.
“If we wrote an article for the client about the kind of solutions a franchise can utilize when sending manuals or training guides to its locations, we would include product calls-to-action and keywords like binder and saddle-stitch in the content because those are frequently searched terms and they relate to one another.”
Interested in creating buyer personas for your digital audience? Check out this guide, or contact us to see how we can help.
