Content marketing today is a two-sided coin of sorts, requiring both art and science to accomplish necessary goals. Without due attention to each element, you may find yourself on the outside. Other brands will find success while you watch.
In other words, focusing more on just one or the other can spell disaster.
You can be the world’s greatest strategist, developing plans and metrics to measure. However, implementing them is a whole different ballgame.
On the flip side, you may thrive on creativity and right-brain approaches to reach more people. However, without data-driven guidance to steer you in the right direction, you may find yourself drowning in the tide of information already available.
The reality is that you need a balance of the two — art and science — creativity and analytics – to be successful in your content marketing.
The president and CEO of marketing agency RAPP New York, Justin Thomas-Copeland, put it this way: “Creativity can be helped, guided, and validated by data and analytics. And the reverse is also true.”
He goes on to compare science and art to the yin and yang for today’s marketers.
While there are many articles out there on how to create a content marketing strategy, laying out each step for you to follow, little is mentioned about where art and science intersect and how to use this to your advantage. We will tell you more about this below.
The Art of Crafting Compelling Content
At the heart of digital marketing is the value of your content, which you use to attract, delight, entertain, educate, and engage your target audience.
As such, you need to ensure you are crafting compelling content, and two necessary elements to achieve this are creativity and storytelling.
First, creativity can liven up your marketing with content that resonates and sparks emotions in your readers. It may surprise them, causing engagement in unexpected ways.
It is the use of this creativity that will set you apart and get you noticed.
Storytelling is also an essential part of compelling content. It is just the right combination of narrative and fact to be believable and engaging.
When you include stories that in some way resonate with your readers in a deeper, more profound way, you can create a bond and increase loyalty to your brand. Such a storytelling approach feels much more authentic, and your audience will notice.
Always remember that you are speaking to real people with actual problems and questions that need resolving.
Journalist turned marketing agency Creative Director Jacob Moss says it this way. “Whatever you do and whatever story you’re writing, make it human – make sure the human element is at the center of it and shapes it.”
While you need to provide answers and solutions, you also need to surround these exacts with compelling content to keep the reader engaged.
In short, to be compelling, your content will need to:
- Target a particular audience,
- Provide value beyond what you are selling,
- Be timely,
- Include personality and authenticity, and
- Resonate with your audience on an emotional level.
The Science Behind Successful Content Strategies
An equally important part of your content marketing strategy is the science behind it. This science involves your data analysis, market research, and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Whether you are in the process of creating a strategy for your hometown business or need a global content marketing approach, these three will be imperative.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is key to understanding more about your target audience. These analytics can:
- Provide valuable insights into the behavior of consumers.
- Create a map for where your strategy needs to go.
- Allow you to measure the performance of past marketing efforts and help you make better data-driven decisions going forward.
- Tell you where to revise, refine, or completely change your strategy.
- Show you better ways to optimize your marketing campaigns
- Provide data to use in tailoring more personalized experiences for your audience.
- Play an essential role in measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) and ROI.
In the end, however, keep in mind that it’s not about how much data you compile. It is about what you do with that data.
Bob Hoffman succinctly drives this home. “The amount of data we collect is meaningless… Our ability to understand, interpret and utilize the data effectively is what counts.”
As long as you have team members who understand this, you are on the right track to creating successful content strategies. It is the science behind your success.
Data analysis centering around the performance of content will be an ongoing process, necessary for the success of your strategy both in the short and long term. You will learn what is working and what isn’t.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, hit the nail on the head, saying “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” In other words, do your research, looking at both the pros and cons of your current marketing approach, and be open to surprises and to making unexpected changes along the way.
Market Research
Market research is also essential and needs to be ongoing. While many marketers conduct this research initially to develop a content marketing plan, it needs to remain high on the list of crucial activities to adapt or pivot should it become necessary. For start-ups, market research will be imperative since specific customer data is not readily available and will be beneficial to their initial content marketing strategy.
SEO
Even with all this beneficial data allowing you to create valuable content, if your audience can’t find it, then what have you gained?
According to a 2023 report by Ahrefs, a whopping 96.55% of online content does not receive Google organic search traffic. That’s a lot of wasted effort.
This is where SEO comes into play.
From conducting keyword research to developing a robust linking strategy to creating high-quality, compelling content, your efforts in this realm will help you stand out, alert search engine algorithms, and allow your audience to find you.
All in all, data analysis, market research, and SEO are essential to formulating effective content marketing strategies in today’s reality.
Balancing Creativity and Analytics for Maximum Impact
Now that you see how the two, creativity (art) and analytics (science), can individually contribute to your content marketing strategy, it’s time to find a way to balance them for maximum impact.
Combining the power of analytics and data-driven insights with creativity and innovative thinking requires that you first acknowledge the need for both, and that neither one outweighs the other.
The benefits of balancing the two include:
- The ability to create targeted and personalized approaches, which in turn results in higher engagement with your audience and an increase in conversions.
- A boost to your brand’s ability to make more informed, data-driven decisions that can decrease risk, and help you avoid wasting your marketing budget.
- Aid you in discovering new opportunities and foster innovative content marketing measures.
The question is, however, what measures can you take to balance and integrate the two in your organization? Here are a few tips.
Foster an Inclusive Environment
Within your organization, foster an inclusive environment where creativity and strategic thinking are valued. Consider the talent you hire, and particularly look for those who have skills in both creativity and analytics when possible.
If you are a solo marketer, or a team of one, however, you will need to evaluate your skills and abilities and consider seeking help outside your company. Even if you do have a marketing team, you may discover you need to include other professionals to achieve your goals. This may be in the form of marketing analysts, strategists, or professional writers. Form partnerships and make sure they know you value their particular contributions.
Develop a Culture of Collaboration
Bring creatives and analytical-minded people together, developing a culture of collaboration between them. By doing so, you can make the most of each participant’s perspectives, knowledge, and skills, allowing for innovation and new approaches to reach your target audience.
Use your data to drive creativity. Let your team brainstorm, and be open to experimenting with new approaches that can be measured to see whether they are good for your organization or not. Utilize collaboration software to help keep track.
Find the right technology
Today, technology can help teams streamline workflows, collaborate, track, and measure results. Find the software and apps that will be most beneficial to your marketing team and cross-train as much as possible, so everyone stays on the same page.
Establishing a balance between creativity and analytics will be an ongoing challenge, yet one that you’ll want to keep at to achieve a higher level of success in your content marketing strategies. By keeping this top of mind, you can make a bigger impact going forward.
Implementing and Measuring Impactful Content Marketing Strategies
Determining how to approach the creation of your content marketing strategies, with both art and science in mind, is only the first step. How you implement and measure those strategies will be just as crucial to your success. We briefly discuss the steps below to help you gain a sense of how to make this happen.
Implementing your content marketing strategies
Putting your content marketing strategies into practice requires several steps, including:
- Know your audience (through data analysis and market research)
- Set goals. What do you want to achieve with your content? (E.g., brand awareness, website traffic, etc.)
- Identify KPIs. For example, if you are seeking to increase brand awareness, your KPIs might include site traffic, social media engagement (likes, shares, comments, and mentions), sign-ups, or subscriptions.
- Determine what content formats to use (e.g., blog posts, videos, interactive content).
- Select channels for your content (e.g., blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.).
- Determine your budget.
- Create a content calendar to help keep your team on track.
- Craft your creative, data-driven content.
- Distribute and promote that content.
Measuring content marketing strategies
Evaluating the success of your content strategies based on relevant metrics and analysis will be an integral part of your success. Common metrics to measure include:
- Organic search traffic
- Views
- Impressions
- Engagement
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- Click-through Rate
- Social Media engagement (likes, shares, comments, mentions)
Use what you find to adjust, refine, or otherwise change what is not currently working and meet the intended goals.
Also, let technology help with your marketing analytics. A variety of options exists today, including platforms and tools to help with website analytics, social media monitoring, and more.
Essentially, it all begins and ends with the research. Use it to understand your target audience and then craft content that speaks to them. From there, measure the results of that content and either tweak the approach, continue adding similar content (possibly in other forms, such as videos), or go back to the drawing board and craft more compelling content based on what you learn through your analytics.
Craft Impactful Strategies and Content with the Help of Creative Writers
Partnering art and science in content marketing is the way to go to create strategies that have maximum impact. WriterAccess can help your organization scale content production, incorporating your data-driven guidance with our professional writers’ creativity and knowledge of SEO.
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