With the new year coming along, now would be the perfect time to reflect and see how to improve your business. Content marketing is the first connection many leads and potential customers will find you through. The Content Marketing Institute did a study to find that content marketing will be just over a quarter of many company’s marketing budget.

Year end tasks are dwindling down but it never hurts to plan ahead for improvements! Laura Schierberl (@lscherbs) suggests you ask yourself these key questions when is comes to content marketing in 2017:

What Worked in 2016?

It’s easy to overlook this simple task because of exciting projects you have coming up. Looking into what worked and what didn’t is a critical step. Look into your Google analytics and other resources and social media dashboards to hone in on what is performing well.

Work as a team with sales! They are the ones who know what converted people into leads. Asking them a few simple questions like “What blog posts were mentioned most?” or “What kind of content are they looking for?” will get you a few steps ahead, you’ll take a lot of time from getting those answers. Some other questions:

• Which emails had the highest click-through-rate?
• How many views did the Youtube channel get and what type of videos had the highest exposure?
• Did the leads fit our ideal persona? Should we add, update or remove any?

What Are the Big Changes Coming Up?

Accommodate your marketing plan to any changes you have ahead of you. Is your coming looking into acquisitions? What are the new sales targets and how will your marketing style change to work with them? Will you have more funds to put into new projects? These will have impact your strategy.

Keep your content transparent. If your are going through an acquisition, let your followers know. This will build trust between the two ends and give a smoother transition to any further changes. With new funding allocation is key, utilizing the question above can be a great tool to find the best and most effective ways to further your growth.

How Much Funding for New Projects?

Don’t stop trying new things out! There are always ways you can improve your business. Great content is half the work. People take only a few seconds scanning over a page and if it’s not satisfying to the eye, it’s a click to leave the page.

Design is what will draw your readers in. Streamlined but still informative aesthetics lets your readers view your content comfortably. Adding review sections and photos helps your content to be easily processed. Telling a story through your posts or videos builds emotion between you and your customer too! Find out what is achievable and see how things work, it doesn’t hurt trying something once.

What Are Your Customers Really Looking For?

Keep in mind that everything you do is for your customers. Always circle back to whether or not this is helpful for them. What are the questions they constantly ask themselves? If they were well liked in their team? How can they increase their sales? Put yourselves in the customer’s shoes and find out what the changing trends are in their marketplaces. Check out this blog and see how to turn a bad reviewers into loyal customers.

Your sales team has many of these answers. Talk to them and leave an open line of communication. The sales team has insight on what should be improved on landing pages and type of content. Staying up to date not only benefits you but also your customers.

Hope this helps and our team wishes you a happy and safe holiday season!

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