Category: Marketing

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Director of Digital Marketing, Carrie Cousins, in their June 2024 issue.

It’s a common thought – and rightly so – that people don’t fully read most things put in front of them. This is especially true when it comes to your website.

What if you are creating a barrier unintentionally almost ensuring that your content doesn’t get read? What if you are turning an audience away or sending a signal that you don’t care because the design is challenging for them to understand?

From readability to accessibility, how you communicate through design speaks volumes about your business and the relationship you have with customers.

But first, let’s dive into two key terms of “designed” communication online:

• Readability: The ease of which someone can scan text quickly and understand the words. Readability relates to everything from the typeface you use to the amount of space between lines of text to how long or short sentences span across the screen.
• Accessibility: The degree to which people with different abilities can access content in a way that they understand. From a design perspective, this can include elements such as color contrast, text size, and making sure everything has a “readable” label.

Both are important because they determine if your website is easy to understand. Clear communication is a key to reading comprehension and even overall website conversions.

Readability and accessibility are pretty complex topics but in the most simple form it comes down to this: Is your communication clear and understandable by all?

While this is by no means an all-inclusive list; here are five things you can do to facilitate readability and accessibility. (We’ll focus everything here on design elements for your website.

• Avoid text effects (or use them sparingly); this includes all caps, underlines, too much centered text, or elaborate or novelty typefaces that make you think to read.
• Give all text elements in the design room to stand alone. You should be able to look at a page and clearly identify different text elements and their groupings, such as headlines, subheaders, body text, or captions. There should be adequate space between lines of text, that’s often 1.25 to 1.5 times the height of the typeface’s characters.
• Pay close attention to color. Text elements should have strong contrast with background elements to ensure they are readable for all people, including those with limited color vision. WebAIM has a great color contrast checker that allows you to enter the color codes for background and text colors to see if they pass basic guidelines.
• The same concept applies to text size. Text on the page should have an obvious and distinct hierarchy, from large to small, using a scale that’s easy for the eyes. Most designers will start with a set of specifications for the body text and scale from there.  
• Use a little math to ensure that your body text size (often the smallest on your website) is easy to read. No matter what typeface you use, the ideal width of a line of copy from left to right is 50 to 75 characters. This means that you probably should not have a text frame that extends all the way across on a desktop screen.

Readability and accessibility are a growing concern for website designs. It’s important to plan new website builds with intention and in a way that makes them work for your target audience. Dive deep into website accessibility with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Carrie Cousins is the Director of Digital Marketing at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech. 

“What’s your favorite movie?”

If you’ve been asked this question before it’s likely your eyes lit up before you launched into an impassioned answer. It’s the perfect conversation starter because who doesn’t love a good story?

Stories shape and define us. It’s the way we’ve made sense of our world, passed on information, and created a sense of belonging for millennia. If you’re a business owner looking to create an authentic connection with your audience, then it’s hard to compete with the power of telling a compelling story.

Understanding the Elements of Storytelling for Business

The idea of storytelling for your business can feel daunting. You’re in the thick of the action of running everything, after all! However, storytelling for business is simpler than you might imagine. A good story just needs three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

• The beginning: This is the part of the story where you make the introductions. You might talk about your product or service, or perhaps the problem your customer has. And believe it or not, it only takes a sentence or two.
  
  For example, someone running ice cream shop needs to make a Facebook post. They might start with, “Looking for a sweet treat?” In this example, the ice cream shop introduces the problem: their customer needs a sweet treat but doesn’t have one yet!

• The middle: The middle of the story gets to the point and offers details that will move the plot to resolution. This is the perfect place to talk about what you offer and discuss any special deals. Again, it might only be a sentence or two!
  
  The ice cream shop might write, “We have 15 different flavors of ice cream to suit every taste!” The ice cream shop has the solution because it sells sweet treats! . This is the point of the post and it’s framed within a narrative arc.

• The end: The end of the story wraps everything up and explains what to do with the information contained in the story. It’s a great place to include a call to action.
  
  The ice cream shop could end their post by inviting customers to their store. “Stop by today and discover your favorite flavor.” They’re asking people to buy their ice cream and since it’s in story form, it’s easy to imagine yourself buying an ice cream cone from their shop.

Implementing Storytelling in Your Marketing Strategy

The wonderful thing about this structure is that you can implement it across your marketing strategy. Your business is likely brimming with stories and this framework will help you tell them in a compelling way. It works for social media posts as well as longer form pieces like brochures and webpages. Let’s break it down:

• Social media: You can use this form to write a single, three-sentence post (like we did above) or create three slides that contain the elements of your story.
  
  
• Print collateral: This form works well for brochures and other print pieces too. Whether you’re creating a brochure, a flyer, or a one-pager, you’ll still need a beginning, middle, and end.
  
  
• Web pages: People usually have an objective in mind when they’re visiting your website. When you offer them information with a beginning, middle, and end, they’re more likely to stay focused and they’ll quickly find the information they need.

Get Help Telling a Story that Connects

At LeadPoint Digital, we’re committed to the craft of storytelling as much as we’re committed to getting results for our clients. With the right storytelling strategy, you can feel confident that your marketing strategy connects with the people you want to reach. If you’d like help telling captivating stories for your business, get in touch with us!

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Director of Digital Marketing, Carrie Cousins, in their May 2024 issue.

After writing some 1,500-plus posts for a variety of clients, I can almost claim to be an expert blogger.

I’ve written about nonprofit fundraising, retail business, website design, a variety of tools, outdoors and tourism, photography, and plenty of other things. Some posts were better than others but they all served a common purpose – to help users find the website for which they were written while telling a good brand story.

I recently spoke on this topic with AAF Roanoke and a class at Virginia Tech and thanks to their feedback, I’m sharing it with you.

Blogging and storytelling plays a huge role in your website’s search engine optimization strategy and even business success. And while there’s not a one-size-fits all solution, I have learned a few things that you can replicate if you want to blog like a boss.

First and foremost, a solid blogging strategy is rooted in good storytelling. As you continue to tell your story over time, that content creates a strong foundation for your website and helps search engines better understand your brand.

This doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not necessarily easy. But blogging can be rewarding in the long run and can be a vital part of a long-term digital marketing strategy.

Here’s how you do it:

• Do Your Homework: What story do you need to tell? What should readers do after they engage with your content? You need to do some legwork and set a goal for every piece of content you plan to create. Know who you want to talk to, what keywords are important, why they should care, and what users should do next.
  
• Tell a Story That Humans Want to Read: Every story has a formula – it has a beginning, middle, and end often with conflict and resolution – and you’ve crafted something people want to read. AI also has a pretty distinct formula that can’t get close to the authenticity of human copywriting. (Plus, using AI could lead to duplicate content issues online!) Margaret Atwood said it best: “You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built in the human plan. We come with it.”
  
• Think Keyword Times Three: Every keyword needs to be used a minimum of three times in a blog post – in the title, in the first paragraph, and in a subhead. You can use it more, depending on the length of the post, but not more times than feels like natural reading. (When it feels natural delete one instance and then you should be safe.)
  
• Write Short Paragraphs with One Thought Each: Themed paragraphs should be short and sweet, with just a couple of sentences each. Consider this formula for blog paragraphs: Statement of fact for what this paragraph is about. Supporting facts, metrics, or information to solidify the thought. Finish with a strong statement or quote to support the idea.
  
• Optimize Blog Post Length: Google recommends a blog post length of at least 300 words. That’s a realistic minimum to say something meaningful. What’s more interesting is that most of the top-ranking blog posts in Google search can actually top 2,000 words! That doesn’t mean you have to wax poetic every time; write to the length that your story needs to be effective. Then check the word count. If your story is super short, you might not have enough content right now and should come back to the idea later. If it is exceptionally long, is all of the content valuable as a single post or would it make sense to break it into multiple, shorter posts? It’s ok to incorporate and interchange short-form and long-form content in your blog strategy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; you can download the rest of the slide deck with the more technical tips at leadpointdigital.com/aafroa. I hope it tells a story that resonates with you.

Carrie Cousins is the Director of Digital Marketing at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech. 

In today’s world, having a great website is non-negotiable for business. It’s your top piece of marketing collateral that functions as your calling card, brochure, catalogue, and even point of sale. While there are many aspects to designing a website that’s both beautiful and functional, in this article we’re going to focus on one of the most basic: color. 

Choosing the right color palette for your website is one of the first choices you’ll make when it comes to design. In fact, it’s so foundational that it’s easy to overlook. But do so at your peril. Color is a powerful communication tool that speaks volumes to your potential customers and choosing the wrong one can be bad for business. Applying color psychology to your design choices can help you avoid this pitfall and build a website that converts.

What Is Color Psychology and Why Is It Important for Websites?

Color psychology is the practice of selecting colors to convey ideas, values, and characteristics or to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. People across time and culture have long understood that color is powerful. While different cultures can attach different meanings to color, in web design and branding, colors generally have an agreed upon meaning.  

Your website should make a good first impression, which research shows takes only seven seconds to create. Our brains move at lightning speed to determine if a business is likable, trustworthy, and competent. Choosing colors that are misaligned with your brand personality, product, or service can break trust with your target customers and cost you. Luckily, the solution is within reach. By applying color psychology to your website design, you’ll communicate the right message at a glance.

How To Use Color Psychology

The simplest way to use color psychology is to identify on one or two main features of your business and brand. For example, if you sell financial services then you might want to project a sense of stability and trustworthiness to your potential customers. By contrast, if you run an ice cream shop, you might want to convey a sense of fun and play. 

Once you’ve identified the characteristics you want to communicate about your business, use the following list to find which colors suit your business best. 

1. Red represents passion, energy, love, danger, power, excitement. It’s commonly used for warning signs, romance, or urgency and promoting limited time deals.

2. Blue is the color of the sky and the ocean and represents calmness, trust, stability, tranquility, intelligence, and loyalty. It’s a color that’s all around us and as such is often favored in corporate branding, healthcare, and financial institutions.

3. Green is another plentiful color in the natural world and as such represents nature, growth, harmony, freshness, safety, fertility, and money. You might see green in environmental campaigns, health and wellness, and financial services.

4. Yellow is a high energy color that calls to mind the warmth of the sun. As such, it represents happiness, optimism, creativity, warmth, caution, and energy. You’ll find it used for warning signs, children’s products, and food and beverage industry as it’s said to stimulate hunger!

5. Orange is perfect for conveying enthusiasm, creativity, success, encouragement, energy, and sociability. It’s great for food and beverage, sports, and travel companies.

6. Purple is complex and deep. It’s often associated with royalty, luxury, spirituality, creativity, wisdom and mystery. Purple is a great choice for beauty products, high-end brands, or spirituality and wellness. 

7. Pink is all about love, compassion, nurturing, femininity, playfulness, romance. Pink could be a great option for fashion and apparel, sweets and desserts, or children’s products.

8. Black is a without a doubt a power move. It conveys power, elegance, sophistication, timelessness, and formality. This bold color is often the choice of luxury goods, formal events, fashion, or technology.

9. White is all about purity, cleanliness, simplicity, innocence, and peace. It’s frequently chosen by healthcare, the wedding industry, and household products.

10. Brown is another color commonly found in nature and as such conveys a sense of stability, reliability, wholesomeness, comfort, and earthiness. Reach for this color if you sell natural and organic products, logistics, or food and beverages.

Be Consistent in Your Branding

Within each of these broad color categories is a vast range of tints and hues. You can play with the saturation of each color until you find the perfect version for you. Just remember that consistency is key. Using the exact same shade across your website and brand is a critical part of driving home your messaging, building trust with your user, and developing brand recall that will help you make the sales you’ve worked so hard for.

Get Expert Website Development with LeadPoint Digital

Choosing the right colors for your website is foundational, but it’s just the beginning when it comes to having a website that bolsters your business. At LeadPoint Digital, we’re masters at melding gorgeous design with high usability, and an optimized construction so your customers can do what they came to do—business with you!

LeadPoint Digital specializes in search engine optimization and advertising, content marketing, and website design. If you’re ready to get a website that effortlessly tells the story of your brand while delivering outstanding usability for your customers, contact us! 

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Director of Digital Marketing, Carrie Cousins, in their April 2024 issue.

Recently a job candidate came to the interview, and I never saw his face. 

In another instance, someone was wearing a hoodie (hood up no less) during a meeting with people from multiple companies. 

And in a one-on-one meeting, the other person chomped an apple while we talked social media strategy. 

All of these meetings were online and beg the question: What message are you sending during Zoom/Teams/Google meetings? Do we live in a work culture so casual that body language can be disregarded? 

Regardless of the reason, you are sending the wrong message to the person on the other side of the screen. No matter how much zoom fatigue you may be experiencing, it’s time to turn the cameras back on, dress professionally (at least from the waist up), and make virtual eye contact. 

These things tell everyone you are meeting with that they are important and you care about what they have to say. And if you don’t … then why are you having the meeting in the first place?

Here are some of the unintended messages you might be sending.

• Camera off: I’m not paying attention to what’s going on here.
• Improper or casual dress: You aren’t important to me.
• Eating or having food/drink on camera: I’m bored. 
• Pets on camera: I was too lazy to close the door. 
• Turn around and talk to someone else: They are more important than you.
• Entering the meeting late: Your time does not matter to me. 

Here are some messages you should try to send:

• Blurred background: I’m working from home or a busy office today and don’t want to create distractions.
• Unblurred background: I value authenticity and trust you in my space.
• Proper positioning: I took the time to prepare for this meeting by aligning my camera.
• Maintain eye contact (look at the camera while speaking and while others are speaking to you): I value your thoughts and time. 
• Mute strategically: I understand there are distractions and noise in my space and I’m trying to keep those to a minimum.

Because video meetings can be efficient and make it easy to communicate with clients all over the world, they are unlikely to go away. 

But you must be present and treat video calls with the same care that you would if you were meeting in person. Otherwise, you might end up like that candidate who didn’t turn on his camera – unappreciated and unemployed. 

Carrie Cousins is the Director of Digital Marketing at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech. 

The technology community in Roanoke and Blacksburg is a dynamic ecosystem bursting with world-changing innovation. And no one knows that better than the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council (RBTC). As a member-driven association, the RBTC is working to build a community that is a catalyst for innovation, inspiration, success, and leadership within the Roanoke-Blacksburg region.

In 2022, the RBTC came under new leadership. To reflect this change, they wanted an updated website and a digital strategy to communicate their vision and reengage with their membership. They turned to LeadPoint Digital for help in leveraging digital communication to add value to the tech community through high-quality information and meaningful opportunities for collaboration.

Phase One: Research

LeadPoint Digital did a deep-dive into website content and analytics to better understand RBTC and develop a digital strategy to help them rebuild membership, event attendance, and connection to talent under new leadership. LeadPoint Digital conducted a discovery meeting with RBTC to identify goals and objectives for the technology-based organization moving forward and dove into past website analytics to see what was and was not working on the current website. 

As a member-based nonprofit, RBTC engages with the entire technology community from CEOs, to entrepreneurs to up-and-coming talent. A critical component of the website and overall strategy was identifying key audiences so RBTC could communicate clearly and directly. LeadPoint identified established members, prospective members, and anyone with a connection to the tech community as major audience segments. 

Finally, LeadPoint established an approachable visual feel and tone for the website that was inclusive of all segments of the technology community, industry news, and key members/sponsors. 

Phase Two: Implementation

The website redesign was a 6-month process that started with development of a sitemap and navigation structure. LeadPoint collected assets and wrote new content in keeping with the accessible branding and created a new visual design to better showcase the RBTC. 

A major strategy was to include calls-to-action and registration as primary design elements in the website. This created a highly usable website that guided the user to important information and action. Other important planning and implementation milestones included:

•  Creating audience/user paths to direct action and website conversions
• Connectivity with analytics tools to keep track of user paths
• Create a design that would appeal to a technology audience 
• Development of a robust calendar system for event registrations
• Link to membership login portal/CRM and tools

Finally, LeadPoint helped develop new content that would add value to the technology community. Content was branded consistently with the new RBTC design and was easily shareable across channels for maximum impact.

Phase Three: Results

The new website launched in February 2022 and the results were cause for celebration! RBTC’s new website created a direct line of communication with its core audience which resulted in a significant increase in traffic. 

• In the first two months following launch, the website averaged more than 3,000 unique visitors (the prior year average was 500 unique visitors per month)
• Year over year (ending Sept. 30, 2022), website unique visitors increased 69%, total visitors increased 58%, and direct traffic (typing in rbtc.tech) leapt 300%
• Traffic data shows high user flows on key pages: Events, News, and Membership
• A year after the website launch in February 2023, website visits were up 400% year-over-year while search engine traffic jumped 700%

Contact LeadPoint for a Digital Strategy that Works

What sets LeadPoint Digital apart is our commitment to understanding our clients so we can create strategy that drives results. We have decades of experience running digital marketing departments and creating agile strategies for companies of all sizes and in almost any industry. 

We work to ensure you get the most out of your relationships and digital efforts. If you’re ready to optimize your strategy, get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Director of Digital Marketing, Carrie Cousins, in their March 2024 issue.

When it comes to online real estate – your website, social presence, email, and more – where your assets live can make a big difference.  

Renting versus owning your digital home can impact everything from control of your brand and assets to search engine optimization. Just like with real estate, owning your assets provides protection against market fluctuations and the peace of mind that your content is truly yours.  

What is “Renting” an Online Presence? 

When you rent your online presence, you are using someone else’s tools or platform as a home for your brand, content, and information. This topic has gained importance recently as Google announced that all business profiles using the free website option lose those websites on March 1.  

That’s rented real estate and you have no choice but to move – quickly.  

While most of you probably don’t have a free Google website, you may be doing this same thing with other platforms.  

The most common rental is social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others are all valuable places to put business information, but you can’t control the delivery of the content or if the platform will even exist tomorrow. (Yes, a social media channel could shut down and all your content goes with it.) 

Other “rental” solutions include popular website platforms like Squarespace or Wix, where you build a website in a builder that includes your domain registration and hosting. If that platform were to shutter, where would your content be? (The answer is likely nowhere or in the hands of the owner that is most likely going to make major changes to the platform.)

Yes, renting a digital home is easy and somewhat effortless, but you are at the mercy of the provider any time something changes.  

• Your website provider has a rate increase? You have to pay it.  
• Facebook knocks your content out of their algorithm unless you pay for ads? You have to find additional budget to reach the same customers.  
• Your website platform discontinues service? You have to rebuild fast.  

Why “Owning” is a Better Investment 

When you own your online presence, you have access to all of your digital assets that can’t be revoked or taken away by a third party. Elements like your logo variations, photos, and video fall into this category if you store the files using a physical or cloud server. (Plus, a backup is recommended.) 

Other things you can own include your domain name, website, and email list. 

Generally, you know a digital asset is owned because it likely includes an upfront investment of time, setup, and/or money. Just like owning a home, these investments can increase in value over time. (Did you know search engines value domains that have been around a long time?) 

What’s probably most important about owning your digital assets is that you have control to change, move, or transfer digital assets between accounts or even marketing agencies on your own. Any reputable partner will work with you on accounts, ensuring that both parties have access to everything. It’s a red flag if someone won’t give you access to your business account information, such as a domain or website access.    

Rent vs. Own 

Rented assets are quick, cheap, and don’t come with any maintenance. The biggest risks are closure or cost inflation. Use this option for things that don’t generate much revenue for your business or if an ownership option is not available.  

• Rent: Social media, email marketing provider, review sites or maps (such as Google My Business or Yelp), digital advertising platforms, licensed media or tools 

The benefit to owning is that you are building brand and online equity at the same time. You have control of your online presence and assets and can even monetize them. You should own all revenue-driving aspects of your business (such as a website that’s driving leads or sales for your business). 

• Own: Domain, website, media storage, email list, analytics or historical data, your created content (blogs, photos, videos)  

Owning your digital house is a worthwhile investment. Think of it as your company’s dream home, providing long-term value as you grow your business. 

Carrie Cousins is the Director of Digital Marketing at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech. 

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Director of Digital Marketing, Carrie Cousins, in their February 2024 issue.

Are you sabotaging your own emails before they ever hit the first inbox?

While we all send hundreds of emails each week, sending an email as a brand is a lot different than communication with a colleague or friend. Email marketing is a bit of a relationship that you establish with customers and to do it right you need planning, goal setting, and a dash of technical know-how. 

Some of the most common email mistakes can cause even your best customers to delete messages or might even prevent them from getting there at all. Are you making any of these email marketing mistakes?

1. Sending from a Person’s Name

Do your customers know the names of your employees? For most businesses, it is unlikely. That means sending an email from a person, rather than from your business name could render your emails unopened. (It can also lead to tricky situations every time an employee leaves the company.)

Here’s why this is a problem: Most spam emails are sent from a person’s name (often unknown to the person who gets the email). By sending from your business name, you’ll establish brand recognition and credibility, leading to more potential opens. 

• Use a generic address for your business, such as info@ or hello@
• Send from your business domain, such as leadpointdigital.com
• Include your business name in the “from” field, such as LeadPoint Digital

2. Using too Many Spammy Words

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Email deliverability is greatly impacted by “spammy” words, odd characters, or unusual fonts; almost ensuring your emails go straight to spam filters. 

Start your email with a subject line that’s between 30 and 50 characters and provides direct value for your target audience. 

3. Writing Longform Content

Last time you opened a long email, did you read it? (Or did you roll your eyes and move on?)

Email is not the proper place to share longform content, and it can impact whether the email is even delivered. The ideal file size of an HTML email is 20 to 102 KB. (Text and media contribute.) 

The best way to reduce the overall weight of your emails? Edit that content! An email should have a direct goal, giving the recipient one thing to do, such as clicking a link to learn more about something or buy a product on your website. 

4. Neglecting to Set SPF/DKIM Records

Even if your email content is perfect, it might still need some help to ensure delivery. Every business sending email needs to set SPF and DKIM records. (This may require technical assistance.)

SPF authenticates the sender to ensure that only authorized servers can send emails from your domain. DKIM is used to verify messages haven’t been tampered with in transit. Together, they show that your business is a trustworthy email sender, helping messages bypass spam filters. 

5. Not Using a Schedule 

We are all creatures of habit; therefore, planning an email schedule will help customers know when and what to expect from you, increasing deliverability and open rates. But it’s a bit of magic – send too frequently and your messages won’t have value; send too sporadically and subscribers might ignore the unexpected messages. 

Just the right frequency depends on your business and goals.

If you are making any of these mistakes, don’t fret. Correct your errors and with any luck, you’ll see a boost in email delivery and open rates.

Carrie Cousins is the Director of Digital Marketing at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech. 

As of January 2024, there were an estimated 5.04 billion active user identities on social media. Roughly 66% of all people are online and over half the world is on social media, which means that businesses large and small are there too. Connecting directly with customers has never been more accessible and yet at the same time complex!

Content marketing represents both a huge opportunity and challenge for businesses to elevate their brand and connect with potential customers. At LeadPoint Digital, we’re here to help you cut through the noise and get results with our top 5 content marketing best practices.

5 Content Marketing Best Practices to Implement This Year

Social media changes at a breakneck speed and it’s tempting to take a scattershot approach to your content strategy. Rather than haphazardly chasing the next viral trend, the best way to create sustainable, results-oriented content marketing is through planning, user experience, and a healthy dose of data.

1. Create a Strategy 

The first step in any marketing, regardless of the channels, is a solid strategy. To make a content strategy that works for you, get very clear about the goals. How often will you post and where will you publish? What sort of content makes sense for your business? 

Next, clarify how your strategy will support your business goals. Maybe you want your efforts to drive traffic to your website, or generate more leads. Putting these needs down on paper will shape your approach in a way that makes sense for your business.

2. Understand Your Audience

Now that you understand how your content makes sense for you, it’s time to figure out how to connect with your customers. Take some time to put yourself in your customers shoes. Who are they and where do they hang out? What kind of media do they consume, and most importantly what pain points do they have that you’re positioned to address?

Next, it’s time to create a consistent voice for your company that connects. Choose a tone of voice that addresses their needs and reflects your brand personality and then stick with it.

3. Assess Your Existing Content

It’s likely that you’ve been at the content marketing game for a while and it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If something’s working, incorporate into your strategy! One way to assess this is with a simple audit.

List all the channels you’re using like Facebook, YouTube, or email and then take stock of what’s successful and what’s not. The best barometer of success is analytics (more on that later) but you can also get a sense of what connects with your community through engagement. Be sure to note where people are people clicking and commenting the most and what posts did better than others.

4. Create Content that Adds Value

Creating content takes time, energy, and resources so the last thing you want to do is add to the noise. Instead, give your users valuable content. People tend to use the internet to do one of four things: know, go, do, or be entertained. Use insights you developed about your customers to determine why they show up on your channels. 

This information can also be helpful in determining what format will be most effective. For example, if you’re talking to a primarily “know” crowd, then whitepapers, email newsletters, and informational posts might be valuable to your strategy. By contrast, a “go” crowd might want fast information about events, promotions, and locations.

5. Use Analytics to Measure Performance

When it comes to determining the success of your content marketing, data is key. Nearly all content platforms offer analytics that will give you critical information about how your content is performing. Analytics allow you to measure everything from post views to email open rates and more. 

Now it’s time to circle back to your goals. Having hard numbers on hand will make it easy to see if your investment in content marketing is paying off. You can use this information to adjust and optimize your strategy so it only gets stronger over time. 

Get An Expert Content Marketing Strategy with LeadPoint Digital

One of the fastest ways to get a return on your content marketing strategy is to work with a team of experts. At LeadPoint Digital, we’ve honed our approach to digital marketing so it stands the test of time and drives results for our clients. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you make the most of your content marketing, get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.

You lock eyes from across the room and the connection is immediate. You’re intrigued and want to know more. It’s a tale as old as time and it might surprise you to learn that the plot applies marketing as much as it does to romance. 

Dating and marketing have a lot in common. They’re both aimed at building trust and establishing positive relationships. Whether someone is swiping right to find a soulmate or Googling the perfect smartphone case, the process from introduction to commitment is pretty similar.  

Parallels Between Marketing and Dating

As a business owner, you want to woo your ideal customer. Just like it’s uncommon to get married after a single date, it’s rare that customers make a purchase after their initial exposure to your product or service. Instead, they tend to follow a 5-step decision making process that parallels a great love story. 

1. Awareness: The Meet Cute 

Every great relationship starts with the introductions. Think of your favorite Romcom: the plucky protagonist crashes into a handsome stranger and the rest is history. The same is true of your business and potential customers. Making an introduction is the crucial first step. 

One of the best ways to meet customers is by getting found on Google. With a strong SEO strategy, your business can rocket to the top of the search results making it easy to introduce yourself to customers. 

2. Consideration: The Coffee Date

The next stage in dating and marketing is consideration. Here’s where you want to put your best foot forward but don’t come on too strong. It’s like the classic coffee date. One great way to make a strong first impression is with a beautiful and functional website that’s crafted with your customer in mind. Tell a clear story about your business and you’ll attract compatible customers who are interested in what you offer. 

3. Intent: Define the Relationship

Sometimes a relationship can be full of possibility but it flounders because the two halves want different things. Avoid that problem in your marketing by understanding intent. Intent lets you know what your customer wants, which can typically be broken down into four categories: know, go, do, or entertain. If your customer is seeking information, but you provide entertainment, then your relationship will break down. A strong digital marketing strategy will take the time to research intent and deliver messaging that aligns with the customer’s needs.

4. Purchase: Put a Ring on It

As a business owner, you know your product or service solves a problem for people. After you’ve built awareness, cultivated consideration, understood intent, the last step is promoting a purchase. It’s a lot like getting down on one knee and popping the question.

At this stage, you’ll understand what your customer needs, and provide timely information and incentives. This can look like well-crafted Google ads, elegant email marketing, or compelling social media strategy. When done well, your digital marketing strategy has built trust with your customer so they feel confident in committing to you.

5. Re-Purchase: 1^st Anniversary Dinner

It’s hard to resist a love story that ends happily ever after. But unlike fairytales, the marketing story doesn’t stop there. Healthy long-term relationships take careful tending. In the loyalty stage of the buying cycle, customers not only re-purchase your product, but they advocate for you, sending others your way. Developing a thoughtful engagement plan as part of your digital marketing strategy will help you celebrate many happy anniversaries with your customers.

Call LeadPoint for the Beginning of a Beautiful Relationship

LeadPoint Digital is a digital marketing agency that treasures our relationships with marketing departments, businesses, and organizations large and small. We specialize in search engine optimization and advertising, content marketing, and website design. 

We leverage our deep understanding of online behavior to drive results for our clients. Contact us if you want help building relationship-oriented marketing strategy that converts.