Content Marketing
In recent years, content marketing has become an enormously popular form of online marketing. A recent study conducted by Emerce shows that 79% of B2B marketers focus on content marketing.
The goal of content marketing is to guide the (potential) customer to the next phase in the customer journey. You do this by offering and distributing content that answers the questions of the target audience.
Now that many marketers are focusing on content, you need to ensure that your content stands far above that of your competitors. Due to the content overload, we need to use clever tricks and skills to get the attention of the target audience. And that’s exactly where the intersection with Growth Hacking lies.
Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is a form of online marketing. The term growth hacking was coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis. Compared to classical forms of marketing, growth hacking is based on assumptions that need to be tested to show what works and what doesn’t. In classical forms of marketing, data is first collected, then this data is analyzed. From this analysis comes a theory that explains the results.
Growth hacking is a continuous process of optimizing marketing and products or services with the aim of growing the company. Rapid and innovative experiments follow each other to collect valuable data as quickly as possible to grow the business. Examples of some well-known and successful growth hacks:
Hotmail
In 1996, Hotmail launched its service. A period when many people still thought the internet was something temporary that would pass. Additionally, people mostly used Outlook; Hotmail as a web-based free email service was quite revolutionary at that time. In the first weeks after the launch, Hotmail discovered that 80% of new sign-ups came through a friend’s recommendation. This led one of the investors to the idea of adding a small message under each email. This hack led to 12 million users within 18 months, which was 20% of email users at that time!
Dropbox
Dropbox grew thanks to their referral program. In 2010, Dropbox started giving away 16GB of extra storage space. As a user, all you had to do was invite an acquaintance. In 15 months, Dropbox grew from 100,000 members to more than 4 million members!
The examples outlined earlier were groundbreaking hacks that had a big impact on the company’s growth. These hacks have since been copied by many companies. However, in practice, growth hacking often consists of small advances that quickly follow each other through rapid experimentation.
Content Hacking
When we combine content marketing with growth hacking, we also speak of content hacking. We bring the growth hacker’s mindset into the content strategy.
Content hacking is a process of finding and analyzing successful content and using this as input for your own content. Is it all still a bit obscure? I’ll take you through a concrete step-by-step plan.
1. Determine the Topic
Determine the topic for which you’re going to create content. Then research whether the target audience is interested in the topic. We look at different ways to investigate this.
Keyword Research
You do keyword research when you have an SEO goal with the content. From keyword research, you can conclude whether there is a search intent about the topic and the related relevant questions; in other words, is there a need for this information among the target audience?
For many marketers, research ends after keyword analysis. However, companies operating in a niche will never be able to extract the necessary information from keyword research; monthly searches for their products are usually negligible. Never let keyword research be decisive when it comes to producing content. For companies that do not operate in a niche and can convert relevant search queries into topics for content; consider it an additional source of information. There are many more possibilities to discover what’s happening with your target audience.
Be among the target audience
The target audience is looking for answers online and leaves their digital footprints behind. If you make sure you’re in the places where the target audience is also present, you’ll find a source of information there. Some examples of places you can consider are:
- Facebook and LinkedIn groups
On social media, you can see in groups (where your target audience is) what discussions are ongoing and what questions are being asked. You can also ask a question or create a poll to find out what information needs the target audience has.
For example, I recently made a call in a LinkedIn Group for input for this blog.
- Forums
These pages are visited by people who like to talk about a specific topic or have a question about it.
- Online support page or customer service
The most valuable information about the questions the target audience has comes in through customer service or online support. A source of information that you can certainly use for your content input.
2. Write 10x content
The principle of ’10x content’ is to write content that is ten times better than the current content written about the topic.
We start with research on the current content that’s written about the subject.
Type the topic into Google. Analyze the results on the first page. How many words are the articles? What topics do they all address in the blog? How readable is the article?
Tip: During your analysis, write down what you like about the articles you’re analyzing. You can use this as input for your own content.
Tool: Buzzsumo
With Buzzsumo you can find out which articles on a certain topic have generated a lot of engagement on social media and which have received many backlinks from other websites. What I personally find a big disadvantage of Buzzsumo is that LinkedIn is not included in this.
Analyze the articles that have generated the most engagement. What’s so good about these articles? Take this into account when writing your article. And especially; where are the opportunities to write ’10x content’.
Now that you’ve analyzed the articles that score best in Google and generate the most engagement on social media, it’s time to start writing!
3. A/B testing
After you’ve written the content, it’s time for the A/B test. Earlier, you already researched which articles ranked high in Google and which articles generated a lot of engagement on social media or received many backlinks.
- Can you discover patterns in this?
For example: The articles that generated a lot of engagement contained a lot of visual material
- Estimate the success by using this pattern
For example: Articles that generate the most engagement contain a lot of visual material
- Come up with a theory behind these patterns
For example: The target audience prefers articles that are supported with a lot of visual material
- Set up an A/B test for this.
A good tool for this is Google Optimize. In an earlier blog about A/B testing we already showed how this works exactly.
- Analyze the results of the A/B test. Use the winning version as the basis for the article. From this point, you can possibly test other findings from your research and start again with a hypothesis based on the patterns.
4. Analyze
As I mentioned earlier in this blog, data is an important part of Growth hacking. It’s about continuously learning from the results and becoming a bit ‘smarter’ in achieving growth. Tools that we frequently use for analysis are Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Hotjar.
Content hacks
Finally, I’ll share with you a number of hacks that we regularly use at Contany.
1. Test Titles with A/B Testing
Write down multiple titles you can think of. Choose the two best ones and test them with an A/B test. It may sound obvious, but the title is the most important part of the content.
2. Ensure the Content is Shareable
We all want the content to be shared to increase its reach. How easy is it for readers to share the content? Make sure the share buttons are in the right place. You can test this with an A/B test if needed. Also, don’t use too many buttons, as this leads to choice paralysis. Limit yourself to the most relevant platforms.
Tip: Look beyond the standard share buttons like Facebook and LinkedIn. We prefer not to share publicly. Consider share buttons for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Slack.
3. Collect Inbound Links by Rewriting Content
Are you looking for inbound links? Have you considered this tactic before?
- Type a topic into Google
- Run the results through the MOZ link explorer tool to see how many backlinks the articles have and which websites are linking to the article
- Rewrite the content with the ’10x content’ mindset
- Contact the websites that link to the articles that scored highest in Google. Mention that you have an updated version that delves deeper into the topic.
4. Create a Video from the Content
Videos are a popular form of content. Have you written a good article? Then make a short video to go with it. A useful tool for this is Lumen5.
Video player