Content targeting: 5 tips you need to know

Content Marketing 

The perception of digital marketing has seen a sea change in the last one decade. Few years back, digital content was perceived to be anyone's game. You wrote something and published letting the Internet decide if it was worthwhile. If you hit the quality benchmark of good content, the ranking will automatically rise to the top.

But in current times, the digital marketing space is too crowded with too many players competing against each other. Every form of content is battling for grabbing viewer's attention (which is too short lived). The old forms of building a set of clientele (by creating relationships with other sites, syndicating, link sharing and using cost-effective social media promotion) may not prove helpful now. Say if you have identified a topic which has been largely covered, such as finance, beauty, and so on, you have a rough road ahead.

So does that imply there's no point in even giving it a shot and companies can pack up their content departments in the fear of facing defeat? Not really!

The need of the hour is to act smart about a concept that's gaining a lot of momentum: amplification.
It is one way of getting content within eyeball range of your desired audience. The new generation of amplification is all about using better tools that can dig deep into solving the two most complex questions for success with content marketing:

1) Who is the audience I am targeting with this post
AND
2) How do I connect with them? 

Lets have a look at the types of targeting at your disposal.

Till recently Facebook and LinkedIn both used to offer substantial organic reach, but now these social networks charge brands and users for organic reach while ramping up their content targeting offerings.

Paid distribution is arguably the most effective way to use both social networks.

The targeting ranges in price and it depend on information that users provide in their profiles. It is advisable to figure out where to allocate your amplification dollars and do some thorough analysis. For instance, if you are looking to connect with CMOs, then LinkedIn is probably the best choice.

Retargeting
This focuses on targeting those people who've already visited your website and/or interacted with your content in the past. It keeps their identity, then segments them by demographic info (such as household income, and so on) and targets them with a sequence of additional information.

The idea is to keep people inside the orbit who have already expressed interest. Here the limitation is that you're only targeting a selected group and not masses.

Going deeper
To get a deeper penetration, tools such as Storylift (http://www.storylift.com/), can craft surveys to your demographic target that point to whether or not A or B person will be more likely to use your services. After you have narrowed down those people, and targeted your content to them (usually through a Facebook post) your cost per lead drops dramatically.

So are you prepared to spend on these tools? Cost for each tool varies depending on volume, targeting level, and many such factors. Picking the right tool that will give you exactly what you are looking for and keep your cost-per-lead optimized. So how do you pick? Coordinating and working with a skilled content strategy team will help you figure out which tools are worth your time and money.

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