Content marketing is one of the main tactics every brand and business uses, making it no exception to the translation industry. And with very good reason, as the graph below indicates:
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Evidently, content marketing is one of the most fruitful ways to attract new leads and urge prospects further down the sales funnel by creating blog posts, social media posts, video content, etc.
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However, while content marketing can drive brilliant results, there are some necessary steps that all marketers from all industries need to follow if they want their endeavor to succeed.
Let’s see what they are.
Content Marketing: A Definition
I can’t go further before giving an exact definition for the term “content marketing”.
Content marketing consists of marketing actions that revolve around various types of content created in a timely and relevant manner that will get more leads, sales, and allow brands to reach their goals.
The types of content mentioned above can be anything from blog articles and email marketing content to infographics, social media posts, or ebooks.
In that sense, content marketing aims to get more traffic to a website, generate more leads, and allow marketers to distinguish between qualified and non-qualified leads.
But that is not all, as great content helps brands establish their brand name as authorities in their niche and build a community that will be engaged and interested right off the bat.
To manage that last thing, though, you will need to study very hard.
A Buyer’s Persona and A User’s Intent
Creating content shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all, seeing as you need to have a firm understanding of who your ideal audience and customer is.
Right at this step, you’ll need to take a good look into your data and see what you can do when it comes to creating your buyer persona. So, study your audience and figure out their demographics.
You need to know their location, the best age range for your target audience, their educational level, etc. and, of course, why they’d pick a product like yours – in our case, translations.
By taking a look at your data and investing in some AI technology, your data scientists will be able to distinguish patterns in your prospects’ behaviors that will create micro-segments. Those micro-segments will determine your customer personas.
Customer personas will help you unravel your customer’s intent. In other words, what is it that makes your product more useful than the rest? Why does it make a difference in their lives?
Apart from your data, creating a questionnaire to understand your prospects’ intent and how translations are a part of their business would be a great place to start.
Take note of the way they interact with your already existing content and your competitors’ content. What keywords attract their attention? What kind of posts do they like to see?
Now, let’s talk a little about a user’s intent. When you’re searching for keywords, you need to “translate” keywords to meaning. In other words, understand why prospects are looking for those. Why, out of those prospects, a specific amount is clicking on them.
This type of understanding is what will lead more people to your website. So long as you include it in your content, of course.
Your Content
What do your customers enjoy? Why do they need translation services? And mostly, how do they go about searching for those services?
If, for example, your prospects care about online essay writing services, this would be where you need to focus. If they’re looking for “English to Spanish translators in Brooklyn, NY”, this is the keyword you need to create content around.
Keywords will give you topics on your blog posts, while blog posts – and your website, of course – will provide you with enough material to base your landing pages and social media posts around.
Optimize for SEO
Before I continue with how different types of content can get you leads and, in the end, more sales, conversion, and increased customer loyalty, I need to tell you the basics of how the translation industry needs content that search engines will love.
This is where SEO comes into play. Creating content that search engines will notice is the best way to get more people to your website. It’s also the most cost-efficient way, as it is free.
Use online tools to help you understand and optimize posts for the keywords your prospects use, as I mentioned before. The best keywords are the long-tail keywords – notice the “English to Spanish translators in Brooklyn, NY” above? – because this is precisely the keyword that interests your prospects.
Use popular keywords with a high search volume but low competition for your posts to rank quickly. And don’t forget to use your main keyword in your post’s title, through your post’s body copy, and in your meta description. This will make things easier for both search engines and your prospects, as they’ll know what your post is about right off the bat.
Also, don’t forget to research keyword variants. Repeating just the one keyword paves the way for a dull post that prospects won’t enjoy. Use your tools to find variations that prospects are actually searching for and “sprinkle” on your posts.
Content That Generates Leads
If content marketing were only about posts, then it wouldn’t have worked, no matter how hard a marketer tried.
And there is no better way to know it’s working than seeing more leads coming into your translation business, getting to know your work, and interacting with you. But how is this going to happen?
You will need lead generation tools, such as landing pages, subscription forms, and lead magnets.
Let me give you some definitions first:
- A landing page is a standalone web page that a prospect “lands” on by clicking on a search result, marketing email, or ad.
- A subscription form is located anywhere on a web page and asks users to enter their data to receive promotional emails or newsletters.
Both lead-gen tools aim to do the same thing, and that would be to capture the email of a prospect after they’ve potentially offered something in exchange, called a “lead magnet”.
The lead magnet is something people will expect in exchange for their email addresses. It can be anything. From an ebook and a template to a free translation – since we’re talking about content in the translation industry – as a sample of your work.
Again, use SEO tools to find the right keywords and make sure that your prospects will bump into your landing page or your website and subscription form.
Is the prospect now looking at your content? Great, now you need to show them exactly what they need to do to take the path that you want them to take.
Create a body copy that will be attractive, fun to read, show your product’s benefit clearly, and contain your desired keyword and a clear and actionable CTA. Of course, both the headline and body copy and the CTA copy need to work with each other and complete each other. And yes, you need all three.
Now, let’s assume that you’ve created your content and have captured the email of as many leads as you would’ve liked. What could you do next?
Content Distribution
Your efforts in making content such as blog posts, videos, infographics, explainer videos, posts on social media, even interactive elements like games will all be in vain if there is no channel where you can distribute them.
So, first of all, you need to create social media profiles that will resonate with your audience and will help you attract more people and then take all steps necessary. Facebook remarketing ads, for example, can prove to be a goldmine, helping your posts perform way better than they would on a simple Facebook business page.
Sharing your posts on your translation business’s Facebook page will be helpful as well. Urge your audience to share your post with their followers and ask for feedback or a general question that will warrant a response and engagement.
The more the engagement, the better the algorithm reacts, and this goes for all social media platforms.
Now, if one of your posts performs well, you can always repurpose it and have more content to distribute to your social media platforms.
Let’s assume that you created a blog post that seemed to be exciting but not quite. Why not make an infographic out of it? Infographics perform wonderfully, especially when posted on social media:
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Posting repurposed content on other platforms can also be great for your translation business. Consider publishing a post on Medium or writing an article for LinkedIn and linking it back to a relevant post. Here’s why:
Getting a high-quality backlink isn’t easy. This is just a way to speed up the process, have more people organically visit your website and read your content, and spend more time on your page.
The above will result in search engines considering you a valuable source and growing awareness and establishing your authority in the translations niche.
But when it comes to content distribution, I saved the best for last:
Email marketing is the channel that can do more than social media with less cost and a bigger – and measurable – ROI.
Once you find an email service and manage to grow your email list significantly, create marketing emails to send out to your prospects.
Those emails can be newsletters containing your newest posts or emails that will be informing your prospects of a new offer or benefit since they signed up for your translation services.
An email differs from a social media post in one critical aspect: it’s not “unsolicited”, in the sense that when a prospect is giving up their email address, they know very well what to expect.
A marketing email is a knock on someone’s door, and if you create one that is valuable and actionable, it’s going to be a successful knock.
Apart from creating email content that will be valuable and actionable, make sure to be consistent as well: Prospects need to be expecting you. That way, they’ll be trained on when and why your emails arrive and their purpose, and you will have an obvious schedule on when to post.
Pro tip: Make sure to urge your prospects to some action when reading your email and offer a small something for this action. For example, you can encourage prospects to share your email with their loved ones and spread the word around.
Create a unique promo code for those prospects and reward them each time one of their contacts signs up to your platform.
All in all, your email list is one of the most important tools because your prospects didn’t find you due to chance, and they won’t see your posts if the algorithm favors them.
Your email list is your personal point of contact with your prospect and you need to use it to the best of your abilities.
The Takeaway
Content marketing can help all industries, including the translation industry, provided you create useful and informative content.
Spend as much time as you need to promote it across all channels necessary and optimize for long-tail keywords. That way, you’ll see your traffic skyrocket and your conversion reach the desired standards.