Seven Unconventional Content Marketing Tips

Have you ever wondered what it truly takes to stand out from the noise and truly win at content marketing? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in a sea of information circulating the web nowadays.

Content marketing is a hot topic and everyone has their own opinion.

If you’re tired of seeing the same content marketing tips and just want practical, yet unconventional tips that you can implement today…

Keep reading for my seven best unconventional content marketing tips that you probably haven’t already read 100 times elsewhere.

…I promise the hours wasted staring at a blank computer screen without a clue are long gone!)

Realize That Not Everyone Is Your Customer

Sometimes this one can be tough to grasp. You have an awesome product (or at least you think it’s the best thing invented since Jif Peanut Butter) and you want everyone to know about it, right?

This is where you fail. In order to successfully market your product with primed and ready buyers, you gotta stop trying to appeal to the masses.

If your product is affordable flights for budget travelers, then your target market will most likely be young people or college students who want to travel affordably.

Would it make sense to try and appeal to older, luxury travel enthusiasts? Not so much.

Your content marketing efforts would therefore have more return by pushing your marketing efforts to the targeted audience, rather than trying to appeal to everyone.

One tip I highly recommend is to create multiple buyer personas among your target audience and market exactly to those personas.

For example, one buyer persona could be as follows:

Sarah is a 21-year-old single college student from a small town in New Jersey, who studies art in New York City. Sarah works part-time in the evenings after her classes and saves up her money to take trips on holidays and breaks from school.

Often times, Sarah bases her travels on where she can find the best deal that fits her budget. Sarah is active on social media and enjoys hanging out at speakeasy bars and art galleries with her friends. Sarah’s buy decisions are primarily budget-based, as well as slightly driven by friends and influencers.

After uncovering the above information, marketers are able to learn a great deal about their target market and customers.

Without this vital information, you’re slowly killing any chances you had at successfully marketing to Sarah.

Given that we know Sarah is primarily budget-focused and tends to spend during school breaks, we would use this intel in our marketing messages targeted to Sarah’s persona.

Based on the information provided in the above example, do you think Sarah cares about high-end flight amenities or business lounge options?

…No! Get savvy and start speaking directly to Sarah in your marketing.

Think Like a Human

Often times, what businesses and entrepreneurs get wrong is knowing everything about their product and nothing about the humans they’re marketing it to.

It’s easy to talk about your product and how great it is all day, but how many damns do you think your audience gives?

Yeah, that’s right… zero.

The key to a winning content marketing strategy is being able to think like a customer human.

What problems does your target audience face?

What are they searching the internet for answers to?

These are the golden nuggets you need to fully capitalize on, my friends.

“Success is not delivering a feature, success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.”

Some easy ways to discover your target audience’s pain points and what keeps them up at night are…

Asking them!

Who knew it could be this easy? Thanks to social media, we’re able to connect directly with our audience and can easily pop questions on them in the form of:

-Social media captions

-Live video

-Story polls

-Q&A

Want to know exactly what’s on their mind? Just ask!

Gather intel

Search sites where your audience hangs out. This could be via relevant Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits, Quora, or niche forum sites.

Find out what your audience is searching for and be there to offer answers and solutions!

Competitor analysis

Part of your competitor analysis should be reading reviews on similar products and offers to yours.

What do customers like and dislike? What features or benefits do they wish your competitor’s product had?

These are all things you should be analyzing and addressing in your own marketing.

If you take away anything from this tip, remember: “sell the problem you solve, not the product.”

Embrace Polarity to Stand Out From the Noise

This tip goes hand-in-hand with the first one in that you shouldn’t be trying to market to everyone.

Polarity is the opposite of neutrality. And guess what? Remaining neutral isn’t going to take your business to the next level.

A neutral stance is boring. There’s no strong voice or message in neutrality.

Would you rather make ten thousand people happy who don’t have a strong loyalty to your brand because it’s just neutral and average…

Or would you rather send powerful messages that resonate strongly with your audience of five thousand who all end up as raving fans?

The benefits to the latter is that fostering a stronger loyalty among your customers means they will do your marketing for you: hello free organic traffic!

Not only that, but these fans and followers will be the ones to stay up all night awaiting your next launch, not the ones you merely pleased with your BS neutral stance.

The Colin Kaepernick NFL scandal back in 2016 is a prime example of polarity that sparked major controversy across the U.S…

Remember in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, sat during the national anthem?

In case you missed it, it was during a preseason game as a protest against racial injustice and police violence against people of color in the United States…

Kaepernick was taking a stand for what he believes in. His actions were the total opposite of remaining neutral…

Remember what I said about embracing polarity and attracting a loyal audience?

The aftermath…

Kaepernick’s polarity landed him a multi-million endorsement with Nike under the tag-line, “believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”

While fury and rage were most definitely a byproduct of opposing Nike fans, the end result was a widely successful campaign…

Plus an increase in sales and shares for Nike and a stronger than ever fan base.

Get in the Feels of Your Target Market

Haven’t you heard the saying, “you sell on emotion, but justify a purchase with logic”? In other words, people don’t buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons.

As much as we as humans like to think we make sound logical decisions when purchasing, it simply isn’t true…. all the time.

As marketers, we should be aiming to get in the feels of our audience, whether it’s by provoking happiness, excitement, love, acceptance, empathy, or even anger to solicit a response.

You know how that recent political scandal that angers everyone reading is trending across social media and gaining the most shares?

That’s emotional marketing at its finest. After all, content provoking an angered response is linked to virality and increased views.

So how can you effectively get in your audience’s feels without just pissing everyone off without an ROI?

Know your audience

First things first, you need to know your audience. This goes back to the previous tips and as you can see, they come full-circle.

Without having done an in-depth target market analysis and creating buyer personas, you’re not going to know which emotions to strategically target in your audience.

Embrace Storytelling

You can never go wrong with a storytelling approach, no matter which emotion you’re targeting. Storytelling is proven to be highly effective at building stronger bonds and a sense of trust with your audience.

Whether it’s sharing the story of how your company was founded and obstacles you faced in the process or sharing customer stories and how your product or service makes them feel, you’re sure to be a step ahead in winning the content marketing game.

Start a movement

Companies like TOMS and Adidas are no strangers to the idea of starting a social movement and getting fans to jump on the bandwagon in the spirit of doing good for the world and society.

Starting a movement creates a sense of community and belongingness and can foster greater brand loyalty.

Consider starting a movement or community, especially if your target audience happens to be Millennials or Gen Z’ers.

Remember That Without Strategy, Content Is Just Stuff

Is there a strategy behind your content or are you aimlessly publishing content for the sake of #content?

Remember that without a strategy, content is just stuff… and the world has enough stuff.

So what is content strategy? In a nutshell, content strategy is the development, planning, and management of your content and how it all comes together to serve a cohesive purpose.

In other words, content strategy boils down to the brand’s vision, current and future goals, target market analysis, tone/style, and an editorial calendar to achieve said goals.

Notice that I mentioned goals… It’s crucial to establish set goals (or KPIs) for your content and what each piece is meant to achieve.

These goals could be things like…

• Increase SEO ranking for a certain keyword by the end of Q1
• Gain 1,000 new subscribers to your email list by the end of the month (with an incorporated CTA in each piece of content)
• Grow brand awareness by 200% across Facebook and Instagram by the end of Q1
• Drive traffic to a landing page for a new event launch

As you can see, each of the goals varies greatly and generally involves collaboration across various teams to achieve said goals — such an SEO expert, PPC Guru, and/or Growth Marketer.

If you’re not setting actionable goals for your content marketing, I hate to break it to ya, but you’re wasting time and resources. Let’s get strategic!

Repurpose Content

As a content marketer, I’m in favor of working smarter, not harder. The secret word of content marketing is: REPURPOSE.

What I mean is…

You should be repurposing all of your content. Maybe you start with a podcast episode, which you should also be filming so you can create clips for YouTube and social media, then you can have the entire episode transcribed into a long-form blog post to which you can create content for 20+ social media posts, stories, and more.

Get where I’m going with this…?

Repurposing is the name of the game and not only is it making the most efficient use of your content, but it also allows you to get seen on more platforms.

(Don’t forget about Medium, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc…)

Content is the reason search began in the first place…

At the end of the day, we as content marketers must remember that content is the reason search began in the first place.

Remember These Key Points:

• Know your target audience
• Think like a human
• Stand out from the noise
• Hit your target audience in their feels
• Have a strategy
• Repurpose content

If you utilize these seven unconventional content marketing tips, I promise you’ll be winning the content game in no time. Got some additional tips or any questions about content strategy? Share them below so we can all crush it together!