How To Make Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy More Successful

To help your health and wellness brand succeed, you’ve got to know how to cut through the noise online. This means you’ve got to know what makes your ideal clients/patients/customers tick. But knowing what makes them tick and letting them know you get them requires you to craft messages that speak directly to them instead of at them. By tapping into their deepest needs and sparking ‘aha’ moments, you can build connections one piece of content at a time. And this is where a killer digital content marketing strategy comes into play because it helps you create and manage the content you need.

Before you pen a single word or brainstorm your next content calendar, you must put yourself into the shoes of your audience. I know you probably serve a diverse group, so you may want to think of it as a series of subsets, each of which has its unique challenges, goals, and desires.

So, you’ll eventually need to understand several different personas (aka ideal client profiles, target market segment, target market profile, etc.), but it all begins with one. Just focus on one to begin with, and then, after you’ve mastered connecting with the first one, you can move on to the others.

In other words, you might find that you’ll need to go through this process multiple times to cover the main subsets of the diverse group you serve.

Identifying Your Buyer Persona

Think of crafting your buyer persona as detective work where you’re piecing together a profile that brings your ideal customer to life. Here’s how to find your clues:

• Engage Directly with Surveys and Interviews

  Imagine sitting down for coffee with your customers. What would you ask them? You’ll want to frame your surveys and interviews to uncover the obvious things —like their age or profession—and the not-so-obvious—like their desires, fears, and daily challenges. The goal? To get a vivid picture of what drives them day in and day out.

• Leverage Social Media Analytics

  Social platforms are like ongoing parties buzzing with conversations. Tools like Facebook Insights let you eavesdrop (ethically, of course!) on what interests your followers, what they talk about, and how they interact with different types of content. You can then use this data to add color and depth to your persona, capturing their real-time interests and behaviors.

• Analyze Website and Email Engagement

  Your website and emails are treasure troves of data. By using Google Analytics or your email platform’s analytics, you can see which topics keep your visitors glued to the page and which emails they open and act on. This behavior tells a story of what matters most to them.

• Craft Detailed Persona Profiles

  Now, take all this rich information and sketch out your personas. Ideally, you’ll name each persona, so they feel more like a real person complete with a name, picture, preferences, and quirks. This person has specific needs that your content can meet.

• Iterate and Evolve

  Just like people, personas change over time. Regularly update your personas with new data and insights to keep your content strategy sharp and relevant. Imagine your personas growing along with your business, adapting to new trends and changing preferences.

Conducting Keyword Research to Uncover Needs

Think of keyword research as the guide that helps you discover your audience’s true needs and desires – the ones they’d never say out loud, but have no trouble telling Google, or Siri, or Alexa about them. Here are some basics of keyword research:

• Select a Keyword Tool

  The first step is to choose your keyword tool. Three popular ones are Google Keyword Planner (part of Google Ads), SEMRush (my favorite), or Ahrefs (another great option). Imagine each keyword as a clue that reveals a piece of the puzzle about what your audience is really searching for. You’ll want to be on the lookout for trends and patterns that give you insight into their interests and needs.
  
  What I find fascinating is that every one of my SEO clients is surprised by what the keyword tools tell them. Each of them thinks their clients are looking for one thing, but every single time the data shows something entirely different.

• Decode Search Intent

  Each keyword has a story to tell. Is your audience looking to learn something (“how to meditate”), or are they ready to purchase (“buy yoga mats online”)? Understanding this intent is like understanding the language of your customers, helping you to speak directly to their state of mind.

• Map Keywords to the Buyer’s Journey

  After you have your keywords and understand the search intent, you’ll want to arrange them to show the path from awareness to decision. This helps you visualize how to engage your audience at every step.
  
  For example, early-stage keywords might include “what is mindfulness,” while decision-stage keywords could be “best mindfulness apps.”

• Craft Content Themes from Clusters

  Another great way to analyze your keywords is to group them into themes that tell a larger story. For instance, a cluster around “stress relief” could inspire content ranging from blog posts about stress management techniques to reviews of the best anti-stress products.

• Refine Your Buyer Personas

  Now that you know your keywords, revisit your buyer personas. You’ll want to update them to reflect the language your audience uses, their search behaviors, and their evolving needs. This step ensures your personas remain as up-to-date as the market itself.

• Stay Agile and Adapt

  Because the online world is always changing, you’ll want to update your keyword strategy frequently. Just what does frequently mean? I take a peek at keywords and other SEO KPIs (key performance indicators) once a month for my clients. It helps me to ensure their content remains current.

Weaving keyword research into the fabric of your content will help ensure that your marketing efforts will resonate deeply with the needs and desires of your audience.

Aligning Content With Audience Challenges

In order to create content that resonates, you’ll need to speak directly to the heart of your audience’s challenges. Here’s how you can tailor your content to not just meet, but actually overcome, the hurdles your audience faces:

• Identify Common Challenges

  Begin by gathering insights on the common problems and challenges your audience encounters. You can use your experience with the people in your practice, direct feedback from customer surveys, social media interactions, and online forums where your target audience discusses their issues. For instance, if you’re targeting busy professionals interested in wellness, you might find that time management for health activities is a recurring theme.

• Develop Solution-Oriented Content

  Once you’ve pinpointed these challenges, you’ll want to craft content that offers clear, practical solutions. If time management is a hurdle, produce blog posts, videos, and guides on quick health routines, meal prep for busy schedules, or mindfulness exercises that can be done at a desk. Each piece of content should solve a specific problem, making your audience’s life easier and positioning your practice as a helpful ally.

• Use Relatable Examples and Testimonials

  You can make your content come to life with real-life examples and testimonials that show your solutions in action. Sharing stories of how others have successfully navigated similar challenges provides inspiration and makes your content more relatable and trustworthy.

• Interactive and Engaging Formats

  Consider using interactive content formats like quizzes, polls, or interactive infographics that allow your audience to engage directly with the content. For example, create a quiz that helps them identify their biggest wellness challenges and then offer personalized tips or product recommendations based on their results.

• Feedback Loop for Continuous Improvement

  Hearing directly from your community is gold. You can establish a feedback loop by encouraging comments, conducting follow-up surveys, and monitoring how your content performs in terms of engagement and solving user problems. You can then use this data to continuously refine your approach and ensure your content stays relevant and effective over time.

When you focus on actionable content, it will provide your audience with the tools and confidence to overcome the obstacles they face and that you can help them with. This approach not only boosts engagement but also strengthens the relationship between your practice and its audience.

Measuring Engagement and Feedback

To truly understand the impact of your digital content marketing strategy, you must measure how well your content resonates with your audience. Here’s how you can effectively track engagement and gather feedback:

• Set Clear Engagement Metrics

  Define what engagement means for your content. Common metrics include page views, time on page, social shares, comments, and conversion rates. Tailor these metrics to match the specific goals of each piece of content, whether it’s to inform, entertain, or convert.

• Use Analytics Tools

  Some tools you’ll want to look at to track your metrics include Google Analytics, social media insights, and email marketing software. For example, Google Analytics can give you information about bounce rates and session durations on your blog posts to gauge interest and content relevance.

• Gather Qualitative Feedback

  Beyond numbers, qualitative feedback can provide deeper insights into how your content is perceived. You can use surveys, comment sections, and direct customer feedback to gather subjective responses about your content’s usefulness and appeal.
  
  If you choose to use comments, I suggest that you review all comments before you allow them to be posted on your website. There are too many people out there who take advantage of the anonymity being online provides them to get into mischief or to do explicit harm.

• Conduct A/B Testing

  Another Ninja trick for getting the most out of your content is to regularly test different versions to see what best engages your audience. For instance, you can experiment with different headlines or call-to-action placements to determine what increases reader engagement and participation.

• Monitor Social Interactions

  You’ll also want to pay close attention to how your content is discussed and shared on social media platforms. Tools like Hootsuite or BuzzSumo can help you here and give you a clearer picture of its impact.

• Act on Feedback

  However, you need to do something with the data you gather on the social interactions. You’ll want to use it to further refine and optimize your content. If certain topics or styles get more positive feedback, consider focusing more on those areas as you continue refining your digital content marketing strategy.

• Report and Iterate

  If you have a team, you’ll want to regularly review the data and feedback together to make informed decisions about future content strategies. This ongoing process helps adapt your approach to meet evolving audience needs and preferences effectively.

As you can see, it’s important to look at both quantitative and qualitative engagement so you can continue to fine-tune your content and your digital marketing strategy to meet your audience’s needs.

The bottom line is a truly successful digital content marketing strategy is successful because it focuses on connecting with the audience instead of what you have to offer. When you put them first, they’ll put you first when it comes to making a purchase or selecting a service provider.

Are you ready to elevate your digital content marketing strategy and see real results, but you don’t want to do it alone? Reach out to us today, we’re here to help you every step of the way. Let’s make your content work smarter, not harder, and drive your practice forward together.