Five tips to maximise content ROI for every industry

An effective content marketing strategy needs to be customised to the demands of each industry. Here are five tips to increase your ROI.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach in content marketing, especially when it involves different industries. Content creation and distribution depends on the particular audience for each occasion, and that’s why each industry has its own “rules” to follow.

TFM and BuzzSumo have conducted a research based on the analysis of 150,000 articles, trying to get a better understanding of what makes an effective content strategy in ten different industries.

“The Science of Content” led to many interesting insights, and here are the best tips to consider.

Chasing viral content

It’s common for businesses to invest in content marketing hoping that their content will go viral, but as BuzzSumo and TFM confirmed, this is rare and it only occurs in a small number of posts for every industry.

Instead of chasing big viral hits, it may be more effective to focus on the right tips that will boost all your content efforts.

Pick the right social networks

Facebook is the most popular choice for most of the industries, with its domination changing from one industry to another.

For example, automotive companies rely almost exclusively on Facebook (97.6% of their social efforts), while the figure for the marketing industry in general is 25.4%.

Moreover, fashion companies enjoy using Pinterest (24.9%), finding it more appropriate for their content and their audience. Twitter seems to be very popular for consumer electronics (33.7%) and LinkedIn is the network of choice for many pharmaceutical companies (43.1%).

These results serve as a great reminder for every business to be aware of its audience before heading to a social platform to ensure that its content efforts can be effective. B2B companies seem to make a perfect fit for LinkedIn, while Pinterest seems to be used more by B2C companies.

However, it doesn’t mean that a fashion company cannot find success on LinkedIn, or that an automotive company cannot go beyond Facebook. Experimentation may lead to surprisingly impressive results.

Decide on the ideal length of content

There isn’t a general agreement on the ideal length of content among all industries, as it depends on each company’s needs and goals when creating a new piece of content.

Most industries seem to prefer longer posts, reaching up to 10,000 words, although the automotive industry for example has a preference over shorter posts of up to 1000 words.

Charity and fashion sites also seem to pick shorter posts, mostly going up to 2000 words, as they may also rely on visual content to support their content marketing strategy.

Find the right types of content

Every industry finds success with different types of content, ranging from instructional “how-to” posts and lists, to infographics and video content.

List posts work well in automotive, consumer electronics and fashion sites, with the last ones finding great success on Pinterest.

Video content works impressively well for news media (especially after the rise of native Facebook videos), while the automotive industry does not find it particularly useful on its content efforts.

How-to posts are dominant in the financial advice industry, while infographics seem to be highly appreciated by the marketing industry.

It’s interesting to examine all the types of content that each industry uses, as it provides an overview of how each company may find success with content marketing for a particular industry.

However, as with the decision of which social networks to use, there’s no need to fall into the trap of following the well paved path in your industry, as it may not lead to the desired results.

The power of an effective headline

A headline offers the first impression for your content and it determines whether your content will be read by a larger audience. It has to be short, clear, relevant, appealing, and even the use of words may affect the clicks to your content.

 According to “The Science of Content”, these are some of the most popular words in the headlines for every industry:

• Marketing: “how to use”, “need to know”, “how to create”, “ways to use”
• Travel: “photo of”, “things to do”, “best places to”, “where to eat”
• Automotive: “the new”, “the best”, “Aston Martin”, “Telsa”, “Porsche”
• Financial advice: “how to”,”small businesses”, “discount codes”, “voucher codes”
• News: “Donald Trump”, “Hilary Clinton”, “Bernie Sanders”, “Brexit”, “European referendum”
• Charity: no pattern in commonly used words, although the most shared content included the name of the charity in the title
• Consumer electronics: “how to”, “need to know”, “iPhone 7”, “Galaxy S7”
• Pharmaceutical: “services”, “patient”, “FDA approves”, “cancer drug”
• IT: “you need to know”, “big data”, “open source”, “machine learning”, “Windows 10”
• Fashion: “New York”, “must have”, “spring summer”, “celebrities”, “outfit”, “Instagram”

What’s the best day of the week to publish your content?

Weekdays seem to be preferred by all industries for content publishing and distribution, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday being the most productive ones for everyone.

However, there is also a content opportunity during the weekend, as there’s less competition and more chances to be noticed.

Takeaway

A content marketing strategy should closely monitor the trends of the industry it is focusing on, along with the specific target audience.

Each one of the tips above focused on a different parameter that affects the success of a content plan and when they are all taken into consideration, they may lead to great results.

There’s no need to imitate the trends of your target industry though, as it’s always a good idea to try out new ideas, until you find the perfect fit that gets your content noticed while reaching all the set goals.

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