The Top 12 Content Marketing Tips for Print on Demand in 2024
Every single print-on-demand store can benefit by implementing a few simple content marketing tips.
Digital marketing is fuelled by content that sells. Create content with value for your customers and promote your business without coming across as pushy.
With eCommerce sales predicted to reach never seen before heights in 2022, here are a few pointers on how a bit of strategy can keep your store one step ahead of the competition.
What is Content Marketing?
In short, it’s creating and sharing content designed to boost sales. There is a whole range of channels available, such as blogs, social media, articles, websites, apps, video marketing, podcasts, and many more that can fit your store.
On the surface, content marketing efforts don’t explicitly promote your store. The overall goal is to drive traffic and generate sales. No one knows your customers better than you do and this is the perfect opportunity to offer something of value they will connect with.
Thinking of getting started with content marketing? Here are three questions to start you off:
- How will you get content in front of your potential customers?
- Why are they drawn to your content?
- What is the goal of your creative new content?
Make It Happen Today!
Proper Branding Develops Connections with Customers
Use consistent branding and business storytelling to create a connection between you and your customers. The goal is to add a human touch that resonates with your target audience.
Every store has a story, whether it’s how the company was founded, its values, mission, or who it impacts on a daily basis. One of the strongest connections you can make is for the customer to hear from someone just like them. Ask your customers to share their own stories and use them to fuel your content.
This will help your content stand out, making the customer the main character and focusing on their needs, not the company or the product. Instead of throwing facts and logic at your audience, make your brand thought-provoking, memorable, and real.
Here’s a quick checklist:
- Be consistent and authentic
- Keep the story clear and concise - stick to the most important parts
- Be specific and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach
Common Marketing Funnels
A company’s content marketing strategy should be based on solving problems. These problems are listed within these funnels at various points. By producing content that addresses each stage of the journey, the customer is guided along the decision-making process toward a sale.
The Buyer’s Journey
With content marketing becoming widespread, it has become more difficult to cut through the noise and deliver high-quality content to your potential customers. To deliver content that’s particularly relevant, base it on each stage of the buyer’s journey.
This concept describes a buyer’s journey. Buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of discovery before making that all-important decision to purchase a shiny new product.
You can break the buyer’s journey into five key stages:
- Awareness - Before they buy, they need to know you exist - make content accessible
- Consideration - They are considering buying your amazing product
- Purchase - Yea, high five! You’ve made the sale!
- Retention - innovations can turn your customers into a loyal following
- Advocacy - Make your client so happy with your product that they not only purchase it, but become brand advocates
While different content marketing strategies might have a range of purposes, the end goal will always remain constant – to bring in more sales.
Sales Funnel
This marketing funnel helps businesses plan different marketing steps, from acquisition to retention.
At the top of the funnel you can cast your net over a wide range of potential customers, as they are still far away from a buying decision, while those that you guide to the bottom of the funnel are closer to a purchase.
You can break the funnel down into four key steps:
- Outreach – Attract attention, spread the word, and generates hype for a product or service
- Conversion – Here, the public’s attention is distilled into genuine interest and desire
- Closing – the bottom nails home the payment, sealing the deal
- Retention – Here, brand loyalty is cultivated — represented by returning customers, word-of-mouth advertising, and increasing sales.
The intent is different at each stage, which means that your content will pursue different goals and the results will be measured differently.
The key question is what content works for your potential customers at each specific step.
The Top 12 Content Marketing Tips of 2024
At this point, you have the basics to consistently create valuable content. Check out this breakdown of content marketing tips to dive deep:
1. Use Search Engine Optimization
The technical process of increasing traffic and attracting the top number of visitors to your store is called SEO. Content marketing will help your store become more visible on search engines, while building trust with potential customers who search online.
Content marketing and SEO is a powerful combination, especially as technical SEO is planned around content marketing. Every website needs keywords, search terms, articles, substance, etc. They go hand in hand in order to be successful.
SEO content marketing tips:
- Keywords. Find relevant keywords and rank your content higher on search engines
- Super content. Fresh and creative content ranks higher than repetitive content
- User experience. SEO is not just about keywords and backlinks, but optimizing the user experience with metadata and appropriate tags
- Traffic. Linkback, link-building, or inbound linking will help you rank higher
Overall, the fresher and more consistent your content, the better your store will rank. Content marketing combined with solid SEO is a powerful combination that will bring results over the long term.
2. Create a Content Marketing Business Plan
Writing a marketing plan will force you to think through the important steps that lead to an effective marketing strategy. A well-defined plan will help you stay focused on your high-level marketing goals.
The SMART framework is a helpful tool to help you set clear and achievable goals. Each goal should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Timely
Three content marketing tips to set you up for success:
- Set marketing goals considering your long-term vision and short-term motivation.
- Goals should be tied to the goal of the store - alignment creates purpose.
- Audit your previous initiatives and your assets to identify resources you already have and prevent duplicating your efforts
A content strategy uses content to achieve your business goals. Successful content strategy will attract your target audience at every stage of the sales funnel and keep them engaged after a purchase.
For those starting out and developing a marketing strategy, building an editorial calendar may seem unnecessary early on. However, a content marketing campaign can be invaluable in building customer trust, and a recipe for long-term success.
Marketing strategy questions:
- Who will be reading your content?
- What problem will you be solving for your audience?
- What makes you unique?
- What content formats will you use?
- What channels will you publish on?
- How will you manage content creation and publication?
If you can create just one piece of evergreen content, such as a blog post that gets a steady amount of organic traffic from search engines, it will continue generating leads for you as time goes on — long after you click publish.
These content marketing tips can help you plan for reliable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads.
3. Create Specific Content to Solve a Specific Problem
When it comes to your distribution channels, the reality is that you cannot do it all. You need to narrow things down to what’s going to be most effective. And that means having accuracy regarding your target audience and what content they’ll respond to.
A target audience is the defined set of people that you want to engage when creating content. They are the people that you believe are likely to become a loyal audience and paying customers
Their needs will be largely aligned with one another. They aren’t exactly a homogenous group, but they have stark similarities.
With a target audience strategy, your brand’s voice will reach the people that matter most. The best place to start is by understanding your existing audience or customer base.
Content marketing tips for good demographics:
- Age
- Stage of Life
- Geographic Location
- Language
- Income
- Spending Pattern
- Personality
Once identified, you can create a blog post, webinar, how-tos, articles, guides, videos, webinars, infographics, or social media posts.
You can now target content and online advertising more specifically. You’ll want to consider things like lookalike audience targeting and A/B testing.
Refining your approach over time, you’ll begin to understand which types of content ideas get the greatest engagement, and play to your strengths based on that.
Pick a problem you have a solid understanding of and use the customer’s concerns and objections you have learned when communicating with them. Think of how you managed to answer and overcome these problems, and turn this into in-depth content to generate leads.
4. Use Some Humor
Comedy is an art and humor is an outcome. Use it as a way of showing your audience that you understand and that you’re one of them. Making jokes that only they will understand will engage your potential customers and show them you’re inviting them into your space.
If you keep your level of humor appropriate for the stage of the buyer’s journey, you can attract your audience, engage them with entertaining yet helpful content, then convert with the same charming character that attracted them to begin with.
While the same comedic approach won’t work for every brand, findings show that humor enhances memory and is a solid content marketing tip.
5. Be Original
Don’t get stuck in a race to the bottom. A recent Harvard study has found that intense competition can stifle the creative process, however you can get ahead by innovating and being original. Creative marketing can be the difference between selling and not selling.
If any questions come up about what is fresh and ready for commercial use, check out this quick breakdown.
If you’re using blog posts and social media platforms, consider using original graphics rather than stock photos, as content marketers have reported stock images as the least effective in helping them meet their measurable business goals.
6. Release Content Regularly
You can’t have creativity without some consistency.
Why are you consistently publishing certain pieces of content? If it just feels like something you should do, make sure you’re only spending time on content that’s actually informative, helpful, useful, and valuable for your audience.
Check that it relates back to a measurable business goal. . Are you publishing content directly aligned to this purpose and vision?
You don’t need to overdo multiple distribution methods, and if you don’t enjoy the platform, that vibe is going to show through in your content. When we spread ourselves too thin, the quality of our content suffers.
Keep it simple, aligned with your goals, valuable to your audience, and focus on just a few platforms so you can put your best work out there.
7. Focus on the Customer
Consistent content informed by knowledge of the target audience and their search intent will be customer-focused and presented in a way that connects with them.
Stores that place their customers first can publish content that differentiates them from the competition. Writing content that focuses on addressing the needs of the current audience sets the foundation for meeting business goals and achieving greater success.
8. Use Emotion in Writing
Some of the most successful marketing campaigns went viral because they sparked strong emotional reactions among users. Studies have shown that positive emotions of amusement, excitement, inspiration, and warmth have the power to engage people and positively affect sharing.
Psychologists have shown that customers primarily use emotions rather than factual information when making purchasing decisions. Combining emotional engagement with a relevant story imbued in your brand’s voice can be the key to publishing successful blog posts or YouTube videos.
9. Discounts & Promos
Staying up to date with trendy topics is obligatory for every content marketer. You can follow the latest industry news and use it to create shareable content. Consider how this Norwegian Airlines commercial provoked positive reactions on its social channels by responding to celebrity news surrounding Brad Pitt.
Publishing content that ties in with a specific campaign can be a great way to promote your discount in an innovative and shareable way.
10. Social Media
It’s one thing to increase your social media followers across channels, but it’s quite another to create trendy content. If you’re one of those businesses that doesn’t see much traction despite having a huge following, it’s time to use content marketing to your advantage.
Quality content can help your business gain traction on social media. Make sure to track and use the data provided.
11. Analytics
Accurate analytics are more important than ever. Consumers have become highly selective in choosing which published content they engage with and which they ignore.
Knowing what content is successful ensures that customers see a greater number of targeted content that speaks to their specific needs and interests, rather than annoying mass communications.
Gather all the data spread across all platforms and channels to use in your content creation. Examples of useful metrics include:
- Analytical Examples
- Abandoned Cart
- Activity Log
- Form & Button Conversions
- Geography
- Google Search Keywords
- Top of the Sales Funnel Content Clicks
- Sales by Product
- Traffic and Engagement Trends, Including Audience Growth
- Traffic Sources
Experimenting and tracking the changes to these metrics enable you to make the right decisions. You can procure data yourself, through a variety of methods:
- Case studies, surveys, and data you have already collected from your existing customers
- A competitive analysis that highlights customer demand
- Conduct keyword research using Google Analytics
- Research market trends and statistics
- Collect data from your website, including how you rank in Google, the number of visitors to your website, social media shares, and click-through rates (CTR).
- Collect data from email autoresponders that provide data on email open rates and the number of email addresses collected.
- Create a buyer persona to learn more about the demographic
The data needs to be used in a way that defines how the content will connect with your buyer persona. This helps guide the creation of your content from the start of your project.
It’s not always good enough to guess if your content will resonate with your target buyer. You can design and write content targeted to a specific audience instead of the largest audience possible.
12. Recycling
It’s good for the planet, your conscience, and your content. One experienced content marketer argues “You don’t have to create content day in and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have in the hands of more people.”
Taking something you have created and putting a new spin on it is the main idea behind repurposing existing content. When it’s first published the performance might be average, but over time it will gain traction and once it has been updated you can reach new audiences.
Relevant topics and past successful content are great indicators that the content would be valuable if repurposed. Check your analytics, do a quick content audit and think about what can be done to freshen up the top performers.
Start Using These Content Marketing Tips Today!
Focused content marketing campaigns are one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for your store. Whatever goal you have in mind, from more sales to engaging new customers or building your brand’s voice, you can rely on these content marketing tips.
What is your favorite type of content to create and why? Did we miss some content marketing tips that should be on this list? Let us know in the comments below.
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Written by
Zane Bratuskina
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4 comments
Great read regarding various tips related towards content marketing nowadays and their benefits for continued business success. Thanks for this.
Hi Logan, thank you! We are happy to hear that you liked the article.
Great article! Thanks a lot!
Hi Laura,
Thank you, we are happy to hear you liked it!