Contrary to popular belief, familiarity does not breed contempt. In fact, familiarity breeds sales and thats why Content Consistency is key. Studies have indicated that it takes an average customer as many as a half-dozen exposures to any type of advertising before he/she is sold.
How long has it taken Coca Cola or Krispy Kreme to become household words? A lot longer than one advertisement, one press release, or one direct mail campaign.
Contents
What isContent consistency?
Content consistency refers to the relevancy of the content on a web page. It helps search engines determine whether or not a page is relevant for a specific topic. For example, if a search results page contains content from different-but-related topics, that page is likely to be inconsistent . (For example, if an article contained throughout the text the terms “Ford Motor Company,” “Bill Gates” and “Steve Jobs,” it would be unlikely that the entire site would be about those three individuals.) Content consistency can prevent your site from ranking well in certain search results.
1. The pathway to familiarity is with content consistency.
Consistency is what yields results. So it’s important for you to maintain a consistent tone and look to your brand, marketing, advertising and advertising messages.
Advertisements: Your ads should use consistency to establish brand recognition. They can be institutional (conveying a general theme of who you are and what you do), educational (A CPA might offer some practical tax preparation tips in April advertisements) or “call to action” in nature, as long as they hit the same “notes” each time.
Direct mail: Your marketing campaign should include some form of mailing at least a half dozen times a year to your current clients and prospective ones. This can be in the form of a online newsletter, a series of letters, or a combination.
Public Relations: This includes everything from announcements, press releases, and feature articles on new hires, new products, new services, and new client relationships. As a minimum, you should strive for one announcement per month to be sent to your local, regional and industry. Articles, guest blogging, radio interviews etc.
2. Make Sure Everyone Is On Boardcontent consistency
Content consistency is not just about using the company letterhead or adding your unique positioning statement to the bottom of your newspaper ads. It’s about ensuring that every member of your team — human players and marketing messages — is in sync.
Appoint yourself the Minister of Consistency and lay down the law as follows:
- Work out how various groups and departments in your company should implement marketing messages in what they do
- Ensure that people who understand marketing messages at a spoken level can also write them down.
- Create a communications “manual” that lays down how messages should be interpreted and implemented across all departments who put out company messages.
- Invest in some basic training in business writing skills for ALL employees who will write stuff, even internally — secretaries, technical people, HR staffers, trainers, sales people, etc
3. Your Marketing Message Isn’t For You
Have you given your message a chance to do its job before you stop or change it? Or did you think, “This is the third time I’ve sent out this message? How boring. I’m going to change it.”
Hold on, pardner. You’re about to lose your consistency edge.
Usually, the person that grows tired of a repeated marketing message is the person doing the marketing! The prospective customer probably won’t be nearly so sensitive to the repetition. Don’t forget, most consumers need to be contacted as many as 8 times before they sit up and take notice.
Different audiences will require different frequencies of messages. Each must be evaluated as to the optimum effectiveness. If a quarterly newsletter isn’t working, try switching over to a monthly edition. If your daily email messages aren’t yielding results, cut back to twice a month and see what happens.
The three most important words in successful marketing are “testing, testing, testing.” Consistency and frequency are just one more component to be evaluated when troubleshooting your marketing efforts.
Food For Thought – Quotable Quote
“Whether consistency is boring depends largely on how often the message is rolled out and to whom it’s delivered. If you have a mature understanding of your market… then a consistent approach can be very successful.
“There is a tension between consistency and creativity – but it’s a healthy one.” — William Stancer, Director of Marketing Resources, Accenture.
Conclusion
When it comes to content marketing, consistency is king. Keep up that consistent message and you will ultimately create valuable backlinks to your website. Build quality content, and the audience will come. It may not be a perfect system, but it will help to familiarize your audience with your brand. And isn’t that what content marketing is all about? If you take nothing else away from these tips, remember this: the most effective way to build an audience for your blog is through consistent, high-quality content.