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By Alex Birch, SEO Manager at Typeform
You don’t need hundreds and thousands of dollars to make your marketing campaign look professional. Here are a few tricks you can do to make your content more effective.
Your content marketing could be the most interesting piece of content on the web, but if it doesn’t look professional or attractive, you’ll struggle to realize its potential.
Professional looking and feeling content adds credibility. If you’ve invested in the way your content is presented, you’re more likely to be taken seriously as an expert on the subject.
Content that doesn’t look polished, or isn’t easy to consume loses appeal. You could risk people dropping off your site before they’ve had a chance to take in the message. A huge 90% of people have admitted to leaving a website because it was badly designed.
Here are ways to make your content look more professional, without spending a fortune:
Beautiful imagery
The way your content looks is just as important as what it says, if not more important.
Imagery is a key part of the overall design. Content with relevant imagery receives 94% more views than content that doesn’t have any.
You don’t necessarily need to hire a graphic designer or find an agency every time you need a modern and stylish image for your content marketing.
It’s not even necessary to purchase expensive software packages these days.
If you’re willing to design content in-house you can use online graphic tools like Canva to create social media images, to infographics to PDFs or presentation slides.
Stock imagery is a useful element to add to your low-cost graphic design toolkit. From landing page banners to blog imagery, high-quality stock images can add a modern look to your content. Check out this post for a list of places to find great free stock imagery.
Not only does attractive content marketing help you draw people’s attention, but it can help spread the message further too. Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
Interactive content
Interactive content allows you to take your content marketing further and differentiate yourself with engaging and fun experiences for your audience.
It doesn’t just provide a great experience. Interactive content gains two times more engagement than static content.
By utilizing a range of content types and visual elements, you can create a marketing campaign that feels like it was put together by an expensive agency (on an in-house budget).
Online Quizzes
Online quizzes are a great example of interactive content that looks impressive. You can easily tie them into relevant topics to suit your other content marketing elements.
The most effective quizzes are compelling enough to get the quiz taker to the end, and this means making the content relevant to your audience. The quiz below is an example of a B2B for marketers, testing their knowledge of digital marketing.
There are online quiz tools that allow you to create impressive-looking quizzes without blowing the budget.
Look for a tool that allows you to embed content within your own website or blog pages for a seamless way to elevate your content.
Calculators
Calculators are usually aimed at helping the audience identify the value or ROI of something. They’re successful as interactive content because like quizzes, they provide an answer or score to something.
Calculators are an effective type of interactive content because they are personal and give a quick answer to a question.
They can quickly identify the extent to which their product or service could help you, or improve on what you are already doing. People respond well to saving money, or time, or just getting better results.
This ROI calculator from Symantec demonstrates how to integrate professional-looking content into your website.
It can be cost-effective because it can be tied to your marketing campaigns again and again. The outcome of engaging with this type of content is personal and creates real engagement with the audience, which elevates your static pages.
Surveys
Surveys can be created easily with online survey tools and embedded into your existing website. People like having a say and sharing their experiences, making them an effective way to not only direct people towards your content, but capture data, too.
Interactive content allows you to engage your audience, entertain and inform them at the same time. Statistics show that they could even improve the delivery of your message. 73% agree that combining traditional content marketing tactics with interactive content enhances the retention of their organization’s message.
Accuracy
Professional content rarely contains an error. Mistakes in your content, or poor practices when it comes to citing sources will make you come across as amateur.
Building a review process into your content marketing efforts will help mitigate the risk of publishing content full of inaccuracies. Here are things to add into your process:
Good writing
To check sentence structure and flow run your content through the Hemingway editor. It highlights where sentences could be clearer and when you use too many passive verbs.
Spelling and grammar
Before publishing your content, use proofing software to ensure you’ve not missed any syntax errors.
Grammarly is an online tool that highlights mistakes in your copy and suggests alternatives. There’s a free version, but the paid version can also spot tone and approach to really help you polish your written content.
Back up claims
When making a point, try and back it up with statistics from credible sources to prove you’ve done the research and know what you’re talking about. The more recent the better of course.
Give credit
If you’ve used imagery or video from another site or brand, ensure that you correctly credit it and link through to the original source. It’s not only good manners, but it will avoid you getting into copyright trouble too!
Your wider strategy
It’s important to also consider how each piece of content fits into your wider goal, as well as making sure it performs individually. Your branding says a lot about your company, but this goes further than your company colors and your logo.
Your brand is what your content says about you, and for this to feel professional, you need to convince your audience that you are at the top of your game.
Clear position
What are you trying to respond to with your marketing? Who is your target audience?
By having a focused idea of what you are trying to achieve, you’ll be able to position your brand, and therefore your content marketing in a much stronger way.
Frequent posting
Commit to a regular schedule of content, so that when people visit your site or follow you on social media, there’s always something fresh to look at. Long gaps between posts don’t make it seem as though you’re committed to your marketing approach.
Being ahead of the game
As well as being at the top of your game, you’ve got to be ahead of it, too.
Creating content on the same topics that have already been circulating within your industry doesn’t provide value. Whilst professional doesn’t always mean original, it does mean that you can demonstrate you’re aware of the latest trends.
Making your content look professional on a budget?
It’s all about utilizing the tools available to you.
Make the most of the many effective and reasonably priced marketing tools out there that can respond to your marketing requirements and elevate your content to a higher quality.
