When it comes to email marketing, recipients can be bombarded by several emails a day from a single company. However, most people receive news and updates from several brands and not just one. This can easily drive up the number of content marketing emails to about 10 a day, maybe more.
However
Most people get annoyed when yet another email pops into their inbox. Often they’ll tune them out and end up with a rather full inbox, or they delete them automatically as soon as they see who it’s from. Or, they hit unsubscribe.
These people suffer from brand fatigue and it’s the worst possible result for a brand’s content marketing strategy.
Can it be avoided?
The question is: How can you use email marketing to increase your brand’s online visibility without driving your target audience crazy?
The answer could lie in neutral brands or, as Cadence Marketing refers to them, News & Content Syndication Titles (NCSTs).
What’s In A (Brand) Name?
Everything; which is why balanced content marketing is so important and why content marketers go out of their way to prevent brand fatigue and keep customers happy.
What’s more important than profit?
(OK, what’s equal to profit?)
Two of the most important things that companies hold dear are brand awareness and brand name (or reputation). The trick that content marketers must take into account is that they go hand-in-hand.
For example:
When you push your brand’s online marketing strategy too far and data fatigue sets in, your company’s reputation takes a hit. You run the risk of earning labels like “boring” or “annoying” when you’re aiming for “innovative” and “creative.”
Overdone content marketing also runs the risk of losing existing customers to the unsubscribe button, while previously potential customers now give you a wide berth.
We’re going to look at how you can use content marketing to avoid losing existing customers, as well as how to use valuable content to re-engage potential customers instead.
This entails looking at how incorporating neutral brands into content marketing can save your company’s bacon, not to mention your brand’s reputation.
What are neutral brands?
Neutral brands and News & Content Syndication Titles perform the opposite purpose of regular content syndication, which is distributing online content far and wide.
Regular content syndication aims to increase your brand’s online visibility as much as possible by republishing diverse content formats such as blog posts, infographics, podcasts, etc., on as many credible and reputable B2G platforms as possible.
On the other hand …
Neutral brands are trusted, objective third-party content syndication titles that provide value under the radar.
Emails are delivered by these news and content syndication titles to provide recipients with value-loaded content that is interesting, entertaining, and informative.
Because the marketing content is delivered by a neutral brand, the B2G company that’s using the NCSTs for content marketing isn’t at risk of brand or data fatigue.
In fact, if content marketing is done correctly, recipients look forward to the valuable information and industry insights delivered regularly by your content strategy team.
About the marketing content
If you want to reap the benefits of this type of content marketing strategy, you must keep it sales-free. No sneaky sales spiel, no sales jargon, no promoting a product, service, or work; just value-added content that provides your target audience with several notable benefits.
Benefits Of Using News & Content Syndication Titles In Content Marketing
Let’s look at five benefits of content marketing in neutral brands and content syndication titles.
1) Value increases engagement
Emails from neutral sources provide valuable content to recipients. Relevant content that appeals to your target audience is delivered in different formats, for example, paid ads, webinars, blog posts, and PR content marketing.
The exact content marketing format depends on your goals and your clearly defined audience, for example, whether you want to generate more leads or lead users more quickly through their customer journey.
The formats and social media and digital marketing channels used are varied to maintain the interest of more customers, both existing and new.
The desired result, as mentioned above, is for existing customers – and new customers who are developing an interest in your brand – to look forward to your high-quality content because it’s always engaging and worth their while.
2) Greater brand awareness
One of the primary factors that contribute to the success of online content marketing and leads to greater online visibility is:
Sharing
What is everyone’s favourite thing to do on the net? Share content (probably).
Interesting, engaging, and entertaining emails with great content, like video content and podcasts, are more likely to be shared by recipients than generic emails and spam.
A successful content strategy that hits inbound marketing on the head, ensures that your high-quality content is forwarded to other email addresses, shared on social media platforms, and could even land a top spot on search engines’ results pages.
And while your brand isn’t pasted front and centre, the links to content (for example, social media posts and video content) serve to remind old and new customers that you are, indeed, a thought leader in your industry.
3) Recognised as an industry leader
You start to stand out from the crowd as your brand awareness grows and you continue to add worthwhile insights to your industry.
Being recognised as an industry leader is great for generating leads because the value you provide to customers encourages them to follow you on social media and register for emails directly from your domain. This is good for your company as it helps to attract new customers, increase brand recognition, and establish brand loyalty.
Recognition as an expert who leads the way with industry trends and innovations increases your opportunities to attend events with other thought leaders. This is excellent for relationship-building and knowledge-sharing.
Speaking at live events is a good opportunity for networking and business growth because you meet other well-respected experts in the field. You can learn valuable lessons from each other, such as how to take your content marketing optimisation to the next level.
You can also incorporate your brand into your presentation. Not overtly, however, but in case studies, how-to guides, and other successful content marketing examples.
4) Removes the risk of brand and data fatigue
Switching email content marketing directly from your brand to the neutral brand or NCSTs limits your tendency to exhaust recipients with multiple daily and weekly emails.
In this way, you change risky content marketing behaviour to a more effective marketing strategy.
It also puts an immediate halt to the climbing unsubscribe rates that might have been afflicting your brand as a direct result of over-zealous email content marketing. (Because the emails don’t come directly from your domain, you’re a step away from unsubscribe rates.)
5) Hassle-free GDPR compliance
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a strict data privacy and security law enacted by the EU. It affects the public sector and B2G marketing in particular because marketing content draws data from several sources (are the sources GDPR compliant?) to create an effective content marketing strategy.
It also applies to content marketing that distributes information to the public via blog articles and visual content across social media platforms.
B2G content markers that use neutral brands are spared GDPR concerns because NCS titles are responsible for compliance with regulations. You don’t have to worry if different types of content marketing are guilty of compliance infringements. It’s all taken care of.
What Types Of Content Marketing Benefit From Using A Neutral Brand Or News & Content Syndication Title?
There are several instances when a neutral brand helps create a successful content marketing strategy.
Email campaigns
So far we’ve focused on just some of the features included in email content marketing strategies.
Here we’ll talk a bit about content creation.
You have two options when it comes to email content creation.
Some public sector marketing agencies let you choose between:
1) User-generated content. You provide the content you want to use in your email marketing strategy and the agency’s content marketing team will provide some suggestions, if necessary.
2) Agency-generated content. Some agencies create content for you. It depends on the agency whether the service is included in your package or whether it’s an optional extra with an extra fee.
The aim is to create content for your email marketing strategy that can be adapted for different types of content marketing. This means it can be distributed in different content formats, including case studies, podcasts, blog posts, video content, social media, and surveys.
Webinars
The trust built into content syndication titles ensures that webinars aimed at current and potential customers don’t contain anything like a sales pitch for inbound marketing efforts.
Instead, creating content for digital marketing webinars requires a kid-glove approach.
This means that content must be crafted to enlighten and engage, without giving in to the temptation to punt a particular social media goal, for example.
Rather, webinar attendees can rest assured that they will receive high-quality content that is engaging, entertaining, and insightful.
All of this is in line with NCST’s strict requirements for creating content that must be loaded with value before it can be published.
Content marketing is a collaborative effort
Collaboration is one of the best ways to take webinar content marketing services to the next level. By working hand-in-hand with a public sector marketing specialist, you can agree on things like the design of your webinar’s registration page.
You can optimise your content so that it meets your conversion goals, which could be to generate leads or increase brand awareness.
In other collaborative efforts, you and your content marketer can create content that’s used as a base for email marketing content, which can also be used for audience generation and post-event promotion – gated access to downloadable resources, including video recordings.
Market research
Even market research in content marketing, like surveys, is better when backed by a neutral brand. Essentially, it shows that market research was conducted independently with no affiliations.
It also provides an extra layer of respectability to the research because it’s not so obviously aligned with a particular (biased) brand..
A Few Technical (But Not Too Technical) Details
Here’s a brief look at how some of the nuts and bolts of NCS titles affect your content marketing efforts and position on search engines.
Titles
It takes time to establish neutral brands on search engines, especially as trusted content providers. The domains need to be warmed up which means that they must established and respected enough so that distributing valuable digital content won’t trigger spam alerts.
Neutral brands need to have high standards and be very discerning when it comes to the content they publish because they need to retain their reputation as trusted content providers.
The idea is to leverage content marketing to keep the public sector interested and engaged in the online and social media content that comes their way.
After all, ongoing interest is the hallmark of an effective content marketing strategy.
Choosing a title
Public sector marketing agencies are specialists in the field. They know which neutral brands or NCSTs will work best for your specific content marketing strategy and ensure you reach your target audience.
Content marketers won’t distribute your content unless you are happy with the format and the recommended title. That’s why it’s important to keep lines of communication open, so you are on the same page when it comes to major decisions like this.
Your logo
The point of NCSTs is to not blast your brand across the web. Instead, branding is subtle.
For example, promoting profitable customer action and generating more leads.
Different digital marketing methods and content formats can be used for different purposes.
For example, For webinars, the neutral brand title may co-promote the event with your brand.
This is crucial to maintain independence and avoid allegations of research and marketing bias.
Partner With Cadence Marketing To Enjoy The Benefits Of News & Content Syndication Titles
Cadence Marketing specialises in public sector content marketing, working with buyers and suppliers in the procurement process. Our services are backed by experts in the niche areas of B2G marketing, including content marketing plans for organic content and email marketing, as well as your social media strategy.
Our content marketers work with you throughout the public sector marketing and sales process. This includes social media marketing, developing customer stories to facilitate the buyer’s journey, and leveraging existing content to facilitate the buying process.
Your specialist content marketer will coordinate content marketing efforts and incorporate Google trends on all digital platforms, including data tailor-made for social media marketing.
Contact us to find out more about our range of services to enhance the customer journey through the different content marketing stages, including the consideration stage.
Book a free consultation to discuss how we can work together to deliver the best possible results for your content marketing efforts, including creating content for your social media marketing plans.
