How to craft an effective sponsored content piece

Sponsored posts are a highly valuable strategy to improve your business's visibility, build your brand story and trust. So much so, Forbes Top 10 Marketer, Neil Patel, claims sponsored blogging is the best inbound marketing strategy.

That said, not all sponsored content posts are made equal. Simply putting any piece of content on any website won't guarantee results. Like every decision in digital marketing, it's vital your sponsored content is carefully considered with regards to both substance and platform.

Here are our tips to master your sponsored content strategy.

Understand your audience

Remember, you're creating content for a specific audience with unique needs. Before producing, conduct market research to learn:

• What your audience wants.
• Which websites your audience frequent.
• What answers your target audience is looking for.
• Who your audience is (age, gender, income, etc.).

Once you have these answers, think about how your business can help - what problems are you mostly solving? What questions do you constantly get asked?

The better you understand your ideal customer, the more closely you can tailor your sponsored content to attract and engage qualified leads. Look to your existing market research to learn who your customers are, then develop that profile with respect to online behaviour and specific pain points.

Putting your sponsored content before a more specific audience helps you reach qualified customers.

Relevance is key

When you know what your target audience is looking for, you can craft content that addresses their needs and builds trust. It's important to keep content relevant to your audience throughout, which means sticking to a few basic rules:

• Keyword targeting: Determine which keywords will take priority within your content. These keywords should relate to the customers' pain points, and help search engines and users alike to identify whether or not your post is relevant to them.
• Non-promotion: You're producing sponsored content to support your brand, but that's not why your audience is reading it. First and foremost, they want solutions to their problems - not to improve your revenue. Keeping promotional content organic and directly relevant to helping your audience will improve your odds of being accepted by a host website and building trust.
• Right place, right time: Getting your sponsored content on a major platform might seem appealing, but it's not necessarily the right approach. While you'll reach a wide audience, the proportion of users who are actually in the market for your services may be significantly lower than if you were to choose a more specific platform. For example, realestate.co.nz has a range of predetermined targeted audiences, or can work with you to build a custom audience.

Build a link profile

Don't forget to include backlinks to your own website. Direct referrals aside, backlinks from authoritative, high-quality websites are a significant ranking factor for your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.

A strong link profile requires more than just referrals to your own website, however. Internal and external links alike are vital to improving your content's SEO ranking. Link to great content on the site you'll be posting on, as well as useful, relevant resources off-site. Of course, you should avoid linking to competition, but there's no harm in linking to authoritative resources relevant to your industry.

You'll also need to be aware of any linking guidelines provided by the host website. Some publishers may put limitations on the number and nature of links - so be sure to understand your limitations when entering a relationship.

Include a strong link profile and avoid byline blindness for the best results from your sponsored content.

Byline blindness

If you haven't taken the right steps, readers can easily gloss over the byline of your content, meaning you'll miss out on the opportunity to build trust and recognition.

Gregory Ciotti of Help Scout outlines three key elements that limit the risk of byline blindness:

1. Closing subheading: By including a subheading at the end of the article, you signpost the time for the audience to take action. Without this, your call to action (CTA) may easily be glossed over.
2. Compelling question: Using the first of two bullet points, prompt the readers with a question related to what you've written about, or invite them to leave a comment.
3. Leave a short CTA: Finally, use your second bullet point to direct users to an immediately relevant landing page on your website. Being placed in the bullet point, this CTA fits more naturally into the content and instructs the user journey.

Writing for the web

Finally, keep these tips in mind for effective online content writing:

• Keep it concise: Less is more. Aim to deliver your point in as few words as possible. Many users will be reading on a phone screen, so shorter sentences and more frequent line breaks can make a piece of content much more user-friendly.
• Tell a story: Know the purpose of your article. Start by introducing your main point in the introduction and save the details for the body of the content. Avoid digressing too far from your main point. Lastly, remember to reiterate and reinforce your message in the conclusion.
• Use relevant imagery: Images should be visually and contextually relevant to support your message and tie in with the tone and style of your writing.
• Know your strengths: Not everyone has your expertise, and not everyone is a writer. DIY isn't always best when it comes to content, so consider working with a professional writer to communicate your knowledge more effectively. 

Sponsored content is an integral component to a successful inbound marketing strategy. By combining market research, careful decision making, SEO tactics and brand visibility, you can make your next sponsored content piece leave a real impact.

To organise your own sponsored content right here on realestate.co.nz and reach our large audience of property seekers, contact our media team at advertising@realestate.co.nz, or click here to learn more.