I Created Marketing Content for One Month
I have spent the last four weeks learning the fundamentals of content marketing. I did research on a company and its demographic then created a mock landing page, a 7-day social media campaign, and finally a 5-day welcome email campaign. If you are interested in my process and what I learned along the way, here is an overview of the last month. Enjoy!
Video Overview
What is Content Marketing?
I started this month by diving into what content marketing really is. Before I learned about what makes successful marketing campaigns and the many forms of content marketing, I had several misconceptions. Content marketing is not false advertising, manipulation, or only for creative people. Rather,
Content marketing is focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online
Doing so raises awareness of the company, generates demand, and ultimately converts customers.
I learned that in order to create content for a targeted audience, I needed to research one. This led to choosing a company I wanted to focus my projects on and looking into the demographics they try to reach. The company I chose is called Workaway.
Workaway is a platform that allows traveling members to receive homestays and food in exchange for working a pre-agreed amount of time per day, in over 170 countries. Workaway excites me because I love to travel. I like this business because it provides opportunities for travel on a budget, to meet new people, and build lifelong skills. If you want to view my company research, I linked the Google document below.
Building a Landing Page
After researching my audience, it was time to start creating. I began with making a mock landing page for Workaway. A landing page is a webpage designed to persuade users to take one specific action.
Landing pages help with lead generation by capturing visitor information, boosting the effectiveness of marketing, providing targeted messaging, and simplifying campaign measurement.
The most important aspects of a landing page include a compelling image, a catchy headline and subheading, and a clear call to action.
In this assignment, I started with different mock-ups with the goal of having the target audience sign up as a host or a workawayer. I added three links, one to sign up and find a host, one to sign up as a host, and one to learn more about how the company works. I included a catchy headline and subheading over an image I think captures the company’s values of travel and connection. My final landing page is linked below!
7 Day Social Media Campaign
Once I created the landing page, it was time to move on to the social media campaign. I first learned about how strategy is essential when it comes to a successful social media campaign. A company’s social media is not all about chasing trends or researching company blog posts, but continuing to create targeted content that will boost engagement and raise awareness.
To do this, I started by looking at Workaway’s Instagram and Facebook (their most-used platforms), as well as their top competitors, to gain inspiration. I noticed that the companies are all about sharing their member’s experiences, which is smart considering their target audience focuses on meeting friends all over the world.
These posts add a sense of community and connection to their page, so I decided to make some of my own. Here you can see two examples where I scoured their blog posts for images shared by workawayers. I added a short caption to each in hopes of engaging the audience and providing context.
I also created targeted infographics on some of the most asked questions that Workaway receives. I made the infographics visually appealing and included as much information as I could on one page. Here you can see two examples of solo travel tips and information on how to use Workaway. I made a total of five infographics which were posted across seven days.
This leads me to my next point about the importance of a timeline and automation. Before I made all my posts, I laid out a timeline of when I wanted to post and where. As I said, I chose Facebook and Instagram since they are the most used platforms by Workaway. I then chose to post one to two times daily on Instagram and once daily on Facebook at 12 pm EST (if posting once) or 11:30 am and 1:00 pm EST (if posting twice).
I chose these times in order to boost engagement on the platforms. These are times when people are on lunch breaks and tend to pull out their phones for a mid-day scroll. If I were actually posting these for Workaway, I would implement an automation system. Creating a timeline and automation system is a key strategy to ensure consistency and ideal engagement.
If you want to view the entire social media campaign, it is linked below. I included five infographics, seven ‘adventure’ posts, and three video reel outlines.
5 Day Welcome Email Campaign
For my final project in the content marketing module, I created a mock five-day welcome email campaign for Workaway. Email marketing is just like it sounds: a form of marketing that uses email to promote products, services, offers, lead generation, brand awareness, build relationships, and keep customers engaged between purchases.
A welcome email campaign specifically, is the emails received from a company after they collect user information. These emails are typically specified toward one action, usually to close a sale and convert a customer. In my case, the emails I wrote for Workaway were aimed at having the recipient sign up for their service.
I learned the most important aspects of an email campaign are making it short and informative, including an eye-catching subject line, building a brand-customer relationship, and adding a call to action. I made it a goal to include all of these aspects in my welcome email campaign.
Here you can see two examples from my campaign. I made both emails easy to read and even added some emojis to appeal to the eye. I built a relationship between the brand and the customer by making the copy have a conversation-like feel and made sure to include some sort of CTA. Finally, I made sure that the subject lines would ensure a click from the recipient.
If you are interested in reading all five emails from the welcome campaign, I’ve linked the assignment below.
In Conclusion…
Learning about content marketing over the last month has helped me grow my understanding of what successful content marketing looks like, along with learning the skills necessary to build marketing campaigns and advertisements. I believe this project showcases the knowledge, skills, experience, and value that I can bring to a marketing team in the future.
Skills I Learned
How to research a target demographic.
How to make a landing page for one specific action.
How to create targeted posts and emails.
How to create social media strategy and timelines.
What Would I Do Differently?
Research application sites more before diving in to make sure I can accomplish my vision.
Actually create the videos, instead of just outlining them.
Make all social media posts and emails more consecutive with each other.
Key Takeaways
👩💻 Research Your Target Audience
📣 Implement a Call-To-Action
🗓️ Create a Timeline
🔑 Automation is Key
📧 Keep Emails Short and Informative
🤝 Build a Relationship with the Customer
Tools That Helped Me
🖼️ Canva
💌 Cardd
🪄 Grammarly
✍️ Substack
📑 Google Docs
🎥 Loom