Content is king–but so is knowing the right way to reach your desired audience

Content Marketing World 2023 was held at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center September 26-28.  Now in its 13th year, Content Marketing World is produced by the Content Marketing Institute and brings together marketing leaders, content creators, communications experts, agencies, and creative professionals from around the world. This year’s theme was Evolve. 

With the impact of AI, it’s clear we need to evolve in our thoughts and actions.  Below are some tips I learned while attending the event.

AI is Here to Stay

AI is impacting all of us from our jobs to our daily lives.  We need to embrace AI and figure out how it can help us, not fight against it.  AI can be a tool, a co-pilot, or a muse, helping us find information more quickly, using it to summarize data, or just giving us a starting point for ideas.  However you use AI, it will definitely be part of our lives going forward.

Customer Acquisition, Not Just Traffic Acquisition

When planning your SEO strategy, it’s important to focus on Customer Acquisition and not just Traffic Acquisition.  We need to look at engagement and conversion metrics instead of focusing on the traditional rankings and organic traffic metrics. To do this, we need to know our customers, know their pain points, questions, preferences, etc.  Then match your content to their needs. What keywords have the most purchase intent?  Consider what content format will convert best for your topics.  Look at the customer experience.  The more you can match your content to search intent and a better customer experience, the better your results.

Big Mistakes

Here are 3 things touted as big mistakes in executing your content marketing strategy: 

1. Trying to rank for all keywords associated with your product.  That would be almost impossible.  More importantly, you want to look at the keywords for intent.  Search intent is the primary goal or purpose a user has in mind when typing a query into a search engine. 

2. Letting keyword volume rule.  We’ve all looked for keywords with a larger volume thinking it will bring more people to our sites.  While that may be true, if they aren’t the right audience, it won’t produce conversions.  Again, we need to focus on the search intent to ensure we are targeting the most potential customers. 

3. Insufficient topic coverage.  When choosing your topics, make sure you have a depth of information to reach your customers where they are in the buying journey.

There was so much more to learn at this conference.  Next year’s conference will be held in San Diego October  21-23.  It’s a great opportunity to hear from over 150 expert speakers and network with thousands of other content professionals. 

This year, the conference welcomed over 2,000 attendees with 60 exhibitors

“We are just thrilled with yet another successful year of Content Marketing World,” said Stephanie Stahl, general manager, Content Marketing Institute. “From the inspiring keynotes by Elizabeth Banks, Avinash Kaushik, Derek Thompson, Cassie Kozyrkov and others, to the over 150 breakout sessions from some of the world’s top marketers, CMWorld was a jam-packed three days of intense learning, networking and fun. Our community once again showed up to share knowledge, make new connections and welcome new folks into the fold. We truly believe there’s no other event like it on the planet for content creators and marketers.”

The world is changing quickly and sharing our knowledge and insights helps bring innovation and success.  I’m looking forward to next year’s conference to keep learning and growing.