14 Proven Strategies for Improving Your Marketing Content

Creating marketing content takes time, effort, and resources. If the content isn’t strong, it won’t perform well on channels like search engines or social media, and it might not reach your target market. Even worse, your marketing content may be ineffective when it comes to motivating your market to convert. This can lead to wasted resources, which is a critical error for small businesses that already find themselves struggling with insufficient resources. Ensuring your content performs well and reaches your target market with a personalized, motivating message is essential to marketing success.

This article will show you how to update both old content and improve marketing content moving forward. You’ll also learn how to use your resources wisely and expand your content’s reach. Let’s get started.

How to improve your marketing content

Before launching into how to improve marketing content, let’s see why it’s important to do so periodically.

• Search engines prefer fresh content, so your older content might be reducing your ability to rank well in search results. If the content is no longer relevant, accurate, or complete, you may also damage your reputation as a thought leader in your niche.
• As more users employ AI to answer questions for which they previously trusted websites, you must update your content so you appear in answer snippets and AI results. For instance, transforming some content into lists and using newer schema helps AI tools “read” and “categorize” your content to appear in these snippets.
• Over time, your images may appear dated, and your outbound links may get broken. Updating old content allows you to fix these problems.
• An old date associated with your content may discourage users from clicking on it.
• Your content must not only attract your target market, but also encourage your prospects through the process to complete a purchase. Adding elements such as social proof that’s current, a better call to action, or better visuals and messaging that match your current brand image can improve market performance.
• As mentioned, creating content consumes a lot of scarce resources. By transforming your old content into an infographic, a video, or a series of posts on social, you can refresh your content to help it perform better.

1. Analyze the performance of your existing content

Begin by reviewing how your old content has performed. Take a step back and look at your previous work as a whole.

• How well-written and engaging is each post?
• Does the content have grammatical errors?
• How many resources did it consume?
• How well did it perform?
• and other stats

You should also look at your content from different angles, such as SEO, writing quality, and design. Make a plan to update your content, starting with older content that still performs well. By updating this content, which already resonates with your target market and ranks well, you can improve its performance. Old content that doesn’t attract any attention might warrant deletion (be sure to redirect the URL to avoid a broken link).

Search engines update their algorithms frequently and, while some changes address off-page factors, some are related to your content on the page. Consider updating your content, especially your best content, to address these changes. Similarly, AI tools are increasingly important in attracting prospective buyers. Ensure your content matches the needs of these tools, so your marketing content will be shared with users. This might involve adding schema, lists, or better alt images within your content.

2. Conduct a SERP analysis

SERPs, or search engine results pages, are valuable when analyzing older content. Not only monitor the rank of your existing content, but also evaluate what links rank well for keywords related to your market. This helps you identify the needs and preferences of your target market, highlighting ways you can improve your content by filling gaps, discovering missing keywords, or discovering a better structure.

3. Keep your target market in mind

Remember, you write content for your community, not just for yourself. But how will the content address the community’s concerns effectively if you don’t have a clear understanding of who is part of your community (or should be)? Who is the community anyway?

It’s important to know your target market —their preferences, habits, and concerns—when you create content. By building a persona for each segment of your target market (see template below), you ensure you have a deep understanding that guides you when creating effective marketing content. You want your readers to feel like the content is meant for them.

That’s why you should research your target market before diving into fixing your old (and creating new) content. If the target market shifts over time, you should update your old content and keep the new market in mind when creating new content.

4. Focus on introductions

Good introductions are essential for any content. Make sure to focus on them when you update old posts. No matter the type—blog post, YouTube video, or social media post—a catchy introduction grabs attention right away. Introductions set the tone for your content. They welcome your audience and are your first opportunity to make an impression and engage them.

A compelling introduction is:

• 1.    brief
• 2.    concise
• 3.    addresses the issue or question
• 4.    provides a clear idea about the content
• 5.    encourages readers to read further

A weak introduction is too long, unclear, boring, or doesn’t offer value. This can make readers leave your page. Keep introductions short and direct. Use this space to engage readers and give them useful information.

Avoid the following mistakes when writing introductions:

• 1.    Long and wordy introductions
• 2.    Never-ending background stories and reasonings (i.e., why someone should buy a product)
• 3.    Irrelevancy and off-topic discussion
• 4.    Making too many promises, like saying, ‘In this article, I will show you the trick,’ or ‘Believe me, it works.’
• 5.    Providing no value

5. Treat titles as hooks

Titles have the power to hook people even before they start reading the actual content. They are your hooks. A title is the first thing your audience sees. So, if it is compelling enough, it can steal the clicks even if it ranks third on a SERP. 

On the other hand, a boring title can make people not want to click, even if it ranks number one. Hence, writing captivating titles is important for improving content.

6. Add visuals

Visuals create interest in your content and can even help convey information more effectively (a picture’s worth a thousand words). The images can be simply eye candy or convey information in an easy-to-understand format. Be sure to include an alt tag on your images to ensure text-based tools for visually impaired users and search engines can categorize your marketing content.

Visuals often explain things better than text alone. For example, videos can show details that help people understand your content more easily.

Don’t worry if you don’t have enough resources for visuals; you can create basic videos using images and text with little effort. Tools like Canva, Adobe Express, and AI tools like ChatGPT are great resources for creating images and videos you need to support your marketing content. 

Along with videos, use other visuals such as images, graphs, infographics, and GIFs to make your content more useful and complete. Google often ranks content with visuals higher. Visual posts on social media also get more attention and can help you reach more people.

7. Add examples and proofs

It’s worth mentioning that adding examples and case studies to your content can strengthen its narrative. Sometimes, a piece of information can feel incomplete without examples. For example, if I am talking about how mixing two colors makes a third one, a suitable example would be blue and yellow making green. However, some examples are better presented visually.

Examples often back up your points. Choose the best format—like text, images, or videos—based on what you want to show. Utilize different formats to give examples, such as:

• Graphs
• Case studies
• Stats
• Client testimonials
• Product images, videos, etc.

Clear, helpful examples make your content easier to understand and more user-friendly.

8. Work with subject-matter experts

Working with subject matter experts (SME’s) is the best way to cover a subject online, especially if you are trying to rank on a search engine. It is because subject matter experts understand the subject inside and out. They have “first-hand” experience in a matter, which is also required by Google’s E-E-A-T standards. Subject matter experts can explain topics better than most, helping you build authority and become a leader in your field.

Including hyperlinks to these experts adds credibility to your marketing content that improves your rank. It can also refer readers to a more in-depth treatment of a topic, which allows you to focus on your area of expertise when creating content. This provides more value to readers, enticing them to become loyal readers, subscribe to your email marketing program, and return when they need what you share.

9. Optimize for SEO and GEO

Optimizing your old content for SEO is a key way to reach more people. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It means making your content easier for search engines to find and rank on results pages. See how this process works in the flow chart above.

Don’t be pessimistic if your previous SEO efforts weren’t fruitful. SEO still works. However, it is just one part of a whole strategy. You must now write marketing content that appeals to AI engines (GEO), because users increasingly use tools based on AI when they need answers before turning to a search engine.

SEO alone is not sufficient. This is important to understand because, if you want SEO to work, you have to incorporate other practices that work with it.

10. Refresh outdated content

Once you know what you missed and understand your audience, it’s time to update your old content.

At a glance, here’s what refreshing old content can include:

• Fixing grammar
• Updating outdated information & covering recent trends
• Adding relevant & removing irrelevant information
• Covering missed headings & subheadings
• Covering missed topics & subtopics
• Improving keyword density & adding missed keywords
• Adding statistics & quotations to support your statements
• Linking to sources
• Adding examples & testimonies if you missed them previously
• Adding visuals and removing the ones that add no value
• Fixing the tone and voice of the content
• Incorporating ideas your competitors are using

In general, add what makes your content helpful for people and remove anything that gets in their way.

Pro tip: Use AI tools to reduce the effort of updating old content. For example, a generative AI tool can quickly generate heading ideas, a sentence rephraser can quickly rephrase poorly worded text, and a grammar checker can help you fix the grammatical errors in your content. However, don’t just copy and paste with content generated by AI, as it’s likely seen as duplicate content by search engines, it doesn’t display your unique voice, and it doesn’t add anything beyond what other sites already cover to show your expertise.

11. Recreate what deserves it

Revitalizing some of the old content can take a significant amount of effort. It might be better to recreate a piece of old content if:

• Refreshing is less effort- and resource-friendly than recreating it
• It requires significant changes
• It is completely dead in terms of its quality and performance
• Its URL is no longer relevant

However, if the content is already ranking on SERP — not necessarily high — it is better to revitalize it.

12. Remove or redirect obsolete content

You might want to remove a piece of content or redirect it to your latest post on the same topic if it is doing more harm than good.

Here are some scenarios in which redirecting or removing a post might be a better solution than updating it:

• Your targeted audience has changed
• The user personas have changed significantly
• The content cannot be updated and is damaging the business’s reputation
• A better post on the same topic already exists on your website
• The overall structure of the content is no longer relevant to your needs and should be changed

13. Develop a cohesive content strategy across channels

Your new content will get old, too, so make sure you have a plan. A good content strategy helps you stay focused. A content strategy is like a roadmap. It helps you decide what to create, which keywords to target, and which topics to cover. A content marketing calendar, such as this one, helps you stay on top of your marketing content needs and eases the burden of creating content consistently. A calendar is also a great tool for integrating your content across marketing channels.

Even if you’re just starting out, a simple content strategy can help you set goals, stay focused, and use your resources wisely.

14. Monitor and adjust

Finally, keep an eye on your content and update it as needed. This helps your content stay relevant and useful for your audience. Here are some basic tips to help you monitor and adjust your content:

1.    Set clear goals: Decide what you want to achieve, like more website traffic or leads. Track your progress with key performance indicators (KPIs).

2.    Use analytics tools: Tools like Google Analytics can track your website’s traffic, user behavior, and conversions to help you understand the content’s performance. SEO tools like Google Search Console, SEMrush, and Ahrefs help track keyword rankings, backlinks, and search traffic. All of this data can be used to pinpoint which pieces of content might not be performing well. Social media analytics tools can help you understand what users like and engage with the most.

3.    Use audience feedback: Audience feedback from surveys and polls allows you to perceive your content through the audience’s eyes. Furthermore, monitor user comments on your content and pay attention to recurring suggestions.

4.    Conduct content audits: Review your content to see how it’s performing and if it’s still relevant. Remove or update anything that’s outdated.

By following these tips, your content will stay fresh and up to date year-round.

Conclusion

This article shows why updating your marketing content is key to getting good results on different channels. We covered 14 proven strategies to help you improve underperforming content and reach a bigger audience. Use these strategies to get the most from your resources and succeed in your marketing efforts.

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