How To Create A Content Marketing Strategy
Introduction
How do I create a content marketing strategy? This is a question that challenges the average content marketer. CMI discovered that about 63% of businesses do not follow a documented strategy while developing their contents. However, there’s a higher chance of success when there’s a strategy behind your content marketing. There’s no one way fit all for your content marketing strategy, but there are a few guidelines you can use.
- Introduction
- What is Content Marketing Strategy?
- Importance of a Content Marketing Strategy
- Types of Contents
- Steps in Creating Successful Content Marketing Strategy
- Write Out Your Mission
- Identify Goals/Objectives Of Your Contents
- Lead Acquisition
- Increased Sales
- Attract New Customers
- Brand Awareness
- Nurturing Leads
- Audience Research
- Content Mapping
- Create a Content Calendar
- List of Articles
- Content Format
- Assign Roles
- Research/Content Requirement
- Writing/Production Timeline
- Publishing Date
- Promotion Platforms
- How to Market Your Content
- Social Media
- Paid Advertising
- Forums
- Search Engines
- Write Your Contents
- Measuring Campaign Success
- Conclusion
What is Content Marketing Strategy?
A content marketing strategy refers to the structure you’ve built that your contents will follow. It is a blueprint/structure that guides the creation of contents that will engage your customers to fulfill specific goals. Content marketing strategy includes content types, publication date, intending customers, missions, and goals, amidst many others.
Importance of a Content Marketing Strategy
There’s a high chance of missing your destination if you travel without a map or guide. A strategy is as important in content marketing as a map/guide is important in arriving at a desired destination. However, content strategy helps you to stay on course, commit to your goals, prepare well, and inspire continuity. Also, creating intentional content delivers great ROI in the long run. Thus, it is important to invest adequate and necessary resources into crafting a strategy for your content.
Types of Contents
There are different types of contents that can be employed to achieve your marketing goals. As a matter of fact, content type has edges over each other, in respect to audience and products. In actual fact, there are some content types that perfectly fit a particular audience or products and some doesn’t. And lastly, channels must be considered in choosing the most suited content type to utilize in achieving our marketing goals.
Audio: Many marketers are utilizing the use of podcast channels to market their contents nowadays. Podcasts serves as a great method in satisfying audience that require audio. The visually impaired audience will appreciate a podcast content more than other types of contents.
E-books: This is a content form that is best appreciated by audience who require more information. This type of content presents in-depth into the value of a business. E-books are mostly preferred by scholars and institutions.
Visuals: This can either be in the form of video and graphics. Many marketers employ visuals in presenting their contents.
Blog Articles: Many content marketers employ the use of blog articles in passing their message across to their audience. However, a great investment is needed in making this type of content successful. There must be periodic posting of contents.
Steps in Creating Successful Content Marketing Strategy
Below are the main steps, which are essential in creating a successful content marketing strategy. It is however worthwhile to know that, content marketing is a journey. It is a journey of a cycle. That is, you take actions, observe results, modify actions and relaunch.
Write out your Mission
The first step in structuring a successful marketing plan is to write out the mission statement. A mission statement highlights the value your contents provide, your drive, and your audience. It is important to make the mission statement as concise and rhythmic as possible. A concise and rich mission statement serves as a motivation for continuity on the long run.
Identify goals/objectives of Your Marketing Content
The foundation of every successful strategy is to identify goals. Identifying goals is essential in content marketing. We stated earlier that content marketing is a cycle. If you don’t have an identifiable goal you want to achieve, it will be difficult to measure results and relaunch. Key performance indicators directly relate with identified goals. You can only get indication performance based on the goals you’ve set. And also, your goals must be SMART adhesive. That is, your goals must be simple, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. Examples of goals can be lead acquisition, increased sales, attracting new customers, brand awareness and nurturing leads.
Lead acquisition
This is a view to getting key information about potential customers. For example, this could include email address, phone numbers, and location, amidst many others.
Increased sales
One of the major goals of content marketing is to increase sales.
Attract new customers
Attracting new customers to your products or services can also be a major goal you might want to achieve.
Brand awareness
Brand awareness is a reasonable goal to invest in, especially for small and new businesses.
Nurturing leads
It is essential to nurture the customers you already have. And many people create content goal to nurture their customers.
Audience research
In learning how to create a content marketing strategy, It is important to do a research into the type of your audience. You need to do a critical research and analysis about your audience. You want to know the basic demographics that makes them different from others. Also, you want to know the best type of contents (audio, visual, e-book, or blog) that suits them. Audience research has revealed a lot of effective approaches to get the best out of marketing contents. You can use the 5x5x5 methodology. This methodology observes your best five audiences and document their wants, interests, expectation, and needs. And the result will guide you on the best way to approach a general audience. Audience research is very important, and it is otherwise known as the Persona research.
Content Mapping
The next critical step in the progress of strategy building is content mapping. Content mapping refers to researching the appropriate content that fits all audiences. There are different stages of customers’ journey, and each stage requires different contents. Content mapping helps to fit the appropriate content with the right audience. There are some contents that best fit reaching a customer for the first time. There’s another content that best fits a customer in the consideration stage. And there is another content that best fits customers who have previously converted.
Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is very essential. It will increase dedication and also give you a vivid picture of what you stand to achieve. It will guide you and put order into the sharing of your content. A Content calendar will also help you to measure dedication and commitment to strategies. Here are the lists of what a productive content calendar should entail.
List of articles
Articles must be listed in topics into the calendar. This aids proper research and proactiveness in writing reasonable and exhaustive content.
Content format
The format of the content must also be detailed; either to use an e-book, audio, visual or blog articles.
Assign roles
Roles must be assigned in the calendar. That is; content writer, researcher, data collector, and every other activity that is essential to finalizing the content. Assigning roles puts the team on their toes and ensure timely result delivery.
Research/Content requirement
A calendar must also contain the required resources that is needed to create intending contents. There are some contents that require more resources than others. An e-book major more on online and empirical research, video majors more on gadgets, and blog articles major more on online research. A calendar should list all resources peculiar to the listed articles, and make preparation for acquisition.
Writing/production timeline
It is necessary to include the timeline for writing/producing the contents. If there is no timeline, a calendar won’t be complete. Timelines help to eradicate procrastination, and also aid professional approach to stated goals.
Publishing date
The publishing date must be recorded in the calendar. Many businesses have secured the loyalty of their audience because of orderliness in publishing their articles. If your audience know the time of the day/week that you publish contents, there’s high tendency of securing their trust. Thus, a publishing date is essential when creating a calendar.
Promotion platforms
You must also document the platforms that are best suited to promote your contents in your calendar. Platforms are chosen in respect to the targeted audience.
How to Market Your Content
Some people say it is better to invest 60% of your time in promoting your contents and 40% in creating them. There’s need for promotional plan and the need to identify platforms to utilize in marketing your contents. Without an adequate plan for promotion, your content might not go far in reaching the right audience. Thus, here are some platforms you can utilize to market your contents.
Social media
The social media is a platform for billion of users all over the world. During the third quarter of 2018, it was discovered that Facebook has an average of 2.2 billion active users per month. Other social media have hundreds of millions of active users as well. In the pool of these wide audience, are potential customers for your business.
Paid advertising
Paid advertisement is also a great avenue for marketing your content. Many people use google ads, and SEM in marketing their contents. Paid advertising is very important, as it enables your content to be viewed by a wide range of your audience.
Forums
There are many groups online and sometimes real-life scenario. A forum related to your articles or contents is a great way of promoting your content. In such forums, you can answer relevant questions and provide a link to your contents for detailed information.
Search engines
Search engine is a very good way of promoting your contents. As a matter of fact, you must tailor your contents to what your audience are searching for on the search engine. If your contents answer questions being asked on the search engine, then, SE will promote your contents.
Write your content
After all the aforementioned points have been critically taken, take time to harmonize them to write your contents. You will find quality and promising contents on your table if you observe the above factors in creating a content marketing strategy.
Measuring campaign success
You will need to measure the result of your campaign after it must have run for a while. The campaign can be measured in regards to metrics. However, there are different types of metrics. The metric you will observe and measure must be the one that correlates with your desired goals. If your goal is to drive more sales, traffic, and lead generation, amidst others, then each goal will demand different metrics. Measuring the performance of your contents will ease your relaunching stage and enhance greater conversions.
Conclusion
Content marketing strategy is simple and very effective if you observe the listed factors above. You stand a good and better chance if you have a documented strategy in marketing your content. A good content marketing strategy will keep you dedicated and committed to your course, which will ultimately generate mind-blowing results.
