Whether you are new to the idea of content marketing or you have been working on it for years, your content marketing strategy should be reviewed often and updated to stay current. Ensure you keep your plan current, including engaging, unique content for your target audience.
In this post, we’ll define content strategy, discuss why your company needs a content marketing plan, and outline the actions you’ll need to follow to construct your strategy.
Content Strategy
Your content strategy is your plan on how you will use the content you create to achieve your company’s objectives. This includes content that is textual, visual, and audio. A great content strategy will captivate your target audience at each stage of the funnel and keep them engaged even after purchasing.
There’s a reason we speak about marketing and content strategies: to obtain the most significant outcomes, you must be clear, on topic, and consistent. So, how should you organize and focus your marketing strategy? First, you need to ask yourself a few questions.
Who will be reading my content?
Who is your content intended for? Do you have multiple audiences that you are trying to reach with the content you are creating?
Your content marketing strategy can appeal to numerous personas, just as your business may have multiple types of consumers.
Using multiple platforms and types of content allows you to disseminate custom messaging to each persona.
What issue will you address for your target audience(s)?
Ideally, your service or product answers a problem your target audience is experiencing. Similarly, your content should educate and guide your target audience as they begin to recognize and address the problem.
A solid content marketing strategy benefits users on both sides of your service or product: those still determining their challenges and those currently utilizing your service or product to tackle them.
Your content promotes the solution you’re providing and helps develop credibility with your target audience.
What distinguishes you?
Your competitors’ services or products may be similar to your offerings. So, your potential buyers must know what makes yours the best.
Your most valuable asset may be that you have been in business for 20 years. Or it may be that your brand has a distinct voice that differentiates you from the competition.
To show consumers why they should purchase from you, you have to demonstrate why with a meaningful message. Then, include that message across your content to create mindshare.
What content types should you prioritize?
To choose which media to prioritize, you must first meet your audience where they are.
Otherwise, you may waste time developing content that does not reach or engage your audience.
Once you’ve identified the ideal formats, start planning a budget to determine the resources you’ll need to carry out your strategy.
Where will your content be distributed?
There are numerous channels where you can publish content for your target audience. These channels may include your website, social media platforms, podcasts, and more. Similarly, just as you publish your content in different channels, you can also develop content in many forms.
When deciding where to publish, it is essential to know where your target audience spends their time. For example, if they like long-form video content, you should look into publishing content on YouTube. On the contrary, Instagram and TikTok are good options if your audience likes short-form content.
How will you handle the development and distribution of content?
It might be challenging to figure out how you’ll develop and publish all of your material.
Before you begin, it is critical to establish:
- Who is making what?
- Where will it be published?
- When will it go live?
This may be simple in a small team if you are the lone decision-maker. However, as your organization expands, you may need to work with many content teams to develop an efficient approach.
Today’s content strategies reduce clutter by managing content by topic. In addition, it is easier to visualize the message you want to get across to your audience and establish the business as an industry expert by organizing a content editorial calendar around your topics.
Why Do Businesses Need a Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing helps businesses create a sustainable plan for cost-effective website traffic and new leads.
If your content team can write just one blog that receives consistent organic website traffic, an embedded link to an eBook or helpful tool will keep generating leads for you.
The consistent flow of traffic and leads generated by your evergreen content will allow you to experiment with various revenue-generating marketing methods such as sponsored content, social media advertising, and distributed content.
Furthermore, your content will attract leads, educate consumers, and increase brand recognition.
How to Create a Framework for Your Content Marketing Strategy
Now, let’s explore the intricacies of creating a content marketing strategy.
1. Purpose
When creating your content marketing strategy, the first thing you need to define is your purpose. What is your motivation for creating content and developing a content marketing strategy for your business?
Knowing your goals before planning can help you choose what is ideal for your approach.
2. Persona Research
To create a successful strategy, you must determine your content’s target audience or buyer persona.
Understanding your target audience allows you to create valuable and relevant content your target audience will want to read.
If you’re a seasoned marketer, your objective could have shifted. Is your goal to reach a new demographic or broaden your present market? Do you want to stick with the same demographic? Each year, revisiting your buyer personas through market research is critical to increasing your target audience.
3. Content Research
Most companies begin writing blogs in the early stages. If you want to experiment with alternative formats, you may want to do an audit of your content to determine your best and worst performing material. Then, utilize that knowledge to decide which direction you need to go in next.
If you’ve been in business long, review your past content marketing efforts and the outcomes from the prior year. After your review, identify the things you can do better in the upcoming year and create new objectives.
No matter your stage, an audit of your content can help you decide what your audience is connecting with most. Additionally, your audit will help you to find gaps in your keystone content and topic clusters and generate new content ideas.
4. Content Management System (CMS)
Content development, dissemination, and analytics are essential components of content management. Investing in a CMS can help you quickly produce, manage, and track your content.
5. Determine the Materials You Will Include in Your Content Marketing Strategy
Determining the types of materials you want to include in your strategy will help you stay focused on reaching your target audience whether you write blogs, or eBooks, or branch out to audio content like commercials or podcasts.
6. Generate Content Ideas
It’s time to start coming up with ideas for your next content campaign. While some great tools are available that help generate ideas, having a well-defined target audience is essential. This will help you determine the types of content that will intrigue them and help them to resolve their challenges.
7. Publish and Manage Your Content
When developing your strategy, you must include more than just the type of content you plan to create. It’s also important to include how you’ll organize your content.
You’ll be heading in the right direction with an editorial schedule if you want to publish a balanced and diversified collection of content for your website. Next, develop a social media content calendar to share and promote your content on other platforms and websites.
Many of your topics will be evergreen, meaning they will be relevant and fresh for your readers for years to come. That being said, do not disregard current events. While they might not constitute much of your schedule, they can assist you in producing surges of traffic.
Most people expect big holidays, such as Christmas and New Year’s, to be included in their marketing efforts; however, do not limit yourself to these important marketing dates.
If there are holidays that may appeal to your target audience, producing content on your social media or blog around those holidays may be worthwhile.
Types of Content Marketing
The most common content marketing formats to develop for your audience are listed below.
Blogging
Blog posts are published content on a website that is created to attract new users to your website. Therefore, your blogs should be reviewed for necessary updates to keep the content fresh.
Posts should deliver valuable information to your audience to share your content with their friends and colleagues on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., as well as on other relevant websites.
As a rule, most blog posts are between 1,000 to 2,000 words. However, you can experiment to determine whether your followers like long or short blog posts.
EBooks
EBooks are an excellent tool for lead generation. This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come in, guiding readers to a landing page where they can input their contact information and download an eBook to discover additional helpful business information. As a result, the company that created the eBook now has a fresh lead for the sales staff to engage.
However, eBooks aren’t only useful at the top of the funnel; they can serve diverse objectives throughout the buyer’s journey. EBooks can help educate prospects on a specific pain point. The content in your eBook should be informative and relevant.
Farther down the funnel, your eBooks should be personalized, providing more sales information. For example, prospects might benefit from comparison guides or an eBook of case studies at this level.
Case Studies
Creating case studies helps you share a customer’s narrative while building credibility with your target audience.
Case studies are a very flexible type of content marketing since they can take various forms. For example, a case study might be in the form of a blog, ebook, infographic, or podcast.
The main point of a case study is to show your target audience how your services or products help people or businesses. So, consider where you want to provide value before selecting a customer to create your case study.
Infographics
Infographics are more effective at organizing and visualizing data than words on their own.
Using an infographic is a great way to provide a lot of information in a clear and understandable format.
Videos
Not everyone likes to read, which is where videos come in. Videos can be highly engaging content that you can share on your website and social media.
Videos require a more significant investment of time and money than textual content. However, because visual content provides a high ROI, you should consider it for your content marketing strategy.
Podcasts
Podcasts are an excellent medium for audiences that do not have the time or interest in reading material daily. Starting a podcast can help your target audience discover your brand.
The volume of podcast listeners is on the rise year after year. In 2021 the number of individuals who regularly listen to podcasts reached over 100 million. This number is expected to increase to 125 million listeners in 2022.
Consider podcasting another option for your content marketing strategy if you are looking for ways to expand your reach – especially if you have interesting individuals to interview that will provide valuable and entertaining content for your listeners.
Social Media
After consistently generating material on your site, consider developing a social media campaign to share your content. You may adapt your material into appropriate formats to create unique content for each social media channel.
Posting on social media is a vital piece of your strategy to help you increase your brand’s reach. Researching where your audience is will allow you to know which platforms you should be spending your time providing content to your target audience. There are hundreds of social media platforms. Below are the platforms that are the most popular around the world:
- YouTube
- Facebook Messenger
- TikTok
- Telegram
- Snapchat
- Quora
When you create your business accounts on social media platforms, it is essential to personalize your content to the platform.
For example, if you are creating content on Instagram, users on this platform look for images that appeal to their visual senses. There are many options on Instagram, such as feeds, IGTV, and Stories. Alternatively, the TikTok platform targets a younger market looking for short videos that are current, creative, and entertaining. Do your research to determine your audience’s platforms, and then tailor your content creation to their needs.
Wrapping Up
If you take the time to set up your content marketing strategy ahead of time, you’ll be in good shape for a successful publishing campaign. By organizing your material and planning, you can ensure that your blog posts, videos, and other content are well-crafted and published regularly. And don’t forget about the tools that can help you manage and measure your content – using these resources will help keep you on track and ensure that your audience is getting the best possible experience from your material. Do you need help with your content marketing strategy or execution? Secured Logics can help. Contact us to schedule a consultation.
