A content marketing strategy is essential to respond to your target customer. It helps build relationships, create trust, enhance client conversions, and bring valuable leads.
Before we go further, let’s first define what content marketing is. Content marketing aims to attract and create an audience by offering helpful information and consequently persuading them to recognize the need for your service or product.
The core idea of content marketing was used as early as the 15th century. However, it was only in the 1890s when “The Furrow“, which offered farmers advice on improving their trade. The Furrow provided information on farming and featured stories that its readers enjoyed.
Since then, various companies such as French tire company Michelin, American consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble, comic companies Marvel and DC, and toy company Lego started employing the concept over the years.
John F. Oppedahl first coined the modern term “content marketing” at a meeting of journalists in 1996. It finally put a label on the practice carried out for hundreds of years.
A content marketer should be armed with unique skills in writing and storytelling, research, analytics, and design. In addition, for a content marketing strategy to work, a team should also have access to sales intelligence or tech solutions that will allow them to use data better. Through these, they can work towards creating an effective strategy while following the steps below.
1. Know your audience’s personas and the story you want to focus on.
Identify your target audience by conducting a survey of existing customers, researching the trends, and being aware of your competitors’ targets. Remember that customers are those who begin connecting with your brand even before making a purchase.
Make sure to entice them by providing content that draws them. Then, follow it up with additional content that offers essential information and assistance for when your target market is ready to make their purchases.
Make content for your audience and not your buyer. A company must focus not only on its product but also on topics its audience prefers.
2. Take stock of your content performance and create your content goals.
Ask questions such as what your marketing objectives are for the year. How can your content reach those goals? Use goal-setting frameworks such as SMART or CLEAR.
What are the key figures that should matter in achieving these objectives? Your team will need to look into your past analytics and how your content has been doing against them.
Generating leads, attracting traffic, and promoting brand awareness are still among the primary goals of most businesses.
3. Organize, analyze, and enhance your current content.
Auditing your content will give you a clear idea of what kind of content appeals to your audience. It will also help generate more organic traffic, put your content at a higher ranking, and boost engagement.
4. Prepare an effective editorial plan and content calendar.
In everything, especially in content marketing, it is always essential to have a plan. Put together one by following the steps below:
- Rank which tasks should be on a high or low priority by deciding on the flow of your campaign.
- Generate pertinent topics.
- Organize your content by building a central theme with interrelated topics.
- Research your competition and find out what content formats work well with them.
- Map out the content into stages.
- Make use of an editorial calendar
- Set up content production.
5. Create compelling content.
Content marketers who can come up with the most original idea and unique perspectives usually attract the most attention. Below are tips on how you can also come up with the best content ideas that appeal to your audience.
- Include a mix of content formats to appeal to a broader audience.
- Reinvigorate your content.
- Feature content creation agency by individuals, not brands.
6. Set up content distribution.
Today’s most in-demand content distribution channels are social media (organic and paid), email marketing, and organic search. Examine new channels and ensure your resources go where your audience is, so your content gets seen.
Your content strategy should also feature organic search as its focal point. Prioritize content quality and content optimization by zeroing in on the user experience.
7. Maintain content performance analysis.
This will ensure that you understand what content continuously connects with your audience. Make sure to keep producing the kind of content that attracts them.
Document your content marketing strategy and make necessary tweaks to fine-tune it. With new information, you will need to continually adapt to make it effective and continuously improve the customer experience.
