What are the key Elements of a Good Content Marketing Strategy?

If automating your business is the goal, content marketing could be a great opportunity. Many B2B and B2C companies have not looked back since adopting this practice. There is, however, a lot of good content out there. Most marketers fear to venture into content marketing due to this reason. The focus now has shifted to stop egocentric marketing.

With online marketing getting more visual and creative the need for differentiation is strong. Brands are looking to shift focus to storytelling. They realize no one is the sole source of content on their chosen topic.

The focus now if to offer meaningful business results.

Brands look to create a wealth of knowledge. The content marketing goals are holistic. Successful inbound marketing strategy is the consistent delivery of quality content. Content marketing is set apart by an effective strategy. The rest is already out there, ready to be explored.

Marketers want the customer to move through the purchase decision more quickly. The need to conversion is a big challenge faced by small businesses. Producing quality content that’s consistent is difficult.  One also needs to measure the effectiveness of the content produced.

While some still struggle with fixing goals, others are yet to catch on to newer content marketing styles (re-purposing content). Content marketing is a long-term strategy. The elements help remove the challenges by bringing clarity.

Content marketing strategy helps you provide a framework. With each element, there needs to be more clarity. You will need to dig deeper than just brand awareness as a goal to create a strategy.

So how do you start creating a Content Marketing Strategy?

1. Goals
2. Content Marketing and Business Alignment
3. Custom Content
4. Buyer Persona
5. Content Calender
6. Project Checklist

Goals

What are your primary content marketing goals?

Are these goals achievable?

What resources are needed to achieve them?

Have the guidelines for the goals been set?

Your content marketing goals could be simple e.g. creating brand awareness and increasing traffic. However, there are other factors to keep in mind. Individual goals require an effective strategy.

Strategies could vary from focusing on specific audiences, leveraging different marketing channels, and communicating targeted messages.

Your goal should be able to convert more leads to customers. Improving retention and driving up-sell is a valuable goal. Build your focus on one consumer segment to increase leads.

Fix timelines to evaluate your brand’s goals.

Goals help create high-quality, purposeful content can showcase your company’s expertise.

Goals need to consider engagement possibilities. Content marketing goal is meant to educate, entertain, and provoke questions.

Your content like blog posts, email marketing, e-books, podcasts, advertising needs to fit into a larger picture. If you understand and align your content with the right goals, it can breathe new life into your marketing efforts.

Content Marketing and Business Alignment

Content marketing usually fails when not aligned with business goals. List categories of marketing goals and associated metrics. What are your primary goals from the list? Sales? Brand awareness? Up-sell?

Aligning your content marketing strategy is now simple. Content marketing offers flexibility. You can easily translate content marketing strategies to meet business goals.

The ROI for content marketing depends on the benefits derived by your business goal. It’s subjective. Content marketing gives you room to play in. Shifting marketing investments from low- to high-ROI activities is ideal.

Content marketing costs less to generate lead than traditional marketing.

Simple goals for business include:

• Improve profitability by increasing revenue.
• Improve profitability by limiting expenses.
• Improve customer service.
• Increase customer retention.
• Speed up business growth.
• Build an amazing product.

Custom Content

Developing great content is easy. Copywriters and editors can create an exhaustive calendar. However, you need content that brings satisfaction to your customers.

Content needs to understand motivations and pain points of customers.Well intended articles may have no readers and lose fizz quickly.

Content needs to assist buyer journey. Custom Content is all about engaging with an existing audience. Creating content of this nature requires building relatable situations.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s – Stephen King

Content needs to be relatable to create touch points.  Building a loyal consumer base is a primary marketing goal.

Content marketing allows you to achieve this goal. Remember we are still chasing inbound traffic. Agreed this is time-consuming. However branded content helps in the long run.

Custom content helps bridge search related gaps. You can tailor your content to answer consumer questions. It helps project you as an expert on the topic. 

Simple posts can help answer after sales queries. It can help invite new customers and provide satisfaction to current ones. In all, it will boost your search engine appeal.

Buyer Persona

Buyer Personas are important for any business. The impact of buyer persona is also on marketing. Persona mapping makes it easier for you to tailor your content.

Buyer-specific needs, behaviours, and concerns can be analysed.

The personas need to be as detailed as possible.

Personas need to be realistic.

Negative persons should be part of this exercise. Classifying such customers helps set realistic marketing goals.

Personas help lower cost-per-lead and cost-per-customer for businesses. Buyer personas are hidden behaviours found in databases.

Sales teams can use lead generation data to build personas. Grouping personas are important.

You can use various techniques to get information:

1. Ask basic, demographic-based questions during the interviews.
2. Question them on goals, motivations and challenges.
3. Ask how you can help in the process?
4. Remember all strong quotes from the interview.

Create a list of objections they might raise.

Marketing pitches need to resolve these queries.

The closer to real-life persona, the more likely the success of your campaign.

Content Calender

Content curation and development is vital to successful content marketing. You will need to populate your calendar regularly to stay in the competition.

You will need to fix promotional languages.Additional support, in the form of social media, email campaign and PR, needs to be activated.

Calendars need to contain helpful links, author details, syndication mentions. Editorial calendars are a great way to keep the team focused and organised.

The campaigns should leave room for emerging topics or requests from partners. Pick various content types like videos, blogs, e-books, micro-sites, etc.

Content calendars when done right help align team members and fix accountability. Have a great pool of internal and external contributors, reviewers, and writers. Editorial calendars can be as simple as a Google Sheet.

Project Checklist

Content marketing needs workflow management.

Content marketing needs to be backed by research and relevant data. Content needs to be streamlined, informative, entertaining and unbiased.

Enlist the help of social listening to get primary and secondary data.Create a timeline that the content will travel through during the campaign.

Check if you have enough data. Fix deadlines and process work frames. Match your budgets to your campaigns. Hire agencies and experts to enhance content marketing reach.

Define metrics to look for relevant customer insight. Understand the consumer’s needs, fears and influences.

Understand what touch points you can trigger to complete the buying process. Look at creative solutions for budgeting issues.

Check across groups to ensure error free internal communication. Enlist the use of training companies to bridge gaps.

Do test runs before launch to ensure smooth, error-free campaigns. Design routines to regulate work. Establish a command center for crisis management.Content marketing needs visibility. Build command centers to provide actionable insights.

Conclusion

Content Marketing strategy needs to show the brand promise. A content strategy draws information across channels and devices constructively.

Anonymous visitors now can be tracked as potential customers. A strategy helps understand every interaction that the customer has had over time.

Simple observations now have a meaning. Content marketing strategy helps quality pages get indexed to rank for more search queries.

A great strategy can help increase the perceived expertise, authority, relevance, and trust of your site.

Syndicate your content on your social media platforms for increased visibility. Invest in high traffic content like guest posts to earn thousands of new visitors.

Keep conversion as a primary objective. A strategy is what makes content marketing cost effective. Prospects need to see an affinity for your brand.

It’s crucial for brands to develop a unique voice. Content strategy can turn customers to brand advocates.

Content marketing strategy can connect the dots between marketing and sales. An effective strategy helps your sales team sell more efficiently.

Content is a reflection of how your company positions itself within the market.Significant organic traffic needs an effective content strategy in place.

Developing relevant content helps improve ROI. Content marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing channels. Constant branded content helps stay away from paid media.

Quality content wins over bulk content. Branded content needs a consistent voice. Remember to include profession product images.

Customers prefer sharing images over text. Ensure that your content voice matches the audience and the platform. No matter how great a product, service, category or industry seems, there is always room for innovation that can drive more sales. Branded content can overcome your most common objections. Focus on well-defined targets and you’ll get a better content strategy.

In the end, content should look like content, not advertising.