What Is a Content Marketing Strategy? 5 Steps To Creating One
All well-established businesses today are sustained because of their content. But what is content? And why do you need a content marketing strategy? Content is any information that adds meaning to the lives of your customers.
Earlier, during traditional marketing, businesses reached out to customers through advertisements and pamphlets, promoting their services directly. Although many businesses still use this strategy, it is not as effective as it was in the past. Customers have become smart these days.
When they search for their problem, they expect answers that solve the problem. So, you need to learn and create a content strategy that answers their queries. Moreover, search engines identify businesses that cater to the user’s search intent. If your business provides that information, the search engine will benefit you with organic traffic. However, content has a much larger role than simply providing information. Content bridges the gap between customers and businesses, helping them to connect naturally. To learn how to write search engine optimized content, you should get in touch with experts.
Therefore, you need a strategy that solves your customers’ needs and follows all the guidelines set by search engine algorithms. Let’s decode all the steps you need to create your content strategy.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
A content marketing strategy outlines the process of curating content, publishing it, and then monitoring it. Before you make a content strategy, you need to know how to study the target audience and create content that attracts them. This leads to inbound marketing – where customers reach out to you rather than you reaching out to them.
Your content marketing strategy includes the following:
- For brand awareness, you can create How-to guides, thought leadership articles, research publications, etc.
- Marketers create ebooks, webinars, landing page offers, detailed case studies, etc., for lead generation.
- Custom engagement – newsletters, community forums, quizzes, polls, etc.
How To Create Content Marketing In 5 Steps
To create your content marketing strategy, follow the below 5 steps –
Set clear objectives:
Before you begin creating your content marketing strategy, have a meeting with your team. Talk about the objectives you want to achieve through your content. Set small goals that are feasible for your business to achieve.
Start your day by stating the goals your business wants to achieve. This will also help your team curate content accordingly. Is it more website traffic? Increased sales? Brand awareness?
You can use the SMART criteria to set your goals:
- Specific: What do you want to achieve from your content? Do you want more engagement? Set your goals accordingly so the content team and writers can create content accordingly.
- Measurable: Big or small, you should be able to keep track of your goals. For example, if your content team is publishing on LinkedIn, you should be able to track how many likes or comments your posts are getting. Moreover, are you getting this engagement from the right audience or not? Consistent tracking would help you find out how much you’ve achieved and what’s left to cover.
- Achievable: Avoid setting high goals for your business. If it is 100 organic visits per month, keep it 100. Make your goals attainable and realistic.
- Relevant: The content you post should be relevant to your target audience. If you create the wrong content, you will attract the wrong audience. You can take the help of experts who know how to carry out brand promotion online to target the right audience.
- Time-bound: Your goals should have a deadline. This would keep a feeling of urgency in the work, and everybody would have a plan and workflow.
Analyze your target audience:
The second step to creating high-quality content is to understand your target audience. So start by understanding – “What does your business cater to?” The best way to find out is by studying the product and the service you want to create. Based on that, you can create the buyer’s persona for your target audience.
For example, if your business wants to sell baby clothes, your buyer’s persona would focus on new mothers, expecting mothers, or mothers with a baby older than 1+ years. Once you have identified your target audience, you must understand their challenges and pain points. Why is it important?
Whatever product or service you offer your customers should add value to their lives. It should solve a problem. For example, the challenge a new mother could have is finding the right size of clothes for her newborn child.
Based on that, you would make your digital efforts, converting the customer into a lead. This could include creating content for the audience, as they might search for queries like “how to find baby clothes.”
Audit your current digital presence:
Once you know your target audience, your next step is to figure out how to reach out to them. Most customers start by searching for their queries on a search engine like Google. However, growing digital options allow you to find your targeted audience on social media platforms such as Meta, X, or Instagram.
If your business is new and has no digital presence, your first task is to grow a following. You have to start by creating relevant content to attract the audience. However, if your business has been in the market for a while, you should assess the performance of current digital channels. Also, check: Is there any channel where you can reach out to your audience? Your audit should look for ways to attract your audience organically.
Select appropriate digital channels and tactics:
After completing your audits, choose the right mix of digital channels. This should include different channels to reach out to your audience, like Instagram, emails, Meta, etc. Then, you can post content on these channels regularly. For example, you could post informational content on “baby clothes.” What fabric should you choose? What size should you buy?
Your content should be relevant and authentic. Do not try to be too promotional. If you add some CTAs in your content, try to make it subtle so your customers can move forward into the buyer’s journey naturally or because they are curious to know more.
Develop a content plan and monitor results:
To engage your audience, you should create content regularly. For this, you require a content framework and a plan. You could use a spreadsheet to outline what type of content you would be publishing. For this, you have to rely on the SEO team.
They will help you find out the keywords that your customers are searching for. Based on that, you can create a blog post, a social media post, or any other content to reach out to your customers.
Note that your content creation journey doesn’t end after publishing the content. To check whether your content is working, you must monitor it. Assess the performance of your content and continuously track and optimise your efforts using analytics and KPIs.
Summary
A content marketing strategy is essential to achieving the end goals of your business. We have covered five steps to creating a successful digital marketing strategy. To create your strategy, begin by understanding your target audience. If you don’t have any idea about this, talk to the product or sales team. They could help you identify the customers they are targeting. Once you have some idea, create a descriptive buyer’s persona.
Here, ask yourself-
- Who is my ideal audience?
- What type of content might they be looking for?
- What are the problems they might be facing?
While developing your content strategy, focus on solving your customers’ problems. Empathise with them. Do not push them to buy products or services.
