Content has always been king! No marketing strategy is complete without content marketing. As per a report by demand metric, 78 percent of chief marketing officers are in favor that custom content is key for future marketing strategies. Content marketing is a long-term investment. It is an ongoing journey, so it is important that you have a well-laid out and documented content marketing strategy in place before you begin.
6 tips for building a successful content marketing strategy
- Create a planning document
It goes without saying; documented strategies tend to perform better than verbal strategies. Come up with a plan, as well as a document. Improvise it and make changes as you go.
- Focus on your business objectives
Proper business objectives are what keep you and your content strategy on the right path. Associate the success of your content marketing strategy with clear and precise goals. Undoubtedly the effectiveness of your content is not easy to measure. Thus, it is better to associate its success with a few primary and secondary goals. Primary goals could be increasing newsletter subscribers. Secondary goals could focus on improving the rankings on search engines, enhancing website traffic and increasing the number of Facebook page fans.
In order to make sure that your content marketing strategy is on the right track, it is better to measure the success of your content strategy with certain benchmarks, say, getting 3,000 followers on Twitter, or having 50,000 unique visitors every month.
Be clear about the impact of your business goals in order to know the importance of benchmarks in your business and be clear about how the achievement of 50,000 unique visitors will benefit you.
- Communicate your core message
It is essential that you stand out in the crowd of brands on the web today. Make sure that your identity is not lost among many and be very clear to your customers as to how you will benefit them. Identify your target audiences and have a close eye on the type of content that your target audiences like to share, on what platforms your target audiences are most active, and so on. This insight will help you in serving them the content they are looking for.
This is when your unique value proposition (UVP) comes to your rescue. But how would you define your UVP? First things first, UVP is not a headline, slogan, tagline, mission or vision. It is an effective statement that immediately communicates a benefit to your target audience and makes you different from the rest! For example, every beer company provides a strict and focused attention on purity and quality.
Also on StartupNation.com: Content is (Not) King, Content is Currency
- Content amplification plan
Marketing content to reach its target audience is essential, and social media marketing can help greatly. Another reliable way is to make use of influencers. Positive word-of-mouth publicity can also influence millions of your targeted customer base in no time.
For example, suppose you launched a new line of nail polish and you are looking to create awareness about your product. Collaborating with fellow beauty bloggers and reviewers who have top ranks on Google would do the trick. Persuade them to write about your product or your services on their blog. Send them a free sample, or organize a small event in their city, and ask them to cover the event or give an honest review of the product on their blog. This way, a blog that has a reach of, 2 million people, let’s say, is talking about your product, which will in turn boost your brand.
Gather more insights on your customers with the help of website analytics. Study their interests and needs in terms of various parameters like user behavior, internal search data and bounce rate. You can find insight on all these through Google Analytics. Also consider direct feedback, and take the time to communicate with your audience.
- Perform a competitive analysis
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer! Define your competitors. The best way to find them is to use Google search. Just by typing your targeted keywords, the wide range of businesses that are enjoying good ranks in SERPs are naturally your competitors.
Perform a close analysis on their strategy by studying their headlines, their well-performing content, topics they are covering, their style of content, social networks they are active on, etc.
Gather all data and look for the gap that your competitors are leaving. These are the gaps that you should target and focus on.
- Choose the right set of instruments
No strategy is successful without the right tools.
Start by choosing a perfect content management system (CMS) for managing your website or blog content. Reputable CMS platforms include WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. To reap the maximum search engine benefits, make sure that you’re choosing a search engine friendly CMS.
Based on the insights extracted in the above steps, decide on the platforms that you would choose to post and promote your content.
Final thoughts on content marketing strategy
Developing a content marketing strategy that works is a bit of a tedious task, but in the end, your small business will reap the rewards. All that you need is a proper strategy backed up by useful data, analytics and research. Take your time in laying out the strategy by analyzing your own data and the data extracted from your competitors’ strategy. Aim to engage your customers, and the rest will follow.
