A content strategy is the atomic unit of successful marketing. Honestly, when I first started as a content marketing consultant, I faced several gridlocks. Though I had a good flair for writing and had success with some of my pieces, quite soon, I discovered there was nothing that tied all my content efforts together. That is, I did not have a specific content marketing strategy. I soon figured, “creating content” without a thoughtful vision is basically like writing individual book pages for readers without any logical storyline. So to save you from this ordeal, I have come up with 7 foolproof content marketing strategies that will help you to yield the best results for your business.
Can’t wait to learn the strategies at the earliest?
Then let get to it without any further ado:
1- Know your specific goal
Before banging your head on the wall, thinking about “what” content you are going to create, you must have a clear idea about “why” you are preparing that content it in the first place.
How are you planning to measure the success of the campaign?
Which aspect are you going to focus on?
- Traffic?
- Conversions?
- Social shares and engagement?
- App downloads?
- New subscribers?
- Video views?
- Podcast downloads?
- Sales?
Understanding your goal from the very beginning will help you during other important decision making stages as well.
2- Identify your audience
According to John Mark a digital marketer and senior paper help expert, the key to a successful content marketing is “talking to the right people in the right language.” So, before embarking on the content marketing campaign, you will need to uncover your primary niche audience; also known as your buyer’s persona.
This involves developing a firm idea of the current marketing trends, the demographics you want to address, the people who are most likely to engage with your product, what exactly solution your product or service offers, who has the resources to afford it etc.
So, it will be essential to consistently keep updating your customer persona as well. Marketing databases, surveys, interviews, focus groups and machine learning tools will help you to tap into the behavioral analytics of your target market and customer persona.
Click here for more tips on creating audience-specific content.
3- Set up a blog (hurry, if you haven’t done it already!)
Now let’s move from the tactical to the technical aspect of your content marketing strategy; finding a suitable platform to host your content. And luckily, you get to choose from a gamut of different options (starting from ready to use platforms to fully customize templates).
So, what’s your plan? Do you want to build your own platform or use someone else’s? Surely the pre-existing external domains like Medium, YouTube and Apple (that host write-ups, videos and Podcasts respectively) give you instant access to an active audience base. But, in the case of pre-existing platforms, you won’t be in control of what the platform does in future. They might change their policies, get hacked or in extreme scenarios shutdown one fine morning leaving you clueless.
This is why I personally prefer using WordPress. Though it will be a little difficult to kick start a campaign with WordPress in your initial years, it will definitely deem beneficial in the long run.
Well, the final choice is yours.
4- Keep updating the contents (i.e. if you have been publishing already)
Are the earlier blogs and articles not driving enough traffic to your website? Then, this will be the time to bring those pre-published content within the ambit of your new content marketing plan. It is never too late to re-evaluate your content strategy and shift gears when you find something isn’t working as per planning. To do this successfully, you must have a clear idea of what exact content ‘types’ you’re going to produce.
At this point, we’re not talking just about the format of your content (i.e. blog posts, videos or podcasts) but rather the specific topics on which you will need to write consistently.
BrandVox, the founder Andrea Goulet calls these ‘Content Pillars (topics that serve as the foundation of your content marketing strategy).
For example, in the case of a finance blog, your core content pillars can be:
- Personal finance tips and tricks
- Interviews and stories about people who found financial freedom
- Industry news and what it means for you
- Finance basics
You might even consider scrapping your content altogether if it doesn’t fit into your new content marketing strategy. It’s always better to write from scratch rather than losing your profile visits to outdated content.
5- Invest in figuring out the analytics and reporting
The bottom line is, no matter how popular, creative or memorable your contents are, its success will finally be judged by the impact it makes on your businesses sales.
It will be essential to establish sound measurement practices from the very beginning of your content marketing program (to track, analyze and optimize the business’ performance clearly). You can use online tools like Google Analytics to understand the metrics like source of traffic, the number of page visits, the devices used to access the content, the bounce rate, inbound links generated, repeat and new traffic, on-site behavior and etc.
6- Build an extensive email list
Let’s now divert our attention to the most crucial piece of the distribution puzzle, i.e. Email. Emails are a great way to amplify your content engagement as it gives you direct access to the inbox of your subscribers.
So, bunk everything else and first set up an extensive email list that is well-organized and segmented. A comprehensive Email list shows that you have eager subscribers who actually want to hear from you. Also, the people in your email list (who are interested and engaged in your emails) are far more likely to become loyal customers in the long run.
Get in touch with any email service provider (or, ESP) at the earliest. They allow you to send emails, check reports, build/maintain your subscriber list and provide analytics on how your campaigns are doing. They will also keep your list healthy and in check, make sure your emails stay out of spam folders and ensure you’re adhering to all relevant laws around emails.
Also, make sure you maintain a clean email list to ensure high deliverability to your subscribers.
7- Customer’s journey map
A journey map charts the relationship between your company and your customers. It will be like a timeline of touchpoints told from the point of view of the customers.
But in most cases, their journey map isn’t linear as often different customers are at different stages of their journey. They tend to jump from one stage to another and interact with some of your touchpoints and channels while completely skipping the others. To avoid such dysfunctional journey, you must draft customer-centered, smart content keeping the customer’s needs and requirements in mind.
Make sure your content caters to these four basic stages o customer journey map, if you want to drive all the potential customers to your stores.
Lastly, you must remember that these are just the basic guidelines. Creating precise content strategies that suit best for your business will require time and attention to details. Go through trial and error, track the results, be ready to fail (and keep learning from your failures) and eventually you will be able to serve the customers in a way the benefits your overall business. Utilize these tips to curate the best content which will allow your readers to see what your company really has to offer.
Author Bio: John Mark has been working as an digital marketing manager for a reputed content marketing firm in the UK for the past 10 years. He is also associated with MyAssignmenthelp through which he provides paper help to students all over the globe.
Never miss a story..!!
Grab the Latest SEO & SMO News, Tips, Updates & Trends..!!
See Our Blogcenter
Want to share your thoughts with our readers? Learn how to become a contributing author
