So you want to give content marketing a try. However, you’re still wondering whether or not you need a ‘strategy.’ There is no shadow of a doubt that your online content is of the utmost importance in and of itself. But, it would be best if you kept your eyes on the prize. And for that, you need goals and ways to achieve them, something which is the backbone of any ”strategy.’ In fact, many businesses utilize various types of content to generate leads, inquiries, improve customer experience, build brand awareness, and much more.
They also use content to get feedback through various marketing channels. However, no matter your goal, your final content ‘strategy, whether your Twitter account, Facebook page, or blog, is to effectively and consistently promote your brand’s message and provide an excellent user experience to add value to your business.
When implemented appropriately, your content marketing strategy will generate many leads while costing 62 percent less than traditional marketing techniques. So, with that in mind, if you’re looking to create a solid content marketing strategy, then you have come to the right place. So, without further ado, let us look at some essential elements of a content marketing strategy. Some of these elements are listed down below.
Covered Topics
Diverse content
Providing a diverse range of content is vital for any content marketing strategy these days. Doing so allows you to engage your audience via informative content, including blogs, articles, how-to guides, and whatnot. However, your content marketing strategy shouldn’t end with articles or blogs. In fact, you need to diversify the range of content you offer to your customers with the help of ebooks, webinars, infographics, product demo videos, and much more.
Furthermore, you should also keep a close eye on the type of content that is the most engaging for today’s customers. Once you know what works, it is all about churning new, readable content regularly. That said, you also need to incorporate a DAM system into your content marketing strategy. After all, managing, organizing, and distributing such content types require a lot of effort, time, and money. But, a digital asset management system will help make these processes a little for you.
Relevant customer personas
According to a CMI study, around 77 percent of successful marketers utilize personas in their content marketing strategy. In the end, catering to an audience with varying needs through a single piece of content is impossible. After all, your target audience will consist of various individuals with different job roles and values. In fact, a particular customer’s need might be different than others when choosing a product or service. As a result, you have to develop content that caters to every customer’s unique needs and requirements. And to achieve such a thing, you have to identify your customer’s demographic traits such as education, age, and much more. For example, you can utilize a person mapping tool to develop buyer personas according to their challenges, job responsibilities, job title, target industry, etc. This tool will allow you to jot down every buyer’s unique persona so you can offer them personalized content that effectively solves their issues.
An excellent content marketing platform
You might have an excellent content marketing strategy in hand. However, you won’t be able to do much without the presence of the right tools. In fact, you might not be able to measure your content’s performance if you aren’t using the right content marketing platform. Not to mention, your content marketing team will end up losing organization, efficiency, and productivity. So, it is vital to your content marketing strategy to use the right content marketing platform.
So, go ahead and invest in one that caters to every aspect of your content marketing strategy ranging from content development to measurement to publishing to planning.
Solid content promotion and distribution plan
An excellent content marketing strategy doesn’t end at content creation alone. In fact, promotion and distribution hold equal importance! after all, you have to ensure that your content makes its way in front of the right customers as soon as possible to improve engagement, brand awareness, and, most importantly, more conversions. Meaning, you have to choose the best channels for distributing and promoting your content online. So, ask yourself, which platform will work the best for you? For example, if you’re using Facebook to market and distribute your content, do you know whether or not your target customers spend most of their time there? In such a case, you have to test out various social media platforms to see which one sees the most engagement.
Furthermore, you should also promote and distribute your online content via various content syndication platforms. Moreover, give paid promotion on social media platforms, such as Facebook, a try as well. Also, you can get in touch with leading influencers in your relevant industry to promote and distribute your content with their followers. However, be prepared to pay these influencers for their content promotion efforts. Typically, influencers charge anywhere from 120 dollars to 1500 dollars for Instagram shares, depending on the influencers’ popularity.
An effective content calendar
You have created your content and selected your choice of content distribution and promotion platform. So, the following essential element of any content marketing strategy is to map your content using a content calendar. Doing so will allow you to segment attributes such as content owner, campaign, topics, Etc. Moreover, a content calendar will enable you to schedule your content on a transparent, visual platform, which you can then share with your content marketing team.
However, working with your internal content creation and marketing team is vital to aligning your content calendar according to the changes in your target industry cycles. These valuable content news cycles will be precious when executing and distributing readable, user-friendly content online.
Conclusion
Like everything is like and business, when you have a goal, you need to ensure you’re on the right direction to achieving said goals. Suppose you adequately planned for everything in the beginning. In that case, you’ll already have with you key performance indicators, metrics, and the milestones you want to achieve. The same is the case with a content marketing strategy. For instance, you may want to generate ten daily comments on your blogs or attract one hundred visitors per month. Whatever the case may be, you must monitor your strategy’s performance and adjust accordingly to compensate for any changes in customer behaviors or the marketplace.
