The Importance of Content Marketing Strategy

Going into any situation without a plan will prevent you from optimizing your desired goals. This is especially true when tackling a marketing strategy.

You may think starting a business is the hardest part of being a successful entrepreneur, but effectively operating your company can be much harder, especially if you haven’t clearly defined your short and long-term goals.

These goals may include:

• Generating leads
• Gaining eCommerce sales
• Increasing your brand awareness

Knowing your business objectives helps you create a roadmap to achieving them. And, no matter the range of your goals, you’ll need a well-defined strategic marketing approach. You need to know where to direct your resources and energy to create captivating content via multiple channels.

From blogs to social media posts to emails, your content should be custom-designed for search engine optimization to boost your rankings and bring in a larger audience.

How to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

A business that chooses to market itself with an overwhelming amount of explicit advertisements and promotional content gets annoying fast. No customer wants to be continuously pushed to buy or learn more about a service.

Effective digital marketing strategies are:

• Audience focused.
• Consistent.
• Adaptable.
• Multi-channel and multi-platform.
• Created based on precise goals.
• Designed using SEO principles.

Aligning your strategy with your business goals and your audience’s needs creates long-term, synergetic, and sustainable relationships with your customers. This helps your business stick around for as long as you want it to.

Let’s break down 7 of the most important tips for creating the best content marking strategy.

1. Understanding Your Audience

Whether you are just launching your company or you’ve been around forever, knowing who your target audience is allows you to tailor your products, services, and marketing techniques to attract customers.

Not every person on the planet is going to want the product or service you’re hoping to sell. You may be offering a service in a specific location, or offering a product created for a certain type of person. Knowing who and where you should target will generate business.

There are several ways to figure out your ideal audience:

Create an audience profile by determining the characteristics and needs of someone who would most benefit from using your business. Attempt to be as specific as possible and tailor the characteristics to your product or service.

Determine the demographics of your target audience, such as age, location, gender, etc.

Identify what problem your service solves, so you can focus on people struggling with that problem.

Conduct audience research by creating surveys for your current or potential customers. This research will reveal demographics and allow you to directly ask why they use you.

Source: Business Insider

2. Setting Clear Goals and Objectives

To begin creating content, you have to know why you’re doing so.

When you start a business, you should clearly outline your long-term goals and objectives. These may include:

• Revenue goals for the next 1, 5, and 10 years.
• Building a loyal audience and good reputation.
• Expanding your team and the services/products you offer.
• Receiving acclaim for your growth.

These goals will drive your marketing content, as you can get more specific about how each piece of content will push your business one step further. You can also begin to clearly define your marketing content objectives.

We recommend setting SMART objectives for your strategy, which stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-Bound

Having analytics to evaluate after releasing different forms of contact is essential for determining their effectiveness. If your channels experience an increase in traffic, positive conversations, and engagement, you can decide to continue with your strategy. If the results are negative, you can alter your strategy.

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3. Content Creation and Planning

There are a lot of different types of content you can make to reach a variety of audiences, including:

• Blog posts.
• Infographics.
• Social media posts on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
• Videos.
• eBlasts.

As aforementioned, no one likes to be bombarded with content, so we recommend developing a content calendar for at least one month in advance. This way your content stays relevant and you can capitalize on trends without overwhelming your audience.

It’s also important to make sure your audience enjoys the content you’re putting out. You can determine this via engagement metrics, or direct feedback.

4. Distribution Channels and Promotion

The best digital content marketing strategy pushes content through all distribution channels:

• Social media.
• Email.
• SEO blogs and landing pages.

Each of these channels will require a different strategy. Your company’s social media may be a bit more fun and audience-engagement-focused, while your SEO blogs are more formal and educational.

You can also venture into the world of paid ads. Although this is a more explicit form of direct advertising, it can help your business grow.

5. Measurement and Analytics

Regularly measuring performance data and evaluating analytics is the most concrete way to determine if your campaign is successful. Investing money into a content marketing strategy that isn’t helping your business is pointless.

Some commonly used analytic tools are:

• Google Analytics.
• Social media analytics. Each platform will have its own analytic system.
• Semrush.
• Looker Studio.

Accessing the performance data of your digital marketing efforts is great… unless you’re not sure what to do with it.

When analyzing your data, you can evaluate your success based on your company’s key performance indications (KPIs). KPIs are metric targets that indicate progress toward your bigger goals.

Examples of KPIs include:

• The number of leads.
• Website traffic numbers.
• Call-to-action engagements.
• Customer satisfaction ratings (gathered from surveys or reviews.)
• Net profit.
• Numbers of retained and new customers.

To help track your KPIs and analyze your company’s data, you can turn to 2POINT’s social media management service, which not only monitors but creates social media content for your business.

Source: New York Times

6. Iteration and Optimization

A successful content marketing strategy doesn’t just mean one viral post that generates sales. Digital marketing requires repetition and alteration based on performance insights.

You should always review your analytics in relation to your goals and objectives, allowing you to identify what is working. From there, you can choose to change your strategy. Maybe you need to reach a different audience or improve your SEO in blog posts.

No matter what you can always optimize your content and improve your digital marketing to obtain more business and reach your goals.

7. Staying Updated with Trends

If you use the internet, you’re probably aware that things are constantly changing.

From daily trends to technology updates, staying on top of these innovations is vital to capitalize on them.

When you are designing your social media posts or writing blogs, keeping them updated and topical is the only way to generate an audience and stay relevant.

You should also be aware of technological updates to keep your sites running smoothly. Customers are more willing to support brands with a refreshed and operational online presence.

Conclusion

Developing a successful content marking strategy may seem impossible, especially if you’re just starting your business. But, it’s a fairly simple process once you’ve established goals and know your audience.

Focus on creating content for multiple marketing channels, and don’t forget to review your performance data.

Your digital marketing content strategy should be dynamic. As your business grows, your audience changes and the world adapts to an influx of technology, your content will change. Establishing a solid foundation, built with clear goals and strong analysis, will allow you to ebb and flow with the ever-shifting internet and the greater world of digital marketing.

Have questions or want support implementing a strong content marketing strategy? Reach out to 2POINT today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a digital content marketing strategy?

A digital content marketing strategy is a plan to use various forms of media across many channels to promote your business. This content is not explicit advertising but uses more subtle posts and messaging to promote your services or products.

Does my business need a content marketing strategy?

Yes! If you’re hoping to grow your business, generate new leads or sales, or reach a new audience, you must use digital marketing. And, you should use varying types of digital content marketing.

How do I create a content marketing strategy?

The first step in creating a content strategy is determining your company’s goals and objectives. These should be specific to things such as sales increase, audience growth, or increased awareness. From here, you can begin to build an audience profile and design content for your ideal customer. Finally, you should always keep your content relevant and in line with your goals, which requires monitoring your performance analytics.

What are KPIs?

KPIs are key performance indicators. They are targets you can measure based on raw data to determine your company’s progress toward goals and objectives. They include things like profits, website traffic numbers, and engagements.

How do I know if my digital content strategy is successful?

To know if your content marking strategy is helping your business reach your goals and objectives, you should track and analyze your performance data using KPIs, Google Analytics, and other resources. You should also listen to your customers to know if they’re happy with the marketing strategy.