A well-crafted content marketing strategy is essential for brands seeking to stand out and engage their audience. With consumers inundated with information, creating compelling content that resonates is more important than ever. A killer content marketing strategy not only helps to capture attention but also builds trust and fosters brand loyalty. To develop this strategy, businesses must understand their target audience, set clear objectives, and leverage various content formats effectively. From blog posts to videos, each piece of content should align with the overall brand message and goals.
1. Define your goals
Your business goals are the ultimate reason you’re creating content in the first place. They should be clear and concise and motivate you to produce quality content that meets your audience’s needs. The goal of any content marketing strategy is to create awareness for your brand and drive traffic to your website. But what happens after people find out about you? If your goals don’t include increasing sales or generating leads, then it’s likely that your content isn’t helping you reach those objectives.
Make sure that each piece of content you produce reflects the strategic goals of your business – otherwise, it’ll be challenging to measure success. Your business goals will also help you determine which types of content are most effective for promoting your brand. For example, if you want to increase website traffic, producing blog posts will likely be a more effective approach than creating infographics or videos. Once you’ve defined your business goals, make sure to track progress every step using tools like Google Analytics.
This data will help you identify trends and make adjustments as needed. In addition to defining the personas, a content strategy sets goals. What do you want to achieve with the published content? Your goal could be the launch of a new product or the strengthening of the brand identity. Another goal could be to make your company more visible on social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or LinkedIn. You increase the likelihood of achieving your goals if they are verifiable:
- S = Specific (specific, that is, your goal should not be “more success,” but for example, “more revenue”).
- M = Measurable (measurable: Choose clear and quantifiable key performance indicators).
- A = Accepted (objectives must have a recognizable meaning to be accepted by all parties).
- R = Realistic (realistic, workable; the goal must be achievable).
- T = Timebound; ( Specify a time when you reach the goal).
2. Create personas
We always recommend creating personas. They are fictional people who represent a target group with their
- Demographics: Gender, age, ethnicity, income, etc.
- Goals and values: What are the goals and standards or judgment they stand on?
- Behaviours: How do they act in specific situations?
- Challenges: What are the challenges they want to tackle to simplify their daily lives?
- Source of Information: What channels do they use to receive information? (Social media, digital media, tv, magazines, personal experiences).
3. Conduct content audit
Before you act, it is a good idea to look back and get the measure of your top and lowest performing content. Reviewing your previous efforts will help you determine what resonates with your audience the most. Also, it will help you identify future actions and the directions to follow.
4. Write down the problems you will solve for your target audience
Your product or service solves the problem of your target audience. Content acts the same – since it mentors and enlightens your prospects via this problem. Your personas document and business specification will help you identify the pain points. In the end, you will have a list of problems that will assist you exceptionally in finding future content topics.
5. Choose preferable content types
You may be enticed to launch a TikTok account and upload videos, but your audience may be totally on the other side of the moon. Otherwise, you will produce content without an address. For example, If your audience prefers long-form text content, you may opt for whitepapers. If you have a younger audience that likes short-form content, you may start posting on LinkedIn. Information content includes articles, blog posts, videos, etc., that provide users with facts or insights about a topic.
This content is helpful for customers who want to learn more about a subject and for unbiased opinions on a topic. Entertainment content helps people escape from their everyday lives and relax by providing them with interesting stories or videos. This type of content can be enjoyed by anyone who wants something fun to read or watch. Guidance content offers advice on how to live better lives or make decisions in specific situations. People often turn to this content when they need advice but don’t know where to start.
6. Identify your content distribution channels
Some businesses create content designed to be shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Others may create blog posts that can be published on their website or emailed to their subscribers. Still, others may produce video content on YouTube or other video-sharing websites. Experiment with different distribution channels to see which ones work best for your brand and target audience. Testing various methods and formats will help you determine which channels are most effective and reach as many people as possible.
7. Brainstorm content ideas
The best way to brainstorm content ideas is to think of the type of content that your target audience would find interesting and then convert those topics into articles. There are many different ways to brainstorm ideas for content. Here are some tips that can help you start your process:
- Write down words, phrases, or subjects as they come to you.
- Keep a list of keywords that give your content ideas.
- Brainstorm with friends and colleagues to get more outside perspectives on what they think would be good topics.
8. Create a content calendar
A content calendar is a document that lists the dates and times that your organization will publish new content. A content calendar can be helpful for several reasons.
- First, it can help you stay on schedule and ensure that your organization publishes new pieces at the right time.
- Second, it can help you plan your marketing efforts around new content releases, ensuring that your messages get to the right audience at the right time.
- And finally, a well-organized content calendar can help you track which topics are most popular among your audience and develop more targeted content ideas accordingly.
There are a few key things to keep in mind when creating a content calendar:
- First, make sure to list both published and unpublished dates/times. This way, you’ll be able to track both finished and still-in-progress pieces of content.
- Second, consider including long-term (6 months or longer) and short-term (1 week or less) plans for each date/time slot. It will give you enough flexibility to adapt as needed but maintain some degree of predictability for your readers/viewers.
- Third, try not to overcrowd any given date/time slot – spacing out new posts over multiple weeks or months will make them more likely to be read and shared.
9. Promote your pieces
Promoting your content is a critical part of SEO. You can do this by creating a blog post, guest posting on other sites, and publishing articles in press releases to drive traffic back to your site. You can also use paid advertising to promote your content and convert users into customers.
10. Track your results
Measuring the effectiveness of content is crucial. It’s no use investing in beautifully written content if it doesn’t engage users or result in conversions. And it’s also no good if we fail to learn from our marketing successes and failures. That’s why content marketing KPIs are so important. They allow us to assess the strength of our strategy and refine our techniques for future campaigns. KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are an essential tool for all digital marketing professionals, and at greatcontent, we always advise that clients employ them efficiently. To help you maximize their impact, we’ve prepared a shortlist of KPI tips to help you set the right goals for every campaign.
a. Understand how KPIs fit into the content marketing funnel
To start with, different KPIs apply to different stages of the marketing funnel. So, at the top of the funnel, marketers tend to be concerned more with building an audience and promoting products. At this stage, it makes sense to use KPIs that are set up for measuring brand awareness. It could involve setting targets for time spent by visitors on your site, the raw number of new site visitors per week, and new follower numbers. This changes as we descend the marketing funnel. Towards the bottom, we tend to be more concerned with ROI and conversions. It means understanding how efficiently content turns leads into conversions, using metrics like cost-per-click.
b. Why SEO KPIs are vital for business performance
The top of the funnel lies outside their website or social media channels. Instead, their initial focus will be on SEO performance. This is an area where tightening up your KPIs is a no-brainer. For instance, these metrics will be useful when building a solid SEO strategy:
- Organic search traffic: A raw measurement of how many visitors arrive at your content via conventional search engines.
- Mobile search traffic: Increasingly important, this metric lets you assess how effectively your content reaches smartphone users. If it dips below organic search rates, some content optimization may be needed.
- Keyword rankings: Each piece of content can be graded based on how it performs on Google searches for important keywords, giving you a clear picture of which keywords to focus on in the future.
The aim here is to maximize the number of visitors relative to SEO spending. We know that’s not the end game for content marketing, but it’s a vital starting point. Without clearly laid out, properly analyzed SEO KPIs, it’s not possible to create well-crafted SEO content optimization strategies. But with the data, you can launch your pages into the highest reaches of the search engine rankings.
c. Choose the right user engagement KPIs
Let’s return to the top of the funnel for a second. As we mentioned earlier, in this section of content marketing campaigns, KPIs are all about attracting and engaging potential customers, who then become potential leads. There are plenty of KPIs we could use here. Not all will be relevant for your specific campaign, so finding a profitable mix is essential. For instance, you could use:
- Pageviews: A simple measurement of how many unique visitors have reached each specific piece of content.
- Time spent on pages: Alongside page views, it’s crucial to know how much time users devote to absorbing each text or video. This metric gives a very neat read-out of which pages are the most immersive.
- Bounce rate: This matters if the aim is to draw users into other parts of a content system. It measures how many users leave after viewing just one page. If you want to attract them to dig deeper, it’s an essential KPI.
- Scroll depth: This tracks how far down a page visitors read before moving on. It helps assess long-form content.
- Repeat visits vs. unique visitors: Measuring how regularly users visit your content can give a great image of how engaged people are. If you attract plenty of unique visits, but few comebacks, there may be an issue to address.
- Conversions and leads generated: You should also asses every content based on its ROI. There’s no sense in working hard to develop engagement if your content doesn’t result in both leads and conversions. This links back to the idea of the funnel: if the content doesn’t “move” traffic downwards towards a conversion, it isn’t working as designed.
d. Learn how to use social engagement KPIs
While user engagement is essential, most of us don’t just rely on optimizing our websites to engage leads. Social media and audience management are just as necessary to attracting traffic into the marketing funnel. This makes social engagement KPIs vital. Basic KPIs matter here. For example:
- Likes and shares: Provide evidence of your content’s effectiveness but shouldn’t be considered in isolation.
- Reach: This gives an idea of the potential audience for each piece of social media content and helps you understand what proportion of viewers chose to like or share.
- Brand mentions: Expanding awareness of your brand is a critical social media goal, so it often makes sense to track how often users discuss your core brand or products.
Fundamentally, KPIs should tell us how likely social media users are to see our content and take the actions we want them to take. If we notice a discrepancy between reach and likes, something is wrong. And if we see a drop-off in brand mentions, we should also take action.
e. Link KPIs to flexible content production
Finally, we need to mention the value of using KPIs to inform your content strategy. Ideally, analysis feeds directly into content production, so it’s possible to produce content perfectly tailored for your marketing funnel and reflects the data generated by previous campaigns. In other words, the funnel is a feedback loop, which makes content more effective with each pass-through.
Conclusion
Developing a killer content marketing strategy requires a blend of creativity, data analysis, and audience understanding. By defining clear goals and identifying your target audience, you can tailor content that resonates and drives engagement. Consistency in publishing and utilizing various formats ensures a broader reach and keeps your audience coming back for more. Regularly measuring and analyzing performance metrics will help refine your approach, allowing you to adapt to changing trends and preferences. Ultimately, a well-crafted content marketing strategy not only builds brand loyalty but also drives sustainable growth for your business.
