Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to attract, engage, and convert your target audience, as well as to achieve your business goals. But to succeed with content marketing, you need more than just creating and sharing content. You need a content marketing strategy.
A content marketing strategy is a document that outlines the purpose, objectives, audience, channels, formats, topics, and metrics of your content marketing efforts. It helps you plan, create, distribute, and measure your content, and ensure that it aligns with your overall marketing and business strategy.
In this blog post, we will show you how to create a content marketing strategy in 7 simple steps. By following these steps, you will be able to create a content marketing strategy that works for your business and delivers results.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
The first step to creating a content marketing strategy is to define your goals. What do you want to achieve with your content marketing? How does it support your overall marketing and business goals?
Your goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, instead of saying “I want to grow my email list,” you could say “I want to increase my email subscribers by 10% in the next three months.”
Some common content marketing goals are:
- Increase brand awareness and visibility
- Generate more leads and prospects
- Drive more traffic and conversions
- Boost customer loyalty and retention
- Establish thought leadership and authority
Step 2: Research Your Target Audience
The second step to creating a content marketing strategy is to research your target audience. Who are you creating content for? What are their needs, challenges, interests, and preferences? How do they consume and interact with content?
To answer these questions, you need to create buyer personas, which are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on data and research. You can use tools such as surveys, interviews, analytics, and social media to gather information about your audience, such as:
- Demographics: age, gender, location, education, income, etc.
- Psychographics: values, attitudes, beliefs, motivations, etc.
- Behavior: online habits, content preferences, purchase patterns, etc.
- Pain points: problems, frustrations, obstacles, etc.
- Goals: desires, aspirations, outcomes, etc.
You should create a buyer persona for each segment of your audience, and tailor your content to their specific needs and expectations.
Step 3: Conduct a Content Audit
The third step to creating a content marketing strategy is to conduct a content audit, which is a process of evaluating your existing content and identifying what works and what doesn’t. A content audit will help you understand the current state and performance of your content, and how it aligns with your goals and audience.
To conduct a content audit, you need to:
- Inventory Your Content: make a list of all the content you have, such as blog posts, ebooks, videos, podcasts, etc. You can use tools such as Screaming Frog, Google Analytics, or Google Search Console to crawl and collect your content data.
- Analyze Your Content: assess the quality and effectiveness of your content, such as relevance, value, readability, SEO, etc. You can use tools such as Yoast, Moz, or SEMrush to analyze your content metrics, such as traffic, engagement, conversion, ranking, etc.
- Categorize Your Content: label your content according to its status and action, such as keep, update, optimize, repurpose, or delete. You can use tools such as Google Sheets, Trello, or Airtable to organize and manage your content categories.
Step 4: Choose Your Content Types
The fourth step to creating a content marketing strategy is to choose your content types, which are the formats and styles of your content, such as text, video, image, audio, etc. You need to choose the content types that suit your goals and audience, and that match your resources and capabilities.
Some common content types are:
- Blog Posts: articles that provide information, education, entertainment, or inspiration to your audience, and that drive traffic and leads to your website.
- eBooks: long-form content that offer in-depth knowledge, insights, or solutions to your audience, and that generate leads and prospects for your business.
- Infographics: visual content that present data, facts, or statistics in an easy-to-understand and engaging way, and that increase brand awareness and visibility.
- Videos: multimedia content that showcase your products, services, or stories in a dynamic and interactive way, and that boost engagement and conversions.
- Podcasts: audio content that deliver valuable content to your audience in a convenient and personal way, and that build trust and loyalty.
- Webinars: live or recorded content that educate, inform, or demonstrate your expertise to your audience, and that generate leads and sales.
Step 5: Create Your Content Plan
The fifth step to creating a content marketing strategy is to create your content plan, which is a document that outlines the details of your content creation and distribution process. Your content plan should include information such as:
- Content Topics and Keywords: these are the main ideas and words that your content will cover, based on your audience’s needs, interests, and search intent. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, AnswerThePublic, or BuzzSumo to research and generate content topics and keywords.
- Content Calendar: this is a schedule that specifies when and where you will create and publish your content, based on your goals and audience’s behavior. You can use tools such as Google Calendar, Trello, or CoSchedule to create and manage your content calendar.
- Content Guidelines: these are the rules and standards that ensure the quality and consistency of your content, such as tone, voice, grammar, spelling, formatting, branding, and SEO. You can use tools such as Grammarly, Hemingway, or Yoast to check and improve your content quality and SEO.
Step 6: Develop a Process for Content Creation
The sixth step to creating a content marketing strategy is to develop a process for content creation, which is a workflow that defines the roles and responsibilities of your content team, and the steps and tools they will use to create and approve your content. Your content creation process should include stages such as:
- Ideation: this is the stage where you brainstorm and generate content ideas, based on your content plan and audience feedback. You can use tools such as Google Docs, Evernote, or MindMeister to capture and organize your content ideas.
- Research: this is the stage where you gather and verify the information and data that support your content ideas, such as facts, statistics, quotes, and sources. You can use tools such as Google Scholar, Statista, or Cite This For Me to find and cite reliable and relevant information and data.
- Writing: this is the stage where you write and edit your content, based on your content guidelines and best practices. You can use tools such as Google Docs, WordPress, or Medium to write and edit your content.
- Review: this is the stage where you review and revise your content, based on your content goals and quality standards. You can use tools such as Google Docs, Grammarly, or Hemingway to review and revise your content.
- Approval: this is the stage where you get feedback and approval from your content stakeholders, such as your manager, client, or team members. You can use tools such as Google Docs, Trello, or Asana to get feedback and approval for your content.
Step 7: Measure the Success of Your Content
The seventh and final step to creating a content marketing strategy is to measure the success of your content, which is the process of tracking and analyzing your content performance and results, based on your content metrics and KPIs. You should measure the success of your content at different levels, such as:
- Content Level: this is the level where you measure the performance and results of each individual piece of content, such as traffic, engagement, conversion, and ranking. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or SEMrush to measure your content performance and results at the content level.
- Campaign Level: this is the level where you measure the performance and results of a group of related content pieces, such as a blog series, an ebook, or a webinar. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Mailchimp to measure your content performance and results at the campaign level.
- Strategy Level: this is the level where you measure the performance and results of your overall content strategy, such as brand awareness, lead generation, sales, or customer retention. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Salesforce to measure your content performance and results at the strategy level.
You should also use the data and insights from your content measurement to optimize and improve your content strategy, by identifying what works and what doesn’t, and making the necessary changes and adjustments. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, or SurveyMonkey to collect and analyze data and feedback from your audience and customers.
Conclusion
Creating a content marketing strategy is not a difficult or complicated task, but it requires some time and effort. By following the 7 steps we have outlined in this blog post, you will be able to create a content marketing strategy that works for your business and delivers results.
We hope you found this blog post helpful and interesting, and that you will use it to create your own content marketing strategy. If you have any questions/feedback or If you need any help with your content marketing strategy, please feel free to Contact Us. Thank you for reading and happy content marketing!
Content marketing is a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a target audience. It aims to build trust, authority, and drive profitable customer actions.
Content marketing is vital because it allows businesses to provide valuable information, solve problems, and build a connection with their audience. It can boost brand awareness, generate leads, and increase customer loyalty.
Content can take various forms, including blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, eBooks, social media posts, webinars, and more. The choice of content depends on your target audience and marketing goals.
Identifying your target audience involves creating buyer personas, which are detailed profiles of your ideal customers. Research their demographics, interests, pain points, and preferences to tailor your content to their needs.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial in content marketing because it helps your content rank higher in search engine results, making it more discoverable. Optimizing for relevant keywords, quality backlinks, and user experience is key.
The frequency of content creation varies depending on your resources and goals. Consistency is more important than frequency. Focus on providing high-quality content regularly rather than rushing to produce content daily.
The buyer’s journey consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Content marketing can address each stage by offering educational content (awareness), product comparisons (consideration), and purchasing guides (decision).
You can measure content marketing success by tracking metrics such as website traffic, engagement (likes, shares, comments), conversion rates, lead generation, and ROI. Use analytics tools to monitor your progress.
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant and valuable over an extended period. It’s important because it continues to attract organic traffic, providing a long-term return on your content marketing investment.
Repurposing involves adapting existing content into different formats. For example, you can turn a blog post into a podcast or create infographics from research reports. This maximizes the reach and utility of your content.