As much as 63% of businesses today don’t have a documented content marketing strategy according to MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute’s latest research.
Some companies do have a strategy feel that their efforts in content marketing are thriving. But without a strategy, you are merely risking all of your efforts. Failure or success is just a matter of luck.
This is why 64% of marketers say that one of the greatest educational needs of a company is knowing how to build a content strategy.
If you are wondering how to create a content strategy for your business, we’re here to help you.
We’ve created this guide to walk you through developing and executing your content marketing plan which will help grow your business without the need to waste your money and time.
So without further ado, here it is.
Set your mission and goals
When it comes to your content strategy plan, the first thing is to set out a content marketing mission statement. It’s just a small statement which makes it easier for you to focus on what’s important and what is not. This way, you stay on track.
Outline your target audience, the content you will use and the benefit your audience is going to get. Define who is your target audience. Highlight the benefit and then provide examples of what your content covers. Is it going to be on hiring practices, skills development, digital transformation or certification?
Aside from including what your audience is going to get from your content marketing strategy, think of also what your business will get out of it. What are your business goals?
Some examples of goals include:
- Improving revenue from a great content marketing strategy
- Making a lot of sales and more high-quality leads which can help increase your revenue
- Increase traffic to your website with the help of article writing services (After all, having more traffic means more possibilities that you can meet your other goals.)
- Improving your business’ perception so you can be seen as a leader and gain authority as well as influence
- SEO success will result in more traffic
- Reduced marketing costs when you get a more effective content
- Social media management can increase both of your authority and traffic
- Once you’ve set all your goals in place, it’s about time to move to the next step.
Establish your KPIs
One of the best ways to achieve your goals is to make them measurable and specific. What does this mean? It means you have to know your key performance indicators. You can
The KPIs will increase your knowledge on when you’ve achieved your goals by giving you milestones that you can easily check off when reached. These include what you are planning to achieve in terms of SEO, traffic, sales, revenue and several aspects of digital marketing such as social media metrics and email marketing.
In general, these have specific numbers attached such as:
- Hit a specific revenue target within the year, quarter or month.
- Get more signups which shows that you are getting a lot of high-quality leads
- Get a specific number of new email subscribers
- Check that your site traffic and engagement increases
- Improve your site’s search ranking
- Get several mentions, comments, and shares for your key pages.
- Be invited to some key industry events
You should also want to pay attention to your expenditures. Be sure to track your spend in several campaigns. Keep an eye on the cost of making sales and acquiring leads. You can go with outsourcing services to help you so you can focus on what’s more important.
Know who your audience
You have to be clear about who your audience is going to be so you can create the right contents to reach out to them. Here are three actions you can take.
Collect Demographic Data
The first step in collecting demographic data on your email subscribers, visitors and social media followers. The email subscriber analytics, social media analytics, and web analytics can provide you with the data that you need such as age, gender, income, and education.
Aside from that, you can also see their key interests when you go to Google Analytics’ Audience>Interests>Overview.
Social media sites also provide similar ideas such as Facebook Page Insights and Twitter analytics.
Get Feedback on Customers
If you want to learn more about your target audience, one of the best ways to know your customers better is to get feedback from them. You can get insights into:
- What are their urgent needs
- How they feel about your content
- How you can help them with your content
- And when you get the right customer feedback, you can:
- Decide on the best platforms to reach your customers
- Understand your subscribers and readers’ priorities
- Flesh out your buyer persona
Create Buyer Personas
You can flesh out or create buyer personas when you have customer feedback and demographic data. Buyer personas are also known as customer avatars. These describe your ideal customers and readers so you can better target content.
The best customer avatars include info on the pain points, behavioral motivators, sources of information and challenges of your customers.
Once you know all of this, you will have a better understanding of the following:
- How to help your audience
- The kind of content that your audience will respond to
- .What will make your audience care about your content
Assess your current position
A lot of businesses already have content. It includes content that is already on your blog, podcasts, social media content, and videos.
This is why the next step is to see whether or not your content is helping you with your goals.
To do this, you have to carry out a content audit. How?
- Assess your content’s success or usefulness
- Identify the gaps
- Logging in all of your pieces of content like guest posts and blog posts
You may also check how your content compares with your competitors and see if a new content will fit in your market.