8 Questions That Will Help You Create Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing strategy is a broad term which does not merely restrict its realm to creating, distributing and sharing content which allows a business to attract website traffic, improve brand awareness, generate leads and drive conversions. It goes beyond this typical description and indulges in evaluating the ways in which content marketing can be utilised during the customer lifecycle to make the maximum impact through the touchpoints.

The content marketing strategy doesn’t work on one single channel. It combines all the marketing communication platforms to work towards customer acquisition and retention. Most of the businesses operating in Australia don’t have a content marketing strategy which means that they do not have a set of goals which help in optimising their content marketing.

A systematic approach allows SEO and content marketing managers to accomplish integrating marketing communication milestones which encompass digital marketing objectives. Our SEO consultants at Netvision describe how a content marketing strategy can be created by asking seven simple questions to attain superior domain authority, improved search engine ranking results, and higher conversion rates.

1. Why Do I Need A Content Marketing Strategy?

The first and foremost question that a business owner needs to ask is why the company should have a content strategy? What is the marketing objective that we are trying to achieve? The goals and objectives need to be defined to move forward such as finding new subscribers, greater social engagement or more app downloads. Unless you are aware of the destination, you cannot tread on the right path. So setting the goals beforehand guides you to develop a comprehensive plan.

For example, if you want more subscribers for your email signups, then you need to attract people to your website content who will then be persuaded to click the subscribe button. The objective will define the particular number of people who must subscribe. This means you will have to work to get more people to your site through activities like using external links, informative and appealing content, getting influencers to promote your blogs and sharing your content on other platforms.

2. What Kind Of Content Will The Company Share Online?

The next step is to determine the type of content that will be promoted by your company. It can vary from blogs, case studies, presentations and articles to memes, videos, podcasts, and infographics. You will have to figure what will click with your target base and use the same method to reach the readers. You have to list down the topics that will lay the groundwork for your content marketing strategy.

Personalised and relevant content such as tips and tricks, exciting interviews and pertinent news will play a significant role in bringing more readers. The content should also be engaging enough to start a dialogue, must be related to your business and should be informative. You must use the keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to find out the topics your target audience is searching for online.

You can create a spreadsheet to build an editorial calendar which includes topics depending on their search volume and relevance to the business. If you have already published some content, update it and give it a fresh appeal to gather traction.

3. Who Is My Target Audience?

 

As a business owner it is apparent that you are aware of your customers, but now you will be speaking to them through your content. So you need to understand them a bit more to know what they want to read about and what are the queries baffling their minds. When you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you get the list of topics that need to be touched upon to create educational and transformative content that will be shared and viewed abundantly.

To start a conversation, you need to hear their voice through feedback and build the profile of an ideal customer. This will entail ascertaining the demographics (age, gender, occupation etc.) and psychographics (beliefs, values, and interests) of the audience. You need to create fictional buyer personas to be able to relate to the aspirations and morals of these people.

The most significant step is to identify how you can make this ideal candidate read your content. Thus you need to be showcasing your content at all those places where the buyers are already spending time such as Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, Snapchat etc. Once equipped with this knowledge, you can create content which matches the sensibilities of the customer profile you have built.

4. How do I promote the content?

The promotion of the content is the central part of the marketing plan, and this involves targeting the channels that reach the maximum readers. Social media plays a dominant factor in this plan as the world is online and engaging continuously through social networking platforms. You need to create snippets, images, videos, quotes and statistics to be shared on various channels where your audience exists.

However, you don’t have to be omnipresent, choose the platforms that are visited by your buyer profile and generate content which is specific to that particular channel. You can also share and curate content of other people on your company profile if it is related to your business. You can utilise social media management tools like Hootsuite and HubSpot which allow you to plan the posts, monitor the content and get reports on the performance of the posts.

Influencer marketing is another potent way of promoting the content by asking influential users to endorse your content to improve the conversion rates. Also, guest posting helps in building credibility for the business in the eyes of the readers who visit popular websites like Reddit.

5. How Do I Tackle The Competition?

The online world is an immensely competitive domain with each piece of information urging the readers to take an action. It is becoming more and more difficult to find the audience and retain their attention. To make the content more engaging and interesting, you need to focus on the needs and wants of the target audience. The next step is to study the content already present online and the one floated by the competitors.

The key to success lies in coming up with a better and more insightful version of the topic to attract the readers. You need to work on each aspect of your offering such as the length of the blog or article, use of images and videos, etc. to serve them something which is out-of-the-box and has not been in the market before. This is the only way to stay one step ahead of the clutter.

6. How To Build An Email List?

Much before you start promoting the content through social media, you need to create an email list to communicate directly with your customer base. You need to find an Email Service Provider (ESP) which will assist you in creating and maintaining the subscriber’s list, sending emails regularly and evaluating the reports on how the email campaigns are being received by the subscribers.

Also, an ESP tool ensures that the emails land in the inbox and not in the spam folder. Some of the popular names in the market are MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Aweber. The email strategy should coincide with the content strategy so you must begin with promoting your blog through the emails to get more traffic to your site.

The frequency of these emails can be weekly or monthly depending on how often you have an important piece of news to be shared with your target audience. However, it would be best if you were not spamming them or go into oblivion for months together.

7. How To Report On The Results?

When you have set goals in the beginning, measuring the results becomes easier to understand the performance of your efforts. The results can be determined by the increase in the number of engagements and conversions which can be assessed using tools like Google Analytics that allows you to identify the source of the website traffic and the action the reader took after landing on the intended page.

Another method is to set up Pixels on the website which is a JavaScript code that helps in tracking the performance of social media advertising. This will also aid in making alterations to the efforts that have not materialised into desired results.

End Note

Asking these questions will get you all the data you need to plan a content marketing strategy and effectively execute it. It can only fetch results when it is streamlined by defining a set of goals and the activities that will be leveraged to achieve them.