They say behind every successful business there is a dedicated team. We firmly believe that behind every flourishing company, there is a well-planned, innovative, content marketing strategy. Previously, content development strategy was thought to be a technique that distinguished a business from its competitors. Now, it is rapidly paving way to the frontline of all digital marketing campaigns.
About 70% of businesses are heavily investing in content marketing, according to HubSpot’s marketing report. Moreover, 72% marketers credit content development strategy for achieving a huge sum of leads and engagement.
In spite of its perks, 55% of B2B marketers say that they have no idea of building an effective and successful content marketing strategy. Don’t worry, if you belong to the mentioned category. We will help you out in drafting a content development strategy that will skyrocket your search engine traffic and actively engage your audience,
In this article, we will cover a lot of ground which includes:
- Content Marketing Strategy Definition
- Importance of Content Marketing
- Steps Involved In Creating A Content Marketing Strategy
Let’s dive in.
What Is A Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing strategy is a strategic approach, accountable for creating valuable content that connects with a business audience, and solves their issues. Rather than pitching products and services, you provide information to your prospects that they desire to know. On a broader level, the content strategy includes planning, curating, and managing almost every tangible media that a company creates and owns.
The main purpose of this approach is to attract an audience, enhance conversion rate, and drive beneficial customer action. At first, it may seem an easy procedure but it is much more than what may seem visible to the naked eye.
The first step is to figure out your audience’s needs, interests, likes, and pain points. This requires an extensive amount of hard work and effort. Let’s explore what efficient content marketing brings to the table:
- Customized content impacts positively around 61% of the customers.
- Companies that follow content marketing tactics experience a 6x higher conversion rate than the non-followers.
Difference Between B2C and B2B Content Marketing Strategy
A few people believe that the B2B content marketing strategy is the same as the B2C content strategy. We beg to differ, B2B content marketing is about convincing businesses about your skills and talent, like a candidate convincing his potential employer to hire him. Whereas, in B2C content development strategy, a business connects with its audience to pursue them in purchasing a product. Take examples of many television advertisements that market their products through entertainment or emotional displays.
Unlike the general public as the target audience, businesses will not easily fall for you. Because in a way their business depends upon you. You will need to plan a lot of engaging content that will solve their real problems in order to earn their trust. The more confidence they have in you, the more chances you have to turn your lead into a long-term client. To put it all in a nutshell, an effective content marketing strategy is all about addressing your buyer’s problems with content. No matter who you are targeting.
How To Create A Content Marketing Strategy?
Define Content Marketing Objectives
Without setting goals first, you will be creating content without any direction. Displaying content without any sole purpose will bring no results. Many businesses make this huge blunder and then complain that they are not getting any fruitful output. Therefore, always map out your marketing ambition with your business goals. Given below is a chart from Wordstream to help you get started:
Always remember to back up your content with a call to action. Because, if your content does not navigate your audience to your business then it is of no use. Neil Patel has beautifully said:
“Content isn’t just something to be consumed. It’s designed for action and should have intent.”
Research Your Audience
The second step is to indulge in your audience pool to define a precise buyer’s persona. Not everyone will need your service or product. Therefore, strike for a concise, highly target audience and produce content, accordingly. At times, our target audience changes or expands. So, remember to revisit your audience parameters by carrying out thorough research, from time to time. A successful consulting firm, Crowe Horwath, based its content development strategy only for executives in financial companies. A successful user persona requires plugging into the characteristics, interests, likes, etc of your audience. Here is an example of a sample buyer persona from the Alexa blog.
To get a clear picture of what your user persona should look like, head over to Google Analytics. This remarkable web analytics service provides comprehensive insights into the people really interested in your products/ services. You can visit the Google Analytics website for free online courses that help in learning this uber-smart measurement tool.
Map Out Keywords With Business Goals
Start by ponding over the type of content which will appeal to your customer. For example, if you own a pizza place, your target audience will love food. Post delicious pizza images filled with olives, tomatoes that your audience finds hard to resist. After you brainstorm content, figure out relevant keywords that your audience will use to make a search. Include these keywords into your content in a way that it informs both google and your audience of your intentions. There are many keyword research tools, both paid and unpaid, to help you out. Ubersuggest is a terrific tool that helps you in finding popular keywords, along with content marketing ideas. It’s a double treat. Below is a screenshot of how the tool looks:
Conduct a Content Audit.
Usually, marketers start with blogs. But, to stand out you will have to do more than just writing blog content. Consider writing other content types. For instance, write an Ebook that combines almost all your blog topics in one place. In this way, you will be offering two diverse sources of information to your audience, in whatever way they prefer.
If you are an experienced businessman, analyze your last year’s content development strategy by performing a content audit. Examine your loopholes and figure out what you have been missing during the past year. Set newer goals and try different content in the upcoming year, After all, marketing is all about trial and error.
Run A Deep Competitive Analysis
This tactic is more applicable to the B2C content marketing strategy. But, it helps in preserving a balance for any kind of business model. Don’t turn into one of your competitors by copying their entire content development strategy. Observe their work, and try to do something better than speaks out your company’s voice and message, loud and clear. Listed below are a few key aspects to consider while spying your competitors.
- Content-type.
- Content sharing platforms.
- Content promotion tactics.
- Most liked content pieces.
- Frequency of posting content.
Decide Your Content Marketing Strategy Topics
Next, figure out the main topics to include in your content development strategy. Every business, belonging to a specific niche will have to produce content that differs from that of another niche. Many flourishing content marketing strategies include posting content on a website and then sharing it on different social media platforms to get traffic. This proves that blog is the most vital part of any content development strategy. This leads us to an important question – what is the first step when publishing and distributing an article as part of a marketing strategy? It is to list down your audience’s pain points and cover them as article topics. Your article topics should be informative and compelling and might cover a vast range of related topics. Listed below are a few google tools to lend you a hand.
Google Trends
Google trends is a terrific website to identify trending topics across various regions of the globe. It also displays the most popular inquiries made by your audience. Here is a screenshot of what a search query made with the keyword pizza restaurant looks like on the website:
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a special platform that lets you explore trending content ideas. The website offers a variety of market research tools. It also helps in determining the engagement rate of a content piece on social media. This helps in pre-identifying which content types will be successful, instead of testing on your own. You can also customize your search by using filters. Here is an image of what the website pulled out for the keyword, content strategy.
HubSpot Blog Idea Generator
A quick and easy tool to generate a handful of ideas. You will get five most relevant blog topics, within seconds. All you have to do is type in a few words, related to your business and the tool does all the work for you. This isn’t an ideal tool. But the best one when it comes to achieving viable blog topics.
Sharing and Managing Content
The final step of your content marketing strategy is publishing and distribution. You won’t enjoy fruitful outcomes until you post the content on the right channels. But first, you need a social media calendar for posting well-preserved content on your website or other platforms. Many of your content ideas might be ever-enduring, you might want to use it again. If they are added to your calendar, it will be easy to avoid any sort of mismanagement and spike tons of traffic.
The next step is to figure out a schedule for posting your content. Tools like Postify and Hootsuite can help you in this regard. You can also leverage email marketing to notify your subscribers about your latest content.
Why Creating Content Is The Best Strategy?
Are you familiar with the phrase? Content is king!
As the idiom employees, content leads the charge in driving inbound leads to any type of business. The more content you create about testimonials, reviews, and achievements, the more it builds trust with your followers. According to the content marketing institute, 61% of people bought products, after reading a recommendation on a blog.
It is the most affordable way to get your name out there. It helps in building brand presence and exposing your company to the people who had no idea it existed. Content marketing significantly grows organic traffic to your site while increasing inbound links. Well-SEO optimized content helps in ranking your website to google’s first page. Moreover, the most astonishing thing about content marketing is that people who are really interested in learning about your products are the ones viewing it.
Wrap Up
After finalizing your content marketing strategy, it’s time to bring in a team of content creators, social media specialists, and SEO experts. You can also outsource it to a legitimate digital marketing company such as Vizz Web Solutions. The company comprises a talented in-house team that brings your vision to life, boost your online presence, and shoot up organic search traffic. Schedule a free consultation now!
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