If you are or want to be involved in any aspect of digital marketing, you are supposed to develop a clear understanding the process of developing a successful content marketing strategy. Here is a description of some of the key areas that every content manager or strategist needs in order to conduct a successful digital marketing campaign.
1. Understand the content of the funnel marketing (sales)
The sales funnel is essentially a generic term describing the decision-making process of the purchaser, with three main steps:
Knowledge, valuation and sourcing.
Everyone involved in sales and marketing should pay particular attention to this process in order to better understand what drives buyers to go through the funnel.
Content marketing is to some extent considered a local activity, which means that it is something that is at the top of the sales funnel. Strangely enough, this aspect of digital marketing may seem “far” from the real source of revenue (sales).
2. Viewing Content as Data
A content strategy does not affect the number of blogs written per month, how long you need to stay on Facebook Live or whether a company needs to write a white paper or not. These things are absolutely valuable but are not exactly part of the strategy. They are components, but they are not exactly what will guide your strategic approach.
A good content marketing strategy can engage the audience at any time, and to do so, a good strategist needs to know how their content works. When you know exactly how to rotate the content to make it effective at once, you can use this information while moving on to the next step in the funnel.
Analysis will guide your strategy. The task of the strategist is to accurately monitor, report the numbers in order to constantly refine them and adapt them to the best conversions. You need to know where your customers come from and where they are going. In other words, traffic patterns need to be continuously assessed.
The fundamental questions you’ll want to ask are always:
- What can be improved and refined?
- Which tools, applications and platforms are working better?
- What is the best use of time and resources regarding conversion (sale)?
3. Develop a plan
Setting a timetable is essential to the success of a content strategy. Just like an editorial calendar for a traditional publication, a content calendar can help you guide your strategy for a certain period of time. Of course, we recommend adding special dates, such as holidays and events that are important to your industry. You can also leave blank spaces to record, for example, unpredictable but relevant events or hot topics that need to be created.
You can also use this calendar to schedule not only what you are going to publish, but also where. A multimedia strategy is essential just like its scope as a display for guests and public relations. Plan to integrate the various distribution channels into your sales strategy.
4. Re-use
When considering distribution, you will want to consider the different objectives that different types of content have and how this can affect your marketing and how you can use different combinations of material to save time and resources. For example, you might consider creating authority through guest blogs, putting together tandem blogs with email series, and using social media to build tribes and groups.
It is perfectly reasonable and effective to develop a strategy based on elements of content that can be easily replicated through different channels and for different purposes. So if you are developing all the content (thinking about multimedia), think about how you can easily convert it in the future.
5. Define a specific orientation for the user content.
Suppose you are a strategist or content manager and you have a stable structure of content and writers. You have developed a strategy, you know the funnel, and you have a calendar. You have explained in general terms what you mean. Now you just need to stick with it and monitor your work. The only thing that it is sure, it is that you will get results!
The list below is not a detailed example; it will certainly vary depending on the context. But it’s a good idea to divide the content into different phases of the funnel so that all team members are clear about each other’s goals.
- Scope: Facebook ads, landing page, explanatory videos, computer graphics
- Conversion: Social media, informative blogs, case studies, quizzes.
- Closure: series of e-mails, reviews, questionnaires.
- Conservation: exclusive offers, white papers, e-mails, contests, surveys, etc.
It is essential that you prepare this content to be well ahead of the timeline. In addition, you need to know what type of material works well in different contexts, i.e. with different audiences and also across platforms. The trends you can expect in 2018 are in most cases videos (especially ephemeral content), computer graphics and AI-based applications such as voice search.
6. Measuring your progress
By measuring your progress and the results of your content strategy, you can clearly determine the performance of your content. If most of your content is web-based, the backbone for tracking your progress should be around your web analytics tool.
Regularly review key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine if your marketing efforts are effective or if you need to develop a new content strategy. These include the amount of traffic, the sources of that traffic, and how long people stay on the site to read your content (time on page). There are many more measurement data available, so measure the most critical KPIs against the concrete goals you set yourself and take these data into account when planning your content strategy.
7. Viewing keywords
Integrating keywords into blogs and other content is suitable for SEO and organic traffic generation.
It allows your audience to quickly know if they have found the content they need before they move on.
It establishes your brand as an authority in your field.
Bilal Safdar is a Content Creator for Marketinghope.net – An Agency specialized in SEO and Social Media Marketing. Bilal is very experienced in the concept of spreading knowledge and empowering other people to start growing their online business.
Thanks for your superb tips for creating a successful content marketing strategy. This “Define a specific orientation” point is so important for content optimization. Good orientation makes a content worth reading.
Your post information is very unique and useful for all readers.