Globally, companies adopt the promotional strategy of content marketing.
It’s a crucial strategy for promoting brand recognition and increasing lead conversions among other things.
But regardless of your level of experience with content marketing, you must review every aspect of your plan if you hope to stay one step ahead of your rivals.
That is why we have provided you with a straightforward 7-step process to help you develop a successful content marketing strategy:
Nearly 70% of companies, according to Hubspot, are actively engaging in content marketing (in 2020).
This makes it more crucial than ever to preserve your authority on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and your position as an industry authority.
So let’s get going!
Identify your objectives
Each piece of material you create need to in some way further a goal or objective.
You should set S.M.A.R.T. goals, which stand for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic/relevant, and time-bound objectives.
The methods you take to get there become much more simplified
when you are clear about what you want to accomplish and what you are working for.
You should speed up the release of gated material if your main objective is to raise your MQLs.
Similar to this, let’s say you want to raise your SERP ranking.
Then, you should evaluate your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts and look into ways to optimize your present content.
Think keywords, meta descriptions, H-tags, backlinks, etc.
Understand the lifecycle stage of your leads so that you can provide them with the appropriate material.
It’s possible that your goals will frequently relate to your customers or prospects.
You can make sure you stay on the right track when developing your content marketing strategy by defining what you hope to accomplish.
Choose your target market
Today’s marketers produce content for many target markets.
Three audience segments is the most typical amount, according to Hubspot.
You don’t generate material to broadcast it into cyberspace; rather, you produce it with a specific audience in mind.
Therefore, it is crucial to comprehend who your target audience is and what kind of material they need.
Making buyer personas and conducting market research are effective ways to visualize your target audience.
Buyer personas serve as a guide for who you want to reach and why by acting as a fictionalized version of your business’ ideal client.
Personas are created by taking into account a range of factors, such as age, job title, gender, income, and so on.
They then think about how the company might fit with this ideal client and offer solutions.
Knowing your target market will make it simpler to create content that works better because it is more value and relevant.
Look at the analytics for your website and social media channels to see if there are any trends. How do visitors act on your website or in your profile?
Persona research should be done on a frequent basis to help you understand who is most interested in what products and services.
Similar to how the market or cultural trends might affect people’s behavior, these external factors are out of your control.
Identifying the issue your company solves will help you find keywords
High-level information that has nothing to do with what you’re offering or the principles of your company is of no benefit.
You’re not attracting visitors to your site because of the content, but because people are interested in your product or service.
Therefore, start by defining your company in terms of the goods or services you offer.
This will serve as the foundation for the major keyword(s), phrase(s), and theme of your content that you wish to target.
The proper individuals will find you if you rank highly in SERPs by using the appropriate keywords and phrases in your content.
Your target market needs to understand how your company can help them, the value you can provide, and why they should choose you over your rivals.
You’ll gain a better understanding of how consumers see your brand if you align your content with the issues your company addresses.
You’ll also make sure that the information you produce is pertinent, worthwhile, and simple for individuals looking for answers to find.
Conduct a content audit
During a content audit, you examine the written and published material that you have produced.
The purpose of this is to learn more about the kinds of content that are most effective.
By auditing your material, you can see what you’re doing well as well as where you need to make improvements.
With this information, you can use the analytics you’ve obtained to guide the development of your upcoming content.
You can also find out what needs to be changed, rewritten, or even removed using these auditing techniques.
You can partially automate your content auditing process by using tools like Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or Google Analytics.
They provide statistics on your website’s most popular pages, user trends and behaviors, time spent on your site, and even tips on how to enhance things like SEO.
The utilization of content audits can help you plan and develop content
Increase website traffic and SEO, and serve as a guide for future marketing efforts.
Choose the content types you’ll employ
It’s time to choose the kinds of content you’ll produce after you’ve clarified your objectives
Chosen your target market, determined your keywords, and finished an audit.
Your brand positioning can be made or broken by the content you produce.
Because of this, it’s crucial that you carefully plan, develop, and carry out your content marketing strategy.
Establish a content calendar and release
Knowing what to post, when to publish it, and which platform to publish it on is essential for the success of your content marketing.
Calendars for content or editorial labor serve as visual workflows that assist content marketers in planning their daily, weekly, or monthly workloads.
Content calendars can be created using a variety of tools:
A printed calendar, a spreadsheet, Google Calendar, Monday.com, or a specialized, all-inclusive program like CoSchedule.
No one likes a deadline, but we all know that they’re a certain way to keep us on the right track.
They allow you to track the types of material you intend to create, your titles, writers, and dates/times that you plan to post.
Additionally, some businesses incorporate social media content calendars to provide them
with guidance regarding the content they should produce on their social media channels.
