Developing a content marketing strategy is essential for businesses looking to attract and retain customers. A content marketing strategy involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. In this article, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to develop a content marketing strategy that can help businesses achieve their marketing goals.
Step 1: Define Your Objectives
The first step in developing a content marketing strategy is to define your objectives. What do you want to achieve with your content marketing efforts? Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? Once you have defined your objectives, you can start to create content that aligns with those objectives. Also understand there can be multiple objectives for each stage of the sales funnel. Companies are fixated on creating content just for driving sales and completely ignore high level pieces that get thousands of searches per month. Develop a mix such as:
10 high level informative articles,
5 remarketing pieces such as comparative comparison tables, Harvey Ball charts,
2 case studies for gated content
Step 2: Define Your Target Audience
The next step is to define your target audience. Who are you creating content for? What are their needs, interests, and pain points? By understanding your target audience, you can create content that resonates with them and addresses their specific needs. Run an exercise with your product marketing teams to determine the ideal customer profile, where they consume information in regards to their profession and even where they generally spend time online so you can run disruptive ads on their feeds.
Step 3: Conduct a Content Audit
Before you start creating new content, it's important to conduct a content audit to assess the effectiveness of your existing content. This involves reviewing your website, social media accounts, and other marketing channels to see what content you have and how it's performing. Use this information to identify content gaps and opportunities for improvement. That awesome piece written 10 years ago that still brings in new users today are perfect candidates for content refreshes. By conducting these audits, you can get a head start with your content calendar by updating existing assets while you build new ones in the coming weeks. use the ICP to guide the updates.
Step 4: Develop Your Content Strategy
Once you have defined your objectives, target audience, and conducted a content audit, it's time to develop your content strategy. This involves creating a plan for creating and distributing content that aligns with your objectives and resonates with your target audience. Does your ICP watch long form videos or are they on TikTok? Are they podcast listeners or passive scrollers?
Here are some key elements of a content strategy:
Content themes and topics: Identify the themes and topics that will be the focus of your content. These should align with your objectives and resonate with your target audience.
Content types and formats: Determine the types of content you will create, such as blog posts, videos, or infographics, and the formats you will use to distribute them.
Content calendar: Create a calendar that outlines when and where you will publish your content. This should include key dates, such as product launches, events, or holidays.
Content promotion: Determine how you will promote your content, such as through social media, email marketing, or paid advertising.
Metrics and analytics: Establish metrics and analytics to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. This can include metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversion rates.
Step 5: Create Your Content
With your content strategy in place, it's time to start creating content. When creating content, keep in mind your objectives, target audience, and content themes and topics. Make sure your content is informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience. Keep in mind distribution! A 10 minute long YouTube video can be cut into 30 second snippets and distributed on Instagram Stories, TikTok, YouTube ads, programmatic advertising and more. By understanding where these content pieces will live, it's easier to create content that aligns with each channel
Step 6: Distribute and Promote Your Content
Once you have created your content, it's time to distribute and promote it. Use your content calendar to schedule your content for publication on your website, social media accounts, and other marketing channels. Promote your content through email marketing, social media advertising, or other promotional channels.
Step 7: Measure and Refine Your Strategy
Finally, it's important to measure and refine your content marketing strategy. Use your metrics and analytics to assess the effectiveness of your content and make adjustments as needed. Refine your content themes and topics, content types and formats, and content promotion strategies based on your metrics and analytics.
Developing a content marketing strategy involves defining your objectives, identifying your target audience, conducting a content audit, developing your content strategy, creating your content, distributing and promoting your content, and measuring and refining your strategy. By following these steps, businesses can create a content marketing strategy that resonates with their target audience and achieves their marketing goals.