Content marketing strategy has become an essential part of any online marketing campaign. The research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute shows that more than 80% of B2B employees have a content marketing strategy, but only a third of these have documented that very same content marketing strategy.
The process of creating an entirely functional content marketing plan requires time and effort. Brands need to study audience and virtual persona to make the marketing plan to achieve the next level of success.
Let us look at the seven steps needed to develop a content marketing strategy for your business-
- Determine the objectives of content marketing
What is the purpose of content marketing? How will content marketing help your organisation?
Note– The aim should not be about being good in content marketing but being good in business because of content marketing.
- What’s your one thing?
How will your content marketing be different to the other programs? What will be your utility? What will be the basis of your programme?
Note– You need to make the story bigger.
- Measure your content marketing
The objectives you must dictate your metrics. To generate awareness, you need to measure that. The four categories of content marketing metrics should be used.
Note– To track behaviour, you need to do something trackable.
- Define Your Audiences
The objectives you have dictate your audience, and you can use personas to model the audiences for your content marketing. A good understanding of your audience is required.
Note– You are not your audience.
- Research Audience Needs
You should know about the requirements of your audience. Use search and social media plus the customer reviews along with the internal personnel (sales and customer service, especially) to get a better understanding of the requirements of your customers. These needs should be organised to create a map of persona.
Note– You should try to get the real insights and not just data
- Create a Content Execution Plan
The optimal content modalities should be determined using personas and content conversations. You should know how your audience consume information? Depending on the funnel stage the customers will require different types of content. A plan should be build that shows content you’ll create daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
Note– The calls-to-action should be defined which tells your content consumers what to do next?
- Create a Content Amplification Plan
The creation of content is not enough, and you need to amplify it as well. There is a need to market your services as much as possible, and this is where social media can help a great deal.
Note– Social media can be a great tool to promote your content
We think if you apply these steps correctly, it won’t be difficult in building a formidable content marketing strategy for your business.