Creating a content marketing strategy does not involve any secrets. Rather, we rely on our tried-and-tested framework as a reference and dedicate a significant amount of valuable time and effort, typically around 60 days.
We have provided these essential steps to ensure long-term success. We are sharing them with you to help elevate your content marketing strategy and plan. Additionally, we offer a free content marketing strategy template(Open Link in new window) to assist you throughout the process.
Why Content Marketing Strategy Is Important
Before we proceed with the steps, it is important to emphasize that a content marketing strategy is not merely optional but imperative for achieving success.
Content Marketing Institute consistently reaffirms this fact each year through their Annual Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report.
Even though it’s 2021, a majority of content marketers (57%) admit to not having a documented content strategy. However, the ones who do have a content marketing strategy consistently consider their efforts to be much more successful compared to those who lack one.
Updating content marketing strategies has become even more crucial due to the pandemic. A significant proportion of content marketers (70%) who have a strategy state that the pandemic has had a moderate to major impact on their content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing Strategy Steps
To assist you in enhancing your content efforts, here is a summary of the seven steps involved in creating your content marketing strategy.
1. Document Your Goals
Sometimes, we tend to overlook the most crucial aspect of content marketing: the underlying reason behind it. Instead of getting swept up in the details of what, how, and where, it is vital to understand the purpose of content marketing. Are you employing it to generate leads, establish connections, or enhance your customers’ experiences?
Make sure that your content marketing goals are sustainable and aligned with your organization’s overall goals, mission, and vision, regardless of what they may be. To maintain clarity and focus in your strategy, limit your business goals to three to five maximum and make sure to document them.
Your goal is never to create content just for the sake of it.
2. Determine Your “One Thing”
In a world where an overwhelming amount of content is being generated constantly, what unique contribution will your organization make in its content marketing program? Essentially, what is the fundamental essence and purpose of your content program? Are you aiming to:
- Be disproportionately useful?
- Create Youtility?
- Motivate and inspire?
- Educate and entertain?
If you do not respond with YES to all of the above, you may contribute to the ever-growing content glut by providing more of the same.
Taking it a step further, Jenny Magic, a highly skilled analyst at Convince & Convert, offers a great suggestion for validating your “one thing” through intuition.
To begin, she suggests jotting down all the brand messages utilized by your company. Next, select your top three competitors and eliminate any messages from your list that they also employ. What remains will be an entirely distinct collection of brand messages, aiding in the clarification of your “one thing.”
Allow yourself to expand your story by thinking in a systematic manner, without adding or removing any information.
3. Measure Your Content Marketing
When considering tracking content, it is important to create trackable actions and establish methods for validating its effectiveness prior to producing the content. It is essential to avoid relying on vanity metrics that do not provide meaningful insights.
To determine if your content is achieving its intended purpose, we must focus on actions taken rather than just the number of views. This is where the 4 categories of content marketing metrics become crucial.
- Consumption metrics: This is one of the best and easiest places to start. Basically, what did audiences do with the content? Think actions: views, downloads, listens, visits, etc.
- Sharing metrics: How resonant is this piece of content, and how often is it shared with others?
- Lead generation metrics: The ultimate goal for most organizations; How many leads came from a piece of content?
- Sales metrics: Did we make any money on this piece of content?
The term “data” is not interchangeable with “anecdote” when considering it from a plural perspective.
4. Identify Your Top 5 Audiences
In order for us to be relevant, we need to understand the individuals we are addressing and specifically targeting. They may have different interpretations of what it means to be relevant. Therefore, relevancy has the power to create both time and attention.
- Audience: High-level collections of similarly motivated individuals with some common interest or agenda. Think: repeat product purchasers.
- Segment: Cross-sections of an audience or list in which individuals (or companies) share one or more common traits or can be grouped by a common trait.? Think: Work-from-home parents.
- Persona: A data-informed, detailed yet fictitious characterization of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. Think: In-Charge Charles or Happy-Go-Lucky Hank.
When planning your content marketing strategies, ensure that you concentrate solely on your top 5 audiences, irrespective of the audience definition you choose. Analyze their psychographics rather than just their demographics. Additionally, you may consider substituting stock photos with icons or symbols to prevent fixating on the physical appearance or stereotyping based on age, race, or gender of your audience.
When thinking step by step, rephrase the following text while keeping the meaning intact: Avoid focusing on yourself, as you are not the target audience. Instead, prioritize their requirements and motivations. Do not add any new information or omit any information.
5. Assess Your Available Resources
At this point, you may have a multitude of ideas and be enthusiastic about starting. However, before diving in, it’s important to consider a few practical factors. Will you be carrying out the planning, creation, and promotion of this content alone, or will you have assistance from a team? Do you have the necessary funds to promote the content, or will it need to gain traction organically? Are you able to financially support hiring freelancers or investing in content marketing tools to expedite the process?
When it comes to building content, there are various roles and tasks involved. Whether you have a person who is capable of handling multiple tasks or require assistance due to a large content creation plan, it is crucial to be truthful about your capabilities. This will enable you to establish realistic expectations and develop a corresponding strategy.
- Content Marketing and/or SEO Strategist
By exploring how to develop a content marketing strategy, you’re doing this job now. - Content Marketing Management
This person owns the editorial calendar, assigns tasks, and keeps everyone in sync. - Subject-Matter-Experts (SMEs)
These people have the specialized knowledge you need for your content. - Writers and Editors
Professional-level writing is core to every content marketing strategy. - Image and Video Producers
Photos, infographics, and animation make content interesting and easier to consume. - Promotional Expertise
Remember, top-notch content is an investment. Nurture your success with promotion. - Webmaster or Developer Support
Someone must be responsible for keeping your website healthy and making changes. - Tracking, Measurement, and Reporting
You need someone on your team who is comfortable with analytics.
6. Conduct Topic and Keyword Research
When establishing goals and objectives, it is simple to make impressive declarations such as “We aim to position ourselves as experts in our field and achieve the top spot in search results for ‘sales training’.” However, this enthusiasm diminishes when one actually searches for “sales training” on Google and observes the current situation.
Well, wait a minute. Perhaps we should provide additional details.
The process of topic and keyword research involves analyzing the search terms you think you should focus on and determining which ones to actually pursue using the available data. You do this by examining the search queries people enter into Google to find the terms that are relevant to your target audience and that you believe your website can rank for, taking into consideration your website’s strength.
Keyword research is extremely useful because it can completely change the way you prioritize and create your content. Moz has recently released a helpful guide on keyword research to guide you through the process. It is important to note that there is a significant amount of work involved, but it should be remembered that this is not a task you do all at once.
In order to challenge your thinking and improve your plans, it is important to conduct topic and keyword research. For example, at the beginning of this section, our goal was to rank number one for the search term “sales training.” However, we soon realized that the search results for this term contain numerous advertisements and listicles.
We will still use the term “sales training”, but we may emphasize terms that describe the particular training we offer, such as “value-based selling training” or “sales negotiation training.”
First, you will research each topic in more depth. This involves understanding what your customers would want if they were to search for that query on Google, as well as identifying the competitors in the search results. Next, you will develop a structure for the post that enables you to comprehensively address the topic at hand, with the goal of outranking the competition.
7. Build an Editorial Calendar
Now that you have a list of content you want to create and/or update, it is time to construct an editorial calendar, which is also referred to as a “content calendar”.
An editorial calendar is a means or record that enables you to convey your publishing schedule and the individuals accountable for completing it. If you are only publishing occasionally, a basic spreadsheet may suffice. Just write each piece on a separate row, assign an author, and include any necessary information for the author.
If your schedule is more demanding or if multiple individuals contribute to creating content, you might require a more advanced tool. Selecting the suitable tool for your work style is crucial because an editorial calendar can greatly enhance your productivity.
8. Monitor your outcomes and implement changes accordingly.
If you choose to create SEO optimized blog posts, you will track various things depending on your content creation goals.
- How much traffic each blog post brings to your website and where that traffic is coming from (organic search, social media, links, etc.)
- How each blog post is performing in search. Eg, the keywords each post is ranking for, your position in search, and the number of clicks vs impressions.
- What happens after people consume your content. Do they leave, go on to read other content, or sign up for your newsletter?
Side notes
From time to time, individuals inquire about an instance of a content marketing strategy, which poses a challenging question to respond to. A content marketing strategy does not consist of a single document, but rather multiple documents that require extensive research, analysis, and decision-making, encompassing:
- Buyer Personas
- Buyer’s Journeys
- A High-Level Content Marketing Strategy (outlining your goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics, aka GOST)
- A Content Inventory and Audit
- Topic and Keyword Research
- Editorial Calendar(s)
You can condense your key findings and decisions into a presentation including relevant research screenshots. However, the practical guidance, which explains how to implement a content marketing strategy, lies within the specifics. This is the crucial aspect where the magic occurs.
