How To Create, Plan, And Implement A Killer Content Marketing Strategy
The efficacy of content marketing is undeniable, with 82% of marketers using this advertising tactic to connect brands with their audience and offer irresistible value. For this reason, developing a killer content marketing strategy is key to achieving your marketing goals, irrespective of the current market conditions.
Fortunately, capitalizing on the efficacy of content marketing is easy as the steps needed to create a killer strategy aren’t difficult to follow. This article will provide the necessary steps to create, plan, and implement a killer Digital Content Marketing Strategy.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
Before presenting all you need to know to create, plan, and implement a killer Digital Content Marketing Strategy, it’s best to define the term. Essentially, a content marketing strategy is the foundation for producing, publishing, and optimizing your content; it’s a roadmap for digital marketing.
A well-planned content strategy elaborates on your business goals shortly and how you wish to achieve them via digital advertising. It determines the information you share, how you broadcast it, and when the content reaches the target audience.
Digital marketing goes behind writing casually and expecting to rank number one on Google’s search results. It requires effort, a solid plan, and extreme dedication.
Why create a content marketing strategy?
After employing content marketing, approximately 74% of companies experienced increased lead generation, quality, and quantity. This shows the power of creating quality content that draws your audience’s attention as it converts them to customers.
However, like starting a business, success doesn’t come luckily; rather, you need careful effort and an effective strategy; else, you’ll waste time and resources. Therefore, you need a killer digital content marketing strategy to maximize your advertising efforts and gain the most value possible.
Creating an effective digital content marketing strategy
Irrespective of your business status, a multinational or small startup, developing a killer content marketing campaign is critical to positioning yourself as an authority in your industry. While it requires careful and effective planning, this will present all you need for success, and these include:
1. Understand your buyer’s persona
Creating an effective digital content marketing strategy involves producing items your audience finds valuable; however, this goal is impossible without first building a buyer’s persona.
Understanding your buyer’s persona helps you add value to every piece of content you produce since you know what resonates with people interested in your offering.
It’s also worth mentioning that understanding your buyer’s persona goes beyond “female, 20-45”; it’s insufficient to serve as the foundation of your content marketing strategy. Ultimately, it would be best to have something more sophisticated, precise, and reliable.
Some areas to investigate that shed more light on your audience include:
- Biggest challenges
- Online behavior
- Core values and interests
- Financial capacity
- Age
- Marital status
- Spending habits
- Communication preference
2. Set and visualize your goals
Once you understand your audience and possess the information necessary for making valuable marketing content, the next phase is setting specific goals for your digital content marketing strategy.
These goals allow you to define KPIs and metrics that show whether your marketing efforts are successful or need quick revision.
Some content marketing goals include generating sales leads, raising brand awareness, surpassing your competitors in website traffic, and improving search rankings. Also, it’s best to outline these goals and expectations in a business plan alongside the value you intend to provide and any potential inhibitors.
Setting and visualizing these disks early in your digital content marketing strategy helps steer your advertising efforts in the right direction. But, then, it’s necessary to create a killer advertising campaign.
3. Outline your content type
After understanding your audience and determining what you wish to achieve, map out your content type. Essentially, this features the format which is ideal for offering value to your audience, and they include:
- Blog posts
- Ebooks
- Case studies
- Social media posts
- Infographics
- Videos podcasts
It’s worth mentioning that while multiple communication channels exist, pick a few and capitalize on them. On the other hand, choosing too many content types spreads you thin, weakening your message and becoming ineffective.
Furthermore, your digital content marketing strategy competes with other brands for your audience’s online attention. Therefore, make it worthwhile by communicating via their most preferred mode of communication.
*Note: Creating a buyer’s persona will reveal the best content type for your audience.
4. Brainstorm Ideas
Once you have your content type and audience persona ready, it’s time to brainstorm ideas on topics. Again, the goal is to create content your audience finds valuable and helpful, as this doesn’t happen without additional research.
You can source content ideas from what’s already out there; visit your competitors’ pages and understand what others are making. Also, consider recreating these high-ranking topics but improving them to offer more value before publishing each on the internet.
Another way to get valuable content ideas is via content marketing tools like Google trends, which helps to identify topics your audience is most likely to search for online. In addition, predicting future desires allows you to meet your audience’s needs on time and accurately.
5. Develop a content calendar
With the list of content to create and the channels to use, it’s easy to lose track of what marketing piece to upload next or which person or department is in charge of that content. Fortunately, a content calendar can rectify this issue as it keeps track of your promotions and other relevant information.
Scheduling the timeline allows you to pace your content’s publishing frequency and better execute your marketing strategy. Based on your KPI and metrics, you can include different stages of your marketing strategy, like transitioning from awareness to a decisive phase for your audience.
The general properties of a digital content marketing strategy features:
- Content type
- Content description
- Publishing dates
- Keywords and relevant links
- Promotion plans (channels and budgets)
It’s worth mentioning that an editorial calendar can help you resurrect old and outdated content on your website since all that’s needed is to repolish, update, and re-upload.
6. Publish your content
Once you have the elements ready – topics, ebooks, videos, or case studies – proceed to publish them on the ideal platform for communicating with your audience. Also, consider sharing it on social media, pushing it to relevant stakeholders via an email marketing list, and try having industry Influencers share your content.
Amongst the content you possess, focus your budget on the most important ones, those that push you further toward your marketing goal. Furthermore, while you should stick to your plan, hesitate to make changes to your content calendar whenever the need arises.
7. Monitor and evaluate the results
Another crucial aspect of creating a killer content marketing strategy is monitoring the campaign to understand whether it meets your marketing goals or needs adjustments.
Experts recommend keeping track via metric tools like Google Analytics, which provides information on the average time a user spends on a page, alongside the overall page view and bounce rate.
With the insight provided, you’ll be able to adjust your content marketing strategy and provide the kind of content your users value via the right channel. In addition, depending on your marketing goals, you may want to monitor how your content affects sales leads and revenue generation.
*Note: Try receiving feedback from viewers on the type of content they want. The insight may give you a competitive edge.
Bonus: Focus on internal linking
An internal link connects your content to another piece online, whether from an authoritative website or your platform. This feature allows Google to understand your website better, ranking you higher on the search results.
To maximize the benefits of internal linking, ensure to like important words or phrases; use high-quality descriptive anchor text and even SEO-optimized keywords. These actions teach Google about your website and business and recommend it to your audience.
Keep in mind that internal linking is one of many Search Engine Optimization techniques, and overdoing it will reduce your website’s rank. However, you can search for other strategies to rank higher on search engines or hire a professional content writer off freelance platforms.
Conclusion
The most crucial part of a digital marketing strategy is meticulous research; study your audience and create a buyer’s persona. This information will provide all the details you need to create the right type of content and how to communicate with the ideal channels.
Create a calendar and keep track of your marketing efforts as the campaign progresses; it provides insights on whether your strategy is effective or needs reworking. Nevertheless, research, learning, and adapting; maybe your key to success.
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