Content marketing is considered one of the most prominent ways to promote businesses online. Brands that use content marketing have conversion rates six times higher on average than those that do not.
To get the most out of content marketing, you need a robust strategy and thorough planning. But how do you come up with a perfect content strategy for your business?
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8 Steps to a Perfect Content Marketing Strategy for Your Company
Continue reading to learn about the eight steps that can lead you to a perfect content marketing strategy, starting from setting your goals and ending with measuring your marketing results.
1. Set Your Goals
First, try to figure out why your business needs a content marketing strategy. Doing so can help you set specific goals and understand how you should prioritize them.
To help you set your goals, try to use the SMART principle:
- Specific. Your goals should be related to your specific business area.
- Measurable. Make sure to set specific criteria to measure your progress.
- Attainable. Make sure your business has the required resources to achieve its goals.
- Relevant. Try to set realistic and essential goals for your business.
- Time-bound. Set a deadline for your business to achieve said goals.
Take your time when brainstorming potential goals and discuss them with your team to get more perspectives. Remember to consider detailed aspects of your business website too, such as hosting quality and available website tools.
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2. Understand Your Audience
Understanding your audience’s characteristics is essential to help you create personalized and engaging content. Around 87% of consumers feel that personally relevant branded content positively influences how they think about a brand.
Because of that, creating relevant and engaging content should always be your priority. There are several ways to know your audience’s characteristics better, including using surveys, subscription forms, and social media pages.
Free analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and the ones offered by social media platforms, can also help you find out more about your target audiences. These tools present various data such as demographics, locations, and language.
3. Set Your KPIs
As mentioned above, it is essential to make your goals specific and measurable. One of the best ways to track and measure your progress is by using key performance indicators (KPIs).
KPIs work by setting several milestones that you need to complete within a period of time. These milestones can include various factors such as revenue, sales, traffic, and SEO. They also often have specific numbers attached to them.
Examples of the common content marketing KPIs include:
- Increasing the site traffic using your onsite content within a month.
- Getting a certain number of new email subscribers.
- Hitting a certain revenue target within a month, a quarter, or a year.
- Improving search engine ranking of some of your key pages.
4. Do a Keyword Research
Keyword research is an integral part of SEO, which is helpful when boosting your website’s ranking in the search engine results pages. Integrating relevant keywords into your content helps your audience to quickly decide if your content suits their needs.
There are several helpful tools to improve your keyword research, such as Google Trends, Answer The Public, and Ahrefs Keyword Generator. Some of these tools are free to use and very helpful to give you an idea of which keyword to focus on.
5. Decide on the Best Content Types
There are various types of content you can choose as your main focus. When making your decision, pay attention to the kind of industry you’re in and your audience’s characteristics. Several possible content types to choose from include:
- Blog post and articles
- Videos
- Infographics
- Newsletters
- Podcasts
- Social media posts
This process might require some trial and error before you get it right. Remember that it is okay to take your time and experiment with different types of content to see what works best for your business.
6. Choose Your Platforms
Depending on your audience’s demographics and the content type you choose, you may want to publish it on a specific platform. Even though most platforms allow you to post various kinds of content, they often excel in only one type of content.
For example, if you decide to make longer video content, it might be best to post it on YouTube rather than uploading it on Instagram TV. This is because YouTube has more features and can give a better user experience when it comes to video content if compared to Instagram.
However, being present on multiple platforms can be beneficial, too, since it can help you expand the reach of your content and build brand awareness.
7. Create a Content Calendar
Content calendar or editorial calendar is a schedule of when you plan to post content. Having a content calendar is crucial because it helps you with consistency which can positively affect your brand credibility.
There are several ways to create a content calendar; the most straightforward way is by using Google Calendar. All you have to do is make some notes and due dates for each content piece there. This method can work well, especially if you don’t post a lot of content.
However, if you plan to post content more frequently, tools such as Loomly and Trello might be a better choice. These organizational tools offer more advanced features like mockups submission, progress tracking, and a more intuitive interface.
8. Measure Results
The final step in creating a perfect content marketing strategy is to measure your results regularly. By conducting measures and evaluations weekly, monthly, or quarterly, you can find out if you were able to achieve your KPIs.
Measuring results is also essential to help you to identify which aspects of your marketing strategy need improvement. Proper data tracking also lets you manage the resources for your future marketing efforts.
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Conclusion
Optimizing your content marketing strategy can be the key to attracting more customers and improving your conversion rate. To get a good content strategy, there are several aspects to consider.
In this article, we have learned about eight necessary steps when formulating a content marketing strategy, including:
- Set your goals
- Understand your audience
- Create your KPIs
- Do keyword research
- Decide on the best content types
- Choose your platforms
- Create a content calendar
- Measure the results
Each of these steps plays an essential role in the success of your marketing effort. Follow the steps presented in this article, and your content marketing results will improve.
