You might have heard it a million times already but, there’s no denying it, an effective content marketing strategy is worth its weight in gold for your business. Which is why it’s so important that you dedicate the time and research to develop your content strategy.
So, what is content marketing? At its core, this is content such as blogs, social and pages on your website. However, there is more to this form of marketing that adding just any old blurb and hoping for the best. Instead, you need to focus on high-quality content that will really resonate with your customer market.
Yet your content marketing strategy is more than just some quality content too, especially if you want to get the most out of your digital marketing. So, to help you create the best marketing strategy possible, here are 5 key steps you will need to create a successful campaign:
1. Learn About Your Content Marketing Funnel
While a content marketing – or sales – funnel might sound complicated, it simply concerns the process of a potential customer choosing to buy a product or a service. There are three stages to a content marketing funnel and you will need to nail each stage in order to increase sales. These stages are:
- Outreach – where you attract new customers to your website
- Conversion – where you convince these customers to purchase a product or service
- Retention – where you establish brand loyalty and inspire customers to return and/or recommend you to their friends and family
In this content marketing funnel, it is the outreach portion that is concerned with any content that you publish. As you use your content to bring visitors to your website either through click-throughs or by improving your ranking on search engines.
However, to run a successful content marketing campaign, you need to understand each stage and keep that in mind with every piece of content you plane. As, it doesn’t matter how good your content or SEO rankings are, if people aren’t buying into your business it will feel pointless.
2. Develop a Clear Voice for Your Content
Now that you know that you want to develop your content strategy to entice customers on to your pages, you may wish to develop a clear content voice that will help you to achieve this. Here, we basically mean that you want your content to exude your brand’s voice.
For instance, if you are running an online shop selling your own homemade chilli sauces, you may want to build a brand voice that is friendly, fun and informative. Sort of like branding yourself a celebrity chef, your content could include recipes involving your sauces, tips on growing chillies and some of your processes to make that sauce. This should be very photograph heavy and you may wish to create complimentary video content too.
Developing this content voice is very important, especially if you work with a team of writers or content creators. As, by having a clear tone of voice to follow, your content will feel more professional and look like the same person has brought everything together.
A brand voice is also a wonderful way for you to keep your Conversion and Retention rates up. As, if your content voice is inspiring to your customers, they are far more likely to buy from you and stay loyal to you.
3. Consider Your Content as Data – Not Just Words!
When we start building a content marketing strategy, it’s easy to get caught up the words and reaching a target of ‘X’ many blogs a month or ‘Y’ number of Facebook posts a week. However, as important as your content quality and frequency is, it’s also important to view your content as data. As it is this data interpretation that will help improve your campaign.
Most importantly, you will want to match your conversation rates to the content that you are posting. This will show you want is working and what isn’t when it comes to your content marketing. For instance, if you’ve posted a brilliant blog, full of SEO keywords and it’s not improving your rankings, nor bringing people to your website, then something is clearly not working.
The same goes for a piece of content – such as a video recipe – that brings lots of visitors to your site but doesn’t result in many conversions. In this case you’ll know that there is something about your website or online store that is stopping people from making that final commitment.
So, every time you post, make sure you are recording your data and using it see what people are liking and use that knowledge to improve your strategy.
4. Create a Content Marketing Calendar
When it comes to your digital marketing, a calendar is key. As, rather than just posting any old content when it’s ready, you will want plan all your key content ideas in advance so that you can post them at the best moment.
In your content calendar you will want to keep a note of key holidays – such as Christmas and Valentine’s – as well as any key events relative to your industry. You won’t want to jam-pack your calendar though, as you’ll want to leave space for any trending issues which you would like to address with your content.
Keep in mind, your content calendar doesn’t need to be filled out all at once. Instead, keep your calendar digital and be prepared to alter and evolve it as the year goes on. Also, be sure to sure it around the team, as you never know who might have a neat idea for a specific event or holiday that you can utilise in your content.
5. Learn to Repurpose Your Content Marketing
So, you have a really creative idea for a blog – why not repurpose this wonderful idea for various forms of content? It might sound complicated, but actually this is a very simple way for you to bring new content to your business but with very little effort on your part.
For instance, if your business is building conservatories, you may wish to create a blog on the advantages of having your own conservatory. This blog, which will be both informative and shareable, will also be full of keywords to help improve your SEO. However, does that means, that once you’ve posted that blog, you can’t reuse it?
Well, actually, a great content marketer will be able to reuse this blog in many different ways to get the most out of that content. This could include:
- Creating an infographic on conservatory advantages – ideal for posting on somewhere like Pinterest, that links onto your blog and website.
- A visual Facebook post on some of your customer’s before and after photographs – again linking to your blog for those who might be considering a conservatory.
- A video where one of your team walks through a conservatory and talks through the advantages – like a video representation of your original blog.
Just about any content you create can be repurposed and used for a wider audience. Not only will this help bring you more visitors – and help complete that sales funnel – it allows you to create much more content without needing to brainstorm new ideas constantly.
Developing a content marketing strategy can feel daunting, but there’s no denying how important digital marketing will be for the success of your business. If you would like to improve your content marketing and would like some help, get in touch with Studio Coact today. Where we can work together with you to help bring your brand to the forefront of your competitors