Here is your complete guide to strategic content marketing
Introduction to Strategic Content Marketing
A content marketing strategy focuses on developing and launching a competitive content marketing plan. This plan serves as a road map for all of the original content that your company intends to produce. This content may include both written and visual materials. What is strategic content marketing? What do you need to know about strategic content marketing? what is the meaning of strategic content marketing? Here is your complete guide to strategic content marketing.
Consider your content marketing strategy as the “how” and your content marketing plan as the “what.” Your content marketing strategy addresses the question of how your content marketing plan will increase brand awareness or lead generation, for example.
What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
Many businesses follow the proper steps when developing a content marketing strategy. They research their target audiences, create a content calendar, and track the performance of their content.
Their content, on the other hand, does not produce the desired results. These companies frequently take the correct steps but overlook critical details. That’s why this how-to guide goes over best practices and highlights the smallest details.
This method teaches you not only how to create a content marketing strategy, but also how to improve an existing one by identifying flaws. Are you ready to begin developing the most effective marketing strategies for your company?
Begin by following these seven steps:
Establish the goal of your content marketing strategy.
Your content strategy has a goal, whether you want to increase revenue, increase lead generation, or improve user engagement. However, many businesses fail to invest the time required to develop their goal.
Create S.M.A.R.T. goals for your content strategy:
- Specific: A well-defined goal can provide answers to the what, why, who, where, and how questions. Spend time brainstorming what your company hopes to achieve with content marketing and who will be in charge of your content marketing strategy.
- Measurable: Whether you’re in charge of your content marketing strategy in-house or working with a content marketing agency, you should have a measurable goal in mind. How much of an increase would you like to see in your lead generation efforts, for example?
- Achievable: While a difficult goal can motivate your team, it is critical to keep your content marketing objectives attainable. A few things to think about are your company’s marketing budget, as well as your team’s time constraints and other responsibilities.
- Realistic: Another consideration is whether your goal is attainable. For example, perhaps your lead generation goals are more achievable in two years rather than one.
- Timely: You should set a deadline for your content marketing goal. Set checkpoints for goals with a long timeline, such as a few years or several months. If you want to increase lead generation by 10% in a year, commit to hitting 5% by month six.
You lay the groundwork for your content marketing strategy by setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. Your team understands what your company wants to achieve and when it wants to achieve it, which provides a foundation for fully developing your content marketing strategy.
Identify the target audience for your content marketing strategy.
Your audience is an important aspect of content marketing because they are the ones who are reading your content. That is why businesses rarely overlook this step in developing a content marketing strategy. Businesses can, however, improve in this area.
In most cases, you already know the following facts about your target audience:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Education
It’s their basic demographic information, which is extremely useful when developing a content marketing strategy. However, the best content marketing strategies go beyond demographics. They investigate what target audiences do on the Internet.
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Examine your content.
While many content marketing strategy guides recommend a content audit, many businesses skip this step. Some have few pieces of content, while others have a lot.
Conduct a content audit regardless of how much – or how little – experience your company has with content marketing. It’s a crucial step in developing a content marketing strategy. The results provide insight into your previous approaches and may even provide ideas for future content.
Conduct a content audit by following the steps below:
- Make a content inventory: A content inventory serves as a directory and includes the URL for the content. In some cases, you may include the heading and sub-headings of the content. Using a tool like Screaming Frog, you can create a content inventory and then export the data to a spreadsheet.
- Subject of the catalog: Once you’ve completed your spreadsheet, categorize the information. Take note of the content type and topic, such as a 500-word how-to blog post or an 800-word service page, for maximum documentation.
- Content for the grade: After that, assign a grade to each piece of content. Consider the writing’s quality as well as the content’s relevance and accuracy for today’s audiences. Check the organization, tone, and visuals of the content as well, as you want it to match your current branding.
- Log performance: The performance of the content is the last detail to include in your spreadsheet. Some metrics to consider include the amount of traffic received by the webpage, as well as the bounce rate and user engagement, which can all be found in Google Analytics.
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Create your content policies.
This question does not have a simple answer for businesses that are new to content marketing.
It takes time and planning because your team must develop guidelines for creating and publishing content for your company. This is especially important for healthcare content marketing plans, as you must ensure that your content complies with industry regulations.
However, many businesses disregard the advice to create a set of content guidelines. It is critical that your company not skip this step. You can influence the quality of your strategy as well as its impact on your goals if you do not have guidelines.
As a result, you should have a guide that looks into the following content features:
- Types of content: The best content marketing strategies include more than just blog posts — and yours should, too. Make a list of content types and their distinguishing features or requirements. These specifications may include a desired word count or calls to action.
- Images for content: The use and format of images should be noted in your content guidelines. What fonts and colors should they use, for example, when creating custom graphics? Alternatively, what image websites should your team visit?
- Tone of voice: While your company’s branding guidelines may specify the preferred tone for press releases and other formal communications, they may not cover more casual content types such as blog posts. Make a note of your preferences in your guide.
