DIY content marketing is a high-risk high-reward pursuit that lots of business owners attempt. If you’re considering implementing content marketing in your business, you need to know it’s being done right.
Here we will go over what content marketing is, how to set up strategies, and how to implement an effective strategy. Let’s jump into it.
What is Content Marketing
People assume that content writing and content marketing are similar, but content marketing is a completely different concept.
Content marketing is about providing relevant and valuable information to your readers and turning them into buyers. In simple terms, it’s an effort to reach your potential customers when they are going to want to make a purchase.
Customers are always looking for more information about the product or service they want. That’s why content marketing or content strategy helps to create targeted group-specific content and then uses it to promote to their target audience (with the help of the right keyword research).
Content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without pushing toward selling. It encompasses all marketing formats and platforms that involve content creation or content sharing to keep your leads and engage with your audience.
Great content marketing implements professional writing, photos, videos, and graphic designs across websites and social media accounts in your niche.
How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy
The importance of content marketing has increased dramatically in the last 20 years. Blog and social media content has led to the growth of companies that offer unique and engaging content. Winning business owners recognize the importance of building an audience, winning the trust of customers, and establishing authority using content marketing strategies
Now, content marketing is almost universally implemented in most B2B and B2C businesses, and for good reason! It leads to a more engaged audience, more word-of-mouth referrals, and a longer customer lifespan – meaning more people pay more money for longer when they use content marketing effectively.
That’s not to say that making content guarantees results…
Most marketers know that people ignore poor quality content. It doesn’t grab people’s attention, and on the off chance it gets someone’s attention initially, low quality content is unlikely to keep the viewer intrigued.
Even worse, if your audience sees low-quality content, they will think of your brand as low-quality overall. It’s not just important to have a strategy, you need to have quality content to fuel it.
Before developing a content marketing strategy, there are a few things you’ll need to think about. Follow these steps to find the right path to a successful content marketing journey.
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1. Identify the Audience You Will Target
We’ve heard it too many times- “We have something for everyone, so everyone is our audience.” We promise you’re losing business by not being specific with your content marketing.
Content marketing needs to identify the specific audience and focus on creating high-quality content. You have to keep in mind that you’re spending resources to achieve every view and click of your content. If you sell a product that is not well targeted it can lead to wasted ad-spend or time wasted on crafting content for your social media or website. So focus on a specific audience if you want to make the most of your limited resources.
2. Do thorough market research:
A background check of your target market will give you enough information to develop a strategy. You’ll need to figure out what your target audience is looking for and what problems they have that need resolution.
You can do this by building a Buyer’s Persona Profile which will detail your target audience’s demographics, psychographics, and behavior patterns. This will help you understand what motivates your buyers and allow you to market to them in the way they want to be marketed.
While you are doing market research, dig deep and find out what other companies in your niche are offering and discern how your product or service can solve your audience’s problems better than your competitors.
3. Analyze and evaluate your competitors
If you’re going to have a solid content marketing strategy, you need to understand your competitors. When you are able to find a gap in their audience or product that you can capitalize on, that will be your ultimate weapon for success. Learn from them, but be very careful not to be a copycat.
If you create content too similar to theirs it can punish you from the audience and SEO sides. You won’t win an audience by replicating content that is already out there. Instead, learn from your competitors’ succeeding strategies and build on them to add more value for your audience.
One easy way to distinguish yourself from competitors is to highlight your Unique Selling Proposition to show your audience why you are better than your competition.
4. Make smart goals and use the right KPI’s
Having an objective is a strategy that has been used for thousands of years and is known to be successful.
Your goals must be achievable and realistic at the same time, that’s why we recommend the SMART framework for creating goals. Click here to learn more about creating smart marketing goals. You also need to commit and deliver if you want to gain recognition, if you are making empty promises, those are going to put you in a hole with your audience.
The desired business outcome should clearly define what the company wants to achieve through content marketing. Do you want to build brand awareness? Do you want to increase audience engagement? Do you want to focus on converting your existing audience?
I already hear what you’re saying in your head, “Yeah, I want to do all of that.” We hear that one a lot too.
The truth is that big businesses with large budgets can do everything at once. But you should focus on one thing at a time. Pick one thing that you really want to get from your content marketing now, then build up to adding new objectives to capitalize on the gains you achieve after.
To do that well, you’ll need to understand your objective and choose a few KPIs to evaluate your strategy. Here’s a few Objectives and the KPI’s that correlate with them:
| Objective | KPI |
| Brand Awareness | Net Reach & Net Views |
| Audience Growth | Net Followers & Newsletter Subscriptions |
| Increase Existing Audience Engagement | Likes, Comments, Views, & View Duration, |
| Lead Generation | Lead Form Submissions & Subscriptions |
| Sales | Revenu & Return on Ad Spend |
5. Identify your most advantageous platforms and how you will utilize them
There’s no shortage of platforms at your disposal, so this can be a hard choice for lots of businesses. You have limited time and budget available for content marketing, that’s why it’s critical that you try not to do everything at once.
If you are totally new to content marketing, we recommend that you start with one platform to start. When you can get one content marketing platform to start performing for you, then expand to new platforms.
But still, how do you choose?!
Every platform has its own unique benefits. See the table below to help you decide which platforms are the best for you to focus on with your new content marketing campaign:
| Content Marketing Platform | Pros | Cons |
| Blog | Better SEO, Long Form Content Friendly | Low and slow growth using blogs alone for content marketing. Good long term investment, but will not return short-term gains. |
| Best platform for retargeting, everyone has an email address, but not everyone has a social media account | Only works if you have a sizable email list and a method of expanding your email list. | |
| YouTube | Enhanced SEO & better audience engagement | Time consuming and expensive to produce great YouTube videos. Low quality video will actually hurt your brand more than it helps. |
| Exceptional paid advertising opportunities, Facebook Groups has great engagement and purchase behavior organically | Business Pages get very limited impressions. Facebook Groups work great, but time consuming to do well. | |
| Great reach for organic posts, solid choice for products that are visual | It is difficult to move Instagram users off of Instagram to your website with organic content alone. | |
| Most reach per post, great for news sources and keeping community updated | Short post lifespan, low engagement rate for small accounts | |
| Longest lifespan for posts of any platform, great for driving website traffic | Smallest active user base of all the platforms listed | |
| TikTok | Advanced algorithm puts you in your target audience’s feed automatically | Time consuming, only highly effective with 35yo’s and younger |
6. Set A Budget & Create the Action Plan
Efficiently allocate your resources within budget and adapt them to your work plan. After setting a budget you need to take the time to prioritize your needs to make the most of that budget.
Will you be implementing social media? Are you focusing on building better SEO? Will you be creating video content? Do you expect to run paid ads?
Sort your plans from the most critical to the least important that way you know what to start with and you can have a plan for each of your priorities.
Each of these strategies will take time and money to implement, so the next step is to understand how much your team can handle themselves. When you build your action plan, ask your staff how long they expect it will take them to perform the tasks you assign to them.
On top of that, budget for contract labor from specialists in areas that your team is weak. The money you have left after that can and should be allocated toward your ad budget
If you’re not keen on marketing, it can be hard choosing what to prioritize or how to set an appropriate budget. If that feels like you, you may want to consult a marketing strategist to help.
7. Launch your Content Marketing Plan and adjust to feedback as you go!
Encourage potential customers and website visitors to leave comments and suggestions. You should spend more time incorporating the changes as part of your company’s content marketing strategy. After making your changes, let your visitors know that you value their feedback and have made any necessary changes to the content.
Content development is the first step to an effective marketing strategy. By providing high-quality content, you increase transparency, authority and trust with your audience and potential audience.
Wrap Up
Now more than ever, businesses need to get the most out of their content.
Make the most of your time, work, and money by having a strategy, executing on it, and learning from mistakes. That’s how you can reach your audience when they are ready to convert and share your message with them in a way they will connect with your company.
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