Every venture requires proper planning or an outline through which the business will pave its growth. The only profitable sector to gain an online presence is content marketing based on the latest trend. And, it has the power to turn the tables for any business of any size. A power pack in itself requires the minimum expenses but maximum effort.
Today content is the king, and using it appropriately for your business can help you to accelerate in the market. So, your intention should be to craft content that would deliver high returns by the end of the year. And, for this, you have to research, plan and develop a proper marketing strategy.
According to the latest report, around 63% of the business don’t have an efficient content marketing team. And, this is where they lack the potential to rise. You need to invest in building a content marketing strategy. This is a step-by-step process that goes through content analysis, development, and implementation.
So, let’s walk through the 7 steps that would help you to develop a content marketing plan and allow you to take the lead in the market.
#1. Establish your objective
Be specific – what has drawn your attention to content marketing? And, why do you need a strategy? Is it because you want to gain new customers? Or, do you want to increase leads on your website? Or, whether your website lacks proper lead generation capability?
Even if thousands and millions of content are available on the internet, be it on the same topic. But, with time, changes are required. Viewers are more interested in engaging content and give them a priority. You can work on newsletters or promote email subscriptions. Further, this enhances the chances of content being read and shared.
So, summing up, your goal should be clear enough. Set a goal and a mission statement that talks about your brand and its intentions. A goal would help you set a target that your business eventually needs to fulfil.
List out your target audience or to whom it will benefit and how you will reach them. Your content marketing strategy is nothing but the reflection of your thoughts about your brand and where you want to see it in the next ten years.
#2. Understand your target audience
It is important to understand the buyer persona and have deep research and report based on the buyers’ journey. Content is meant to attract customers and must be able to inspire them so that they take some kind of action.
Every business has a particular target audience. Suppose you are selling beauty products for women, then you have a target range for women, and your content should depict that. If you can get hold of the key performance indicators, then there is no looking back. Divide the customer base into factors such as age, demographic details, gender, etc.
Go through the customer data or interview them and interact with your customers to understand their opinion about your brand. It might take some time, but the research is totally worth it. If you want to generate traffic, then create engaging blogs but if you’re focusing on earning sales, then add call-to-action to your content.
#3. Understand your competition
This step provides you with the motivation to work harder and provides you with winning hacks. So, when you are at the base of content marketing, following your competition is not a bad idea. Further, this will help you gain ideas that will set you apart.
Now, it is a fact that competitions can erupt from any place. You will meet competitors who are trying to take the lead with similar products or services. Summing up, everyone is actually competing to gain the same customer base.
So, minutely study the type of content your competition is focusing on, the length, meta titles, etc. Verify whether they have a social media presence as this can help increase social share and reach millions within a stipulated time.
Thus, it is the best option to follow your competition companies and understand their key aspects. This will help you build a plan that will set you apart, and your customers will come back repeatedly. It is time to work on your strengths and weaknesses to form a powerful content marketing strategy.
#4. Let’s analyze and create the content
To begin with, crafting proper content, you must have a professional content writing team who can understand the audience. Moreover, they have the skills to fill in the gaps through their words. Along with that, you must also use tools that will help you to audit the previous content. This is a very crucial part of creating a content marketing strategy.
So, compile all the websites where you have already published content and track – whether it brings any lead, whether there is a bounce rate, and whether there is any content missing? You also need to understand the present demand and implement them in your writing. Here customer feedback has the most impactful result.
Simply writing content won’t help you to bring in profit. Rather you must work on the focal points and have a holistic approach. Your content should be able to correlate with your target group and should emphasize your goal or objective of the business. Ask the viewers about the difficulties they might face while going through your content. After you are done with proper analysis, write precise, original, knowledgeable, and informative content.
#5. Setup of a content management system
After you do keyword research and get approval for the content topics, drafting content is all you are left with. But, along with that, you need to manage the entire setup from creating and analysis to implementation. Here comes the content audit.
The audit reports will help you systematically schedule the content so that there is no gap in publishing. Use a proper combination of social media and editorial calendars to help you measure the post.
Thus, you can constantly improve your understanding of the best time to post a topic and whether it is influencing the customers or audience. A content marketing strategy requires allocated roles to ensure that the tasks are being fulfilled on time.
It would be best to build a team whose prime object should be to reduce abandonment, engage visitors for a longer duration and convert the audience into customers. Get all the resources, such as video makers, graphics creators, and content drafting tools. Hire the experts in every department but with high yielding results.
#6. Content distribution channel
After you are done drafting the content, you must find the channels through which your content will be able to gain views. Every content publishing platform has its own specification and terms. So, be prepared to make the necessary edits, and procure a perfect format based on the channel guidelines.
Content drafting does include not only blogs but also video content, podcasts, infographics, video content, etc. So, decide the type of content you would like to formulate to help you with your goals. This would help create an impression, establish brand recognition and improve engagement.
If you use your own website to promote content, it will act as an additional bonus. Try to include webinars to spread the word about your future content and commitment. This would build trust and bring in more traffic.
#7. Analyze your success
Now that you are all done publishing the content, you have to wait and measure the results. Is your content gaining organic traffic, or do you need to run advertisements? The best supportive tool to get the proper metrics is Google analytics. Moreover, it can help you to get a complete overview of the results.
Analyzing your standpoint is very important to take the next step. Thus, it is always advised to keep the content marketing strategy flexible and workable based on requirements. Moreover, it is always advised to use white hat techniques to bring in improvement. You must also keep patience as the content requires some time to show positive results.
But, at the same time, you must not forget that it is also part of trial and error tactics. If your content strategy fails, then there is nothing to get disappointed about. You just have to buckle up, go through the metrics and start from the first step again.
Conclusion
It is undeniable that content marketing is not so expensive but requires long-term creativity and hard work. You just cannot put any type of content on your website, and it must have the proper information and the power to influence viewers. Along with this, you must keep in mind to establish a setup that assures long-term production.
Along with content, you must also include photos and videos, and they should be original, too. Graphic content attracts the viewers much more quickly. Moreover, marketing would be a piece of cake if you have a well-planned production and content development.
So, it’s time to start with the content creation process and leave your brand’s footprints in the market.
Author Bio
SK Sahin
SK Sahin is an SEO Associate at Meraqi Digital, the best Digital Marketing agency in Kolkata. He enjoys writing different topics about search engine optimization and digital marketing.
