The Ultimate Guide To Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
Content is king, right? We’ve heard that many times as marketers, and it’s true even in 2022 as content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.
You can’t ignore success rates like that right? Well, you won’t see success like that unless you have all your ducks in a row.
Why Is Content Strategy Important?
But let’s face it –marketing without a well-defined strategy is just noise. A content strategy will not only define how your content will be used, but how it will capture your audience and guide them to the actions you want them to take.
Content gives potential customers an opening to engage with your brand. Think of it as a glimpse into your company’s personality. However, people are going to interact with your brand differently when they are at different stages of the buyer’s journey. That’s why it’s important to make sure you diversify your content for every stage of the marketing funnel, including:
Awareness (top) – Top-funnel stage involves the acquisition and retention of new customers or leads. This is also known as the first impression stage where leads are technically still getting their feet wet and getting to know you.
Interest or consideration (middle) – Middle-funnel stage involves leads that are generally interested or have an understanding of who you are, but haven’t taken action yet. At this stage, they aren’t ready to commit yet, but they are well on their way.
Conversion (bottom) – The bottom of the funnel is what sales refers to as a hot lead. They are ready to make a purchase and genuinely bought into what your brand is offering.
Starting a Content Marketing Strategy
A brilliant content strategy puts the audience at the center of everything. Without a clear idea about who your audience is and what they need, it’s impossible to create meaningful connections with them through your marketing efforts.
There are a couple of things you are going to have to define to get started on the right foot:
Customer Personas
Creating customer personas is a crucial step in the content marketing process. It has to be one of the first things you do. A customer persona is an imaginary individual that represents your target market. These profiles give you the direction you will need to create content that will resonate with the exact audience you’ve studied.
In order to create an effective customer persona, you need to know who they are and what they want or need. You should know their attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, interests, and what motivates them to take action.
A Customer Persona can be created through a wide range of techniques including interviews, surveys, Google searches and social media monitoring. We recommend running a workshop with your team and developing them together so everyone is on the same page.
Brand Guidelines
A brand guideline is a set of rules, guidelines and best practices that define the look, content and voice of the company. Essentially, this makes sure that the look and feel of all of your content, regardless of if it’s printed or digital, remains consistent. You can also give this to outside vendors to ensure anything created will be aligned with prior content.
Goals
When it comes to content marketing, the key is to have a clear goal for each and every piece you create. Otherwise, you might find yourself creating things just for the sake of getting something out there, which ends up being a waste of time.
Every company needs to think about where they want their content marketing strategy to head in the long term in order to measure its success. Decide early on before the development of content what metrics matter to you so you have a benchmark for success.
Competitive Research
Competitive research is an important part of any business, but when it comes to online marketing, it can be particularly beneficial.
Study their products, their business practices, their customers and the way they advertise. You also need to look at their pricing, discounts and any promotions they may be doing. This will help you identify gaps and ways your company can position itself to differentiate from what the competition is doing.
Types of Content You Should Create
Remember, every piece of content should have a stage of the marketing funnel in mind. But in the world of B2B, these are our top recommended pieces of content for marketers:
- Blogging –Blogging has proven to be a strategy that’s here to stay, as it’s proven to have a positive impact on SEO efforts, and it’s easy to create content for every stage of the funnel.
- Infographics – This underrated strategy can not only help you with leads, but it can also drive backlinks to your website. In fact, 67% of B2B marketers are creating them, so if you don’t have any, odds are you are behind your competition.
- Interactive Content – The longer you can keep an engaged prospect on your website, the better–right? Interactive content is key for driving longer website times, and it’s way more fun. This can look like quizzes, brand-specific calculators, contests, tools, and more.
- Videos – The possibilities are endless for video creation as it can be used for instructional or educational purposes. This will help your brand with thought leadership credibility and give your audience the chance to get to know your brand’s personality.
- Podcast – Podcasting gives B2B marketers a unique opportunity to give their audience an inside look at what they’re all about. You can also take tidbits from each episode and repurpose them into blogs or social media content.
- Case Studies – As one of the most impactful bottom-funnel strategies, case studies allow your potential customers to put themselves in the shoes of someone similar to them. It’s great to have someone else’s success with your organization told in their own words.
Remember, content marketing is an integrated strategy–it’s not a one size fits all situation. It’s important to measure your results and make changes where it’s necessary. Keep in mind that you can always repurpose the same content across many channels to make your life easier. You never know how the same message could resonate with the right audience if it comes from the right platform!
To Your Success,
Alex Kubicek
P.S. If you have any questions or want content on a particular topic, please reach out to us at support@convertsource.com!
