The Ultimate Guide To Content Marketing Strategy

You may have heard that content is king. In fact, the Internet is awash with content at the moment. Content marketing is the hottest trend in digital marketing right now, and it makes sense when you think about it. After all, content is where we can highlight what makes our brand different from everyone else out there. However, that doesn’t mean creating great content is easy. Content creation takes time and effort, but luckily there are many different types of content you can use to help boost your marketing efforts

It is no longer enough to simply have a website, blog or other digital property. To stand out in today’s content-driven marketing world, brands must create and market compelling stories that show their customers why they matter. Content marketing is the strategy that enables companies to do so.

With content marketing, you can attract new visitors to your website, social media platforms or other digital property, build trust with potential customers, drive traffic to your site from search engines and establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

Read on to learn more about what content marketing is and how it can be implemented for your business.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on creating and promoting useful and relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage an audience.

Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing relevant and valuable content to attract and convert customers. The goal of content marketing is to help educate your audience so you can build trust and drive sales from that audience through your sales funnel. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to build and engage a targeted audience.

If you’re looking to create an effective content marketing plan, consider using a variety of content types to engage your target audience on different levels and inspire them to take the next steps in their journey towards becoming customers. You can also use content to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and increase sales.

Businesses that implement content marketing put an emphasis on creating entertaining, informative, and educational content, such as social media posts, blogs, articles, videos, podcasts, e-books, webinars, research, podcasts, and other assets.

Why content marketing works

When done correctly, content marketing can be an extremely valuable tool for growing your business. It does this in a number of ways.

First, it provides people with the information they’re seeking about your product or service. Consumers are overwhelmingly turning to the internet for their information, and you want to be there to answer their questions.

Second, it provides information that is relevant to your target audience, which helps to drive engagement. Consumers are also looking for information that’s tailored to their interests, and you can provide it through content marketing.

Third, it provides information that is useful to your target audience. Consumers want information that solves problems, answers questions, and makes their lives easier in some way. You can meet this need with your content marketing campaign.

How to create a content marketing strategy

A content marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how your brand will create, publish and promote content.

It is important to have a content marketing plan in place before you start creating content for your business. Otherwise, it can be difficult to stay focused on a particular goal for your content. Your content marketing strategy should include a mix of three different types of content: owned, earned, and paid.

Owned content is content that is published on your website or blog, such as articles or podcasts.

Earned content is content that you promote on other websites and channels that isn’t published by your brand. Examples of earned content include guest posts, influencer marketing, and press releases.

Paid content is content created by your brand that is paid for, such as advertisements.

Your content marketing strategy should include a mix of owned, earned, and paid content. Your content marketing plan should include a target audience, an outline of desired outcomes, and an editorial calendar. Each of these components should be tied to your overall marketing strategy.

Types of content for marketing

Content that is typically most useful to a business's content marketing strategy are:

Blog Posts

When people think of content marketing, they often think of blogging. However, blogging is often the most overlooked of all content marketing strategies. Many brands completely ignore the blog as a marketing channel, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. The blog offers a fantastic way to provide value to your audience and position yourself as an authority. That being said, there are a few things you should keep in mind when creating content for your blog.

Firstly, you need to ensure that your content has a clear purpose. You wouldn’t open a restaurant and serve nothing but desserts, you need a variety of dishes on the menu. In the same way, you need to create a variety of blog posts, offering readers something in which they’ll be interested.

Secondly, you need to create useful content. You can’t just write some fluff and expect people to read it and take something away from it.

Guides and resource lists

Another type of content that is often overlooked is guides and resource lists. This type of content works best when you have an especially technical topic.

With this type of content, you’re taking something that would otherwise be really complex and breaking it down so it’s understandable and simple. You can either do this via an evergreen resource list or a series of in-depth guides. Whatever you choose, ensure that it’s high quality and something that people will genuinely benefit from.

Videos

Videos are an excellent way to both boost your content marketing efforts as well as strengthen your brand.

When creating videos, you don’t have to produce something that’s super high-quality. In fact, sometimes it’s better if it isn’t. Instead, think about what your target audience would want to see. Do they want to see your CEO? Do they want to see how your product works? Do they want to see a how-to video? Whatever it is, make sure that you’re creating something that your audience will benefit from and that they’ll actually watch.

You can host these videos on your own website or on a video platform like YouTube or Facebook. While video creates excellent engagement, it can also be a huge time suck if you don’t plan out your content strategy properly.

Infographics

Visual content is a fantastic way to share your message, but not many people take advantage of it.

An infographic is one of the best ways to quickly share your message and create visual content. This is especially true if you’re writing about a topic that’s pretty complex. With an infographic, you can present your data in visually engaging ways that make it easy to understand and retain information. You can create an infographic using one of the many infographic software programs or platforms available.

Quizzes and games

Another way to engage your audience while using content marketing is through quizzes and games. You can create a quiz and publish it on your blog or a social media page or you can have it hosted on a quiz-type website like Quizlet.

Other common content types are:

• Articles - These are some of the most common forms of content marketing. They can help establish your brand, generate leads, and boost sales.

• Podcasts - Podcasts are great for engaging an audience, but they are also time-consuming to create. If you don’t have the time to produce podcasts, you can outsource this work.

• Ebooks - Ebooks are excellent tools for lead generation, and they can be distributed through a number of channels.

• Webinars - Webinars are another excellent way to generate leads and increase sales.

Measure your content marketing ROI

The first thing you should do when measuring your content marketing strategy is establishing a realistic return on investment (ROI) for your content efforts. This will help you track and evaluate whether content marketing is producing the results you’re aiming for.

The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all formula for measuring content marketing ROI. Your content marketing ROI will depend on your organization’s unique goals, objectives, and audience.

For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to your eCommerce store, then your content marketing ROI might be quantified as sales per visitor. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then your content marketing ROI could be quantified as impressions per visitor.

Whatever your strategy, you need to determine how you’ll track your success—and then actually do it. By tracking your content marketing ROI, you’ll get a better sense of how your efforts are impacting your business.

Track your content’s performance

There’s no point in measuring your content marketing ROI if you don’t also track your content’s performance.

To do so, you’ll first need to identify the metrics that are important to you and your business. You should also create a system for tracking your content performance.

For example, if you’re creating blog posts, then you could track the number of page views, time on page, impressions, shares, organic search traffic, and social engagement such as likes, comments, and shares.

It’s also important to track your content’s performance over time. This will help you identify strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities for improvement. You can break down your content performance by channel, topic, and even individual posts.

Determine the effectiveness of your channels

In addition to tracking your content’s performance, you should also determine the effectiveness of your channels. This will help you determine which channels are generating the best performance, but also which ones need improvement.

When determining the effectiveness of your channels, consider the following:

• How many people are visiting your website?

• How many people are reading your content?

• What is their engagement level?

• Are they taking action after consuming your content?

By tracking and measuring these metrics, you can get a better idea of how your content is impacting your business. This will enable you to identify opportunities for improvement and ultimately optimize your content marketing strategy.

Create a habit of measuring

Measuring your content marketing strategy will enable you to track your progress and make adjustments as needed.

In order to create a habit of measuring, you should create a content marketing tracking system. This will enable you to track multiple metrics at once across all of your content channels. You can also set up a time each week to review your tracking.

While reviewing your tracking, you can also make adjustments to your content marketing strategy as needed. You may discover that you need to adjust your messaging, or maybe you need to publish more often. You may also discover that certain channels aren’t meeting your goals and should be eliminated from your strategy.

Take action based on what you learn

Once you’ve determined the effectiveness of your channels and tracked your content performance, you can take action based on what you’ve learned.

For example, if you discover that social media is generating the best engagement but your resources are limited, you can repurpose your best blog posts for social media. This will allow you to increase the number of impressions your best content receives while also saving you time and money.

Bottom line

Overall, content marketing is a strategy that can be used to great effect by businesses of all sizes.

It’s a cost-effective way to reach new audiences, build brand recognition, and increase sales. But it must be approached strategically to be effective, which means creating a content marketing strategy and sticking to it. To do this, you must know your audience and their needs, and tailor your content accordingly.