Basic Principles for Developing your Content Marketing Strategy
There is no definite structure how you should go about developing your content marketing strategy. However there are some general tips you can follow to get started or get a fresh look at your existing strategy.
Identify Goals and Metrics
A strategy will be successfully implemented when you know what your goals are. Defining a clear destination will make the journey ahead much clearer. In content marketing you will often have multiple goals and each of these might be achievable with different types of content and via different channels. Define your goals and choose appropriate metrics.
One of your content marketing goals might be to increase the trial signups. To achieve this, you could plan on creating case studies that will be published on your website and shared via social media. The case study can include text, photos, a downloadable PDF or video.
Audit Current Content
Maybe you already have well performing content. Before venturing into a new content strategy, it would be great if you can extract useful insights from past content. See what worked and what wasn’t as successful.
Maybe you already have some videos, but have only been published on YouTube. If you find these are gaining viewership, you could consider adding captions for Call-to-Action. Further you can try and expand to other platforms by sharing the video or a clipped sequence of the video and attract more traffic.
In a Content Marketing Institute’s 2018 trends report, marketers stated that content creation and strategy are the top two factors in their success with content marketing. Note that for content creation, it’s specified to be higher quality and more efficient.
In case your content was heavily promoted via social media, a social media audit might be more appropriate. Social platforms have analysis tools for you to check the viewer rate, click-through rate and engagement.
Map Customer Journey
Different types of content work best at different stages of the customer’s journey. A video showcasing how to troubleshoot your product will not be off interest to potential customers, but will definitely appeal to existing customers.
It is important to remember that the customer’s journey does not end with the purchase. This is a mistake often made by a lot of companies. Customer satisfaction is achieved when the company is aware of the customer retention and support phase — and these also need content marketing.
Understanding and mapping the journey of your customer to where your content may be best served is essential, but often forgotten. Once you have all of this done, then your content can be further tweaked and adjusted to reflect your audience and their journey status.
