Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

As much as creating blogs can be a fun and creative outlet for a business, it is still vital to any brand to ave a content marketing strategy plan. There needs to be a purpose behind every piece of content your business throws out there so that everything that is created is more strategic. Having a strong content marketing strategy is the foundation on which your marketing efforts are formed.

Here, we’ll go through a step-by-step process on how to create and implement a fire content marketing strategy that brings you loyal customers.🔥🔥🔥

What are your goals?

Before doing anything, make sure that you know what you want to achieve and who your brand is targeting. 🎯

Typical digital marketing goals tend to include:

• Are you looking to rake in that website traffic?
• Do you want to generate more leads and sales? 💸
• Are you looking to get your brand out there to build trust?
• Do you want to gain more loyal customers?

Make sure that your goals are as specific enough so that you can achieve them in the right amount of time. SMART goals are always a winner! 🤓For example, you could choose to increase the traffic to your website. Make sure that you add in exactly how much you want to improve your traffic by and by  when.

When creating an effective content marketing strategy, you need to understand who you’re going to be talking to. You want to make sure that the content you create and put out there is created specifically for your audience. Look at things like:

• demographics
• interests
• pain points
• platforms they use

Conduct a competitor gap analysis and a content audit

Your next content strategy plan will need to be informed by a competitor gap analysis. You need to know where your brand stands compared to your competitors so that you find out what your need to work on as a business.

Here’s how you do this: 👇

Content audit

Look at your current content to establish things like which ones have the most traffic 📊, which blogs are receiving the most engagement (likes, comments, reposts), and which blogs are performing poorly.

Once you have more of an idea of these metrics, you’ll be able to understand what your audience enjoys, the gaps you need to fill, and the content pieces that you could potentially do without. 👎

Competitor analysis

What are your competitors doing well that you could potentially be working to improve upon? Look at the type of content that they are creating and the keywords they are ranking for. Are they uploading content anywhere specific?

Now, we want to clarify that you should definitely not be hitting ‘copy&paste’ when it comes to your content marketing plan. Instead, look out for opportunities that you could also be capitalising on, but focusing on ways to differentiate your brand. ⚡️

Choose your formats and channels

Your content strategy plan should include the platforms on which you know your audience consumes content. This can include various content formats, such as blog posts, videos infographics, podcasts or case studies. All of these formats are great for different reasons, for example:

• Blog posts: These work well for thought leadership posts and SEO authority.
• Videos: These are great for entertainment purposes and brand story telling, especially short-form videos.
• Infographics: These make complicated data sets easy to understand.
• Podcasts: These are perfect for in-depth discussions and for audiences that are on-the-go.
• Case studies: These are a great way of showcasing results and building trust with audiences. Check out our Case Study for one of our clients here as an example.

The next step in the process is to figure out which platform you want to use to publish your content on.

Tip: A robust content marketing strategy will use more than one platform, using a multi-channel approach:

• Owned channels: Your website will be one of the most important channels you’ll ever use, so make sure it’s SEO-proofed and that it exuberates your brand. 📣
• Social channels: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. 🌱
• Earned channels: Having other businesses or influencers share your content is another great way of getting your brand out there and creating authentic content. 📈

Create a content calendar

You need to remember that consistency is detrimental to being able to build an audience and the best way to be able to show up consistently is by using a content calendar, forming the building blocks of your content marketing strategy.

Make sure that your content calendar includes all the information that you need to be able to create the content, like the title, keywords your’re targeting, target persona and which channels you want to use to share the content on.

Create and distribute your content

Now, you get to do the fun part! 🤩Focus on creating high-quality content that is valuable and that solves problems.

Also, make sure you write content for people, not for bots. 🤖Use strong visuals, calls to action throughout the content and headlines that are compelling and, focusing on SEO-optimised content.

Make sure that you promote your content, too, once you’ve published it. Share it across all your social media channels and make sure that you include it in your newsletters. This is also a great time to reach out to influencers and bloggers to work on collaborations.

Refine your content marketing strategy

Your content strategy plan should always be evolving and should never stay static. There are metrics that you can look at that will help you track your progress as you go along. Useful metrics to take into account are:

• Website traffic and page views
• Engagement rates (comments, shares, likes)
• Conversion rates (downloads, sign-ups, sales)
• SEO rankings

At Assisted, we have all the tools you need to create a successful content marketing strategy that drives traffic and conversions. Using the insights from your data, we’ll refine your strategy so that your brand performs well.

Get in touch with our team of experts at Assisted for more information on crafting the perfect content marketing strategy today! We know how to help your business grow in an authentic and meaningful way.