How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Today, we all have information at our fingertips and whatever information we require, we can search for it and obtain what we need within seconds.  The world has become accustomed to instant communication and gratification and this makes it vital for businesses to be present online.  But being present or visible isn't enough with the changing expectations of consumers in the digital age. 

Today, a company's presence needs to be customer-first, it needs to be helpful, informative and answer the right questions that potential customers are asking. Think about it, if a potential client is looking for something related to your product, service or industry, don’t you want your business to help them, provide answers and ultimately turn them into clients?  The risk of your business not answering the questions being asked is that your competitors may fill that void and in doing so, build trust and credibility at the same time - increasing the probability of them converting that prospect into a customer.

Content marketing is important as it provides a way for you to answer your audience’s questions, and through this marketing tactic you build trust with your target market, improve engagement, create personalised connections, and generate quality leads. 

Companies that have a solid content marketing strategy in place reap the rewards and to put this into perspective, 64% of marketers believe that learning how to build a content strategy is one of the greatest educational needs in the digital marketing industry. 

Below, we have put together 10 steps to help you develop and implement a content strategy.  This will help you to establish a place as thought leader in your industry and ultimately gain more leads and make more sales. 

1) Mission, Objectives and Goals

When you begin your content strategy, build its foundation by understanding and unpacking your brand's mission statement. This will make it easier to focus your efforts on what really matters and what is unnecessary, thus keeping your strategy on the right path. 

Your content marketing mission statement should be made up of:

• Your target market
• The content and channels you will use to reach them
• The value of your audience will get from your content

While your mission statement will outline your audience and what value they will get from your content, you need to consider what your business will get out of this too. And this is why you need to outline your business goals and objectives. 

Examples of content marketing goals can include:

• Getting more high quality leads
• Improving your bottom line through these leads
• Gaining more website traffic
• Establishing your business as an industry thought leader
• Search Engine Optimisation to get you ranking higher in the search engine results
• Social media engagement which will assist in lead conversion and page authority

Once you have identified your goal and put together your mission statement, you can move on to establishing your KPIs. 

2. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The best way to achieve your objectives is to make them measurable and specific, and that is why you should always set KPIs into your content marketing strategy.

The KPIs will give you insight into whether you are achieving your goals by providing you with milestones you can tick off as you implement your strategy. These will include what you want to achieve in regards to sales, revenue, website traffic, SEO, social media etc. 

Your KPIs need to be specific and have numbers attached to them, and they should always be measurable. 

Examples of what you should tackle when putting together your KPIs:

• What your revenue target is monthly, quarterly or annually
• The amount of leads and signups you would like to achieve within a certain amount of time
• The site traffic you expect
• How significantly you would like to improve in the search engine results

3. Buyer Persona

We briefly touched on understanding your audience when it comes to creating your mission statement, but in order to achieve the most out of your content marketing strategy, you need to dig deeper and truly unpack your target audience, their likes, dislikes, online presence, income, location and more. 

So, where do you begin?

• Demographics
  Make sure to collect demographic information on your website visitors, social media audience and email subscribers. This can be done through website analytic tools, social media analytics and email analytic platforms such as HubSpot.   To learn more about your target market, collect feedback from your current clients, this can be done through an email campaign or you can simply contact clients you have a personal relationship with and ask them for their honest feedback. 

• What they think about your current content
• What they want from your content and what they would like you to address online
• What questions they would like you to answer
• What they would like to know about your industry and your business

By receiving this kind of feedback you are able to understand your audience's priorities, decide on the best channels to use for your content marketing efforts and flesh out your buyer persona. Learn more about creating a buyer persona, here. 

4. Assess your Current Content Position

Assess your position when it comes to your current content, this includes your social media, blog, and current website content, and discover whether or not you think your current content is in line with your objectives, audience and mission statement. 

While doing this, it is important for you to take a look at your competitors content and learn how you can fit in with the market and what sets you apart. 

What you should ask yourself:

• Are there inbound links and backlinks  in your current content?
• How are your keywords ranking for your current content?
• Are people engaging with your content i.e: visiting your blog pages, engaging with your social media posts or sharing your content?

Then it is time to identify the gaps in your current content:

• What keywords are you not targeting that you should be focusing on?
• What questions are you not answering?
• What topics can you cover in your content that you are currently not focusing on?

5. Deciding on Content Type

Consider the type of content you want and need to create. Most marketing strategies rely on a central or primary content type that is usually published on a businesses main site and from here, it will be repurposed and shared across online platforms. This is why blog posts are important, you can copy your blog post link and share it on your social platforms, linking a user directly to your website.

There are a variety of content types other than blogging that you can include in your strategy such as:

• Video content: This engages your users and keeps them on your site for longer.
• Infographics: These allow you to share useful information without overwhelming your audience with too much text
• Social media posts: Visually appealing content that grabs the eye, informs the audience and is actionable. 
• Lead generation content: Lead magnets such as downloadable e-books, e-guides, worksheets and white papers. Learn more about creating lead magnet content, here. 

6. Allocate your Resources

Once you have established who you are creating content for and what kind of content you will be creating, you need to ensure that you have everything in place to implement your content strategy smoothly. 

You need to ask yourself:

• Who is in charge of production and maintenance of your content? 

This comes down to allocating roles and deciding whether or not you want this done in-house or would prefer to hire freelancers or an agency. This will come down to your budget, company size and content team. 

• What digital tools are required to create, maintain and manage your content?

Will you be using an in-house team, specialised content creators and editors or freelancers?

• What is your publishing workflow and how will it function?

Work out the channels that your content will go through up until publication.

 7. Content Calendar 

You need to put together a content calendar that outlines exactly when you will be publishing your content to the relevant platforms. If you do not plan out your calendar a lot of your objectives can quickly fall through the cracks.

In order to establish a strong content calendar consider the following:

• Use google calendars and place the details of your content pieces in your calendar
• Manually create your own content calendar 
• Invest in a workflow platform where you can schedule your content automatically for publishing, HubSpot is a great example of this. 

8. Create your Content

Now that you have established your goals, figured out your workflow and have your topics and calendar in place, you can begin creating content for distribution and publishing. 

Begin by researching your content and ensure it is in line with your objectives, include keywords related to your brand and service offerings to ensure Search Engine Optimisation (but do not simply add these for this purpose) and begin writing your content. Make sure to write with your brand's identity, tone of voice and personality in mind. 

9. Publish and Market

Once you have published your content, make sure to effectively market it to your audience. i.e: share your blog posts or videos on your social media platforms so that your audience can click back to your site and engage with your brand.

Consider using email campaigns or social media advertising tools, such as Facebook ads or LinkedIn marketing. You are able to target these ads to your specific audience and this will encourage more engagement, result in more brand awareness, and ultimately lead to more sales - thus improving your bottom line and giving you a great return on investment.

Learn more about digital marketing and sales lead generation for content, here.

10. Measure your Results

Now it is time to assess the success of your content marketing campaign and in order to do this you need to take a look at the KPIs you have set in place and find out if you are hitting your targets effectively or if there is anything you need to change and work on. 

• Google analytics offers a place to learn about the success of your content
• Measure your social media sharing via native social media tools related directly to the platform or through other social analytic tools that are available
• Set up Google Alerts to see if your business or brand has been mentioned online - this will help you learn if your content is creating engagement and discussion online.

It is vital to monitor your progress throughout the process so that you can tweak your content strategy  to ensure the best end results.

In Conclusion

Content marketing is a timeous process, and it comes down to understanding your objectives, tailoring your strategy around your these, delivering helpful content and reaching your audience effectively.   Successful strategies often produce incredible results for businesses and while short term results can be gained, it's more often the case that content marketing produces results many months and sometimes even years after the production and publishing of content.  

Founded in 2005, Nexa has helped hundreds of organisations from small startups to large multinational businesses providing high-quality content marketing and digital marketing strategies. 

Nexa has both the track record and in-house ability to support your business. We create wonderful digital experiences that drive business and more importantly, provide a trackable return on investment (ROI) for our clients.

Our in-house team of Digital Marketing experts use cutting edge technologies and proven tactics to create a winning formula for businesses across the globe.