Nowadays, in the digital world where we live, content marketing has become a massive important aspect in the struggle to engage businesses with their target audience and, therefore, build trust and, hopefully, obtain more clients and sales.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a startup or you own an established business, a well-built content marketing strategy is the key to stay competitive and create brand loyalty , which is the base to grow your customer base. The question you must ask is: how to create a strategy that works? Well, that’s what this guide is for: to expose the importance of content marketing and give readers a practical step-by-step approach to create an effective content marketing strategy.
This concept is usually understood as the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract a target audience and, therefore, engage it.
Directly pitching products or services is, by now, an old-fashioned strategy that doesn’t pay off like it used to. Content marketing, on the other hand, implies providing solutions for the customers problems and also useful information that matches their needs. This approach builds trust and helps to position your brand in your industry.
Content marketing is so important because it builds trust and authority among your audience although this is something you achieve only by posting and publishing high-quality content. This way, over time, your customers will choose your brand over others because they already trust you.
This strategy of consistently publishing high-quality content also increases your brand visibility, especially if it’s optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which significantly improves your website’s visibility. If your blog posts or articles attract enough organic traffic the brand awareness grows and also the number of potential customers.
In addition a well-executed content marketing strategy generates more website traffic, this traffic is converted into leads who, eventually, will turn out to be customers through the calls to action.
But, the most important thing is to publish high-quality content, since good content encourages people to engage with a brand. Either if it’s a blogpost or something you share through social media, it is the content what ensures the loyalty of your audience.
Another important aspect to highlight about content marketing is that it is highly cost-effective compared with traditional advertising. With content marketing it is possible to boost your brand in an affordable and sustainable way that, besides, gives you long-term results, so keep reading and discover all the steps you should follow to boost your brand with a proper content marketing strategy.
If you require professional advice to boost your content marketing strategy you can take a look at the marketing material section on our website and discover all the tools and resources we have to offer you.
Additionally you can visit our organic SEO and marketing communication section and start to learn how you can increase the SEO traffic to your website.
The process to create an effective content marketing strategy can be divided into ten basic steps that, for sure, will guarantee the best results if well implemented. This ten steps are:
The first step is defining your goal or, in other words, your objectives. So, you have to ask yourself what are you looking for and what do you want to achieve? It’s probable that the answer to these questions will be increasing your website, getting a higher brand awareness, obtaining leads or retaining customers.
When you’re clear about your goals you can easily measure your success and, if required, make the adjustments to improve your strategy.
The second step is to get to know your audience. If you want to create content that really impacts your target audience, first of all, you have to know and understand who they are, what they want and, of course, what they need.
A very good strategy to know your audience is developing buyer personas, which are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. Through these characters you should collect some important data about your customers such as: demographic information (age, gender, location and incomes), interests, challenges, goals and habits.
You can also use surveys, interviews, customer feedback and study websites and social media analytics. To make sure to really get to know your audience, develop buyer personas and include surveys in your website or your social media profiles.
If you want to incorporate surveys or information forms in your website but you’re not quite sure about how to do it, you can visit the web design section in our website and discover how we can, not only incorporate any element you want, but also to change or improve the general design of your website and start making a stronger visual impact.
The third step is studying your current content to identify what is working and what should be changed. This step involves a review of the content like blog posts or multimedia content to analyze its performance.
It is important to check the performance of your content according to key metrics like page views, social shares and conversion rates. You should also identify gaps to fill, which is, things the audience want or need but you haven’t provided yet and update content. Regularly analyze the key metrics to measure the success of your content.
The fourth step is making keyword research for SEO to place your content in the rank of things the audience is searching. For this matter, resources like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush can be very useful. It is also important to use both short-tail keywords (1 to 2 words) and long-tail keywords (up to 3 words)
You can also verify the content that has these keywords and take it as an example or guide to improve yours. Use the available resources to make your own keyword research and start to place your content in the rank.
If you need additional and professional help to position your brand in the Google search, you can take a look at the sponsored partner section in our website and learn how this service can boost your brand awareness on the internet and increase your reach.
The fifth step is to identify the formats that best work for you. Each format provides different results depending on the purposes you may have. The best strategy is to diversify the content to reach a bigger audience.
The most popular formats are:
Choosing the right content depends mainly on your audience and your goals but you’ll always have the option to use different kinds of content and see what works the best for you. Closely study the formats that you use, identify the ones with the best performance and start to use them more frequently to optimize your results.
The sixth step is to create a content calendar since it is very important to have consistency to have a successful content marketing strategy. With a content calendar you can organize your content and schedule publications and postings ensuring consistency.
However, you should keep in mind the following aspects:
Using a content calendar will ensure, not only that your content will be properly organized, but also that it is aligned with your marketing strategy. Create an organized chronological calendar to be clear about the dates when you should publish your content and start to create consistency for your brand on social media.
The seventh step is to create high quality content. Your content must be valuable, informative and engaging. To achieve so it is important to:
Make sure to use keywords, be original and visually creative and offer exactly what your audience needs or wants to improve the quality of your content and stand out in your business.
For any further advisory about how to boost your brand in the digital space and improve the quality of your content, you can visit the marketing material section on our website and discover all the material and resources we have to improve your content marketing strategy and boost your brand.
The eighth step is the distribution and promotion of your content. If you already have very good and high quality content…you’re just half the way. An effective promotion can be more complex than what you think and it totally depends on your target audience.
The most used communication channels to do so are:
– Social Media, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and LinkedIn.
– Email Marketing, to reach your email subscribers to keep your brand present for them.
– Paid advertising, paid ads on platforms like Google Ads or Facebook can be very useful to reach a big audience very quickly.
By knowing your audience you’ll also identify the channels they use the most and, therefore, publish there. Once you’ve identified these channels, start to use them to promote your content in the best days and hours to effectively boost your brand.
If you need any advice about how to promote your content through social media platforms, you can visit the social media section on our website and learn how to promote your content and use the social media to boost your brand and increase your reach and, overall. The conversions.
The ninth step is measuring and monitoring your strategy results. It is important to track key performance indicators (KPIs) according to your goals. The metrics used to measure this are:
– Website traffic
– Conversion rates
– Social media engagement
– Lead generation
Tools like Google Analytics, social media insights and CRM software are very useful to monitor the progress of your content marketing strategy. If you see your results are not what you’re expecting, you can adjust or change your strategy and continue testing.
Regularly check the results of your marketing content by tracking these indicators and, when required, make the necessary adjustments to improve your content and its results.
The tenth and final step is to optimize your strategy. Keep in mind that content marketing is an ongoing and continuous process and you’ll discover that some topics, some content and some formats give you better results than others. You must have the will to experiment, test and be creative to keep improving.
Try different strategies to identify the best type of content and formats to boost your brand, don’t be afraid to be bold and disruptive and, on the road, you’ll figure out how to lead your content marketing strategy.
Although it can seem overwhelming at first, following these 10 steps will help you to have a successful content marketing strategy. Remember that your audience is your priority and it is also very important to produce high-quality content, monitor your results and be consistent on your strategy. If you do it right, you’ll boost your brand and place it in the map for everyone.
If you require more help and advice for your marketing strategy, you can take a look at the content marketing section in our website and discover all the resources and services that we can offer you to improve your content quality and boost your brand. Don’t hesitate to reach us out and start taking your brand to the 2020 decade.
