Working with content marketing is not always as easy as it sounds. Once you've decided to get started with content production, it can be difficult to know where to start.
A content marketing strategy can be described in seven steps:
- Define a goal
- Think about the purpose
- Measure the results!
- Find your target audience and stick to them
- Find out what your target audience needs
- Be efficient in production
- Create a content calendar
Before we look at each step in more detail, let's start with a basic question. Namely, the value of content marketing.
Why work with content marketing?
To succeed in your business, you need content. Content marketing refers to all the content you produce and put out there. It could be the text on your website, a company blog, a YouTube channel where you post informative videos or your social media channels.Think about how you seek out information yourself. Most likely it starts with a search in a search engine and the same goes for your target audience. You therefore need to make sure that you are visible in search results for those who are looking for your particular product or services.An updated website and channels are an effective way to show search engines that you are relevant and offer value to your customers.With that said, let's now take a closer look at the 7 steps required to create a content marketing strategy.
1. Define a goal
Define why you should work with content marketing. The answer must not be because content is good to have.Do you want to drive traffic and generate leads? Is the goal to build trust and a relationship with your target audience? Do you want to educate your target audience? Is the goal to create a platform that gathers answers to common questions?Make sure you know why you are producing content. Make sure the goal is aligned with the overall goals of your business. Are you in a growth phase or are you focusing on building the brand? Depending on what your business objectives are, the goal of your content marketing strategy will also need to be adjusted.
2. Consider the purpose
Huge amounts of content are produced every day. To stand out from the crowd, you need to be purpose-driven. Do you want to create value for your customers? Do you want to provide information that helps your customers? Do you want to have a strong relationship with your customers?The answer is hopefully a resounding yes.As I said in the previous step, creating content just for the sake of it won't work. It will shine through and will not be perceived as genuine. Remind yourself of the real purpose behind content - namely to motivate, help, inform, add value and build a relationship with your audience.With that in mind, you'll be in the right frame of mind to create valuable content.
3. Measure the results!
You can create phenomenal content, but if you don't have measurement tools in place, you won't know the results of your efforts.It's also easier to justify a marketing budget when you can show positive results in black and white, including concrete figures on:
- Traffic driven to the website
- Engagement - how many people interact with your content
- Conversions
- How long visitors stay on the website and how many/what pages they visit
One advantage of content marketing is its cost-effectiveness. Once a blog post or video is published, it will continue to drive traffic as long as the content remains. The production cost will then be quite low for a post that can drive traffic more or less indefinitely.
4. Find your target audience and stick to them
We often talk about the importance of relevant content, but how do you know what's relevant to your audience? Well, by knowing who your target audience is.There are many theories behind how to define your target audience and one way is to look at 3 different levels.
- Target group: a broad group of people with a common denominator. For example, existing customers who are interested in buying again
- Segment: more niche target group where a group of companies or people belong to the same category. For example, companies with 10-50 employees or those on parental leave
- Persona: a fictional person based on data about your target audience. Seen as a typical person who buys your product or service. For example, Marcus the marketing manager or Eva the finance manager.
When defining your target audience, remember to find out who is actually included, how they behave and what they need. Don't base it on yourself and what drives you.Also remember not to work on too many audiences at once. Stick to a maximum of 5 audiences, otherwise you'll never have time to create regular content that suits all the audiences you're trying to reach.
5. Find out what your target audience needs
You have defined your target audience and know who they are. The next step is to find out what they really need, what drives them and what they expect.You need to create content that appeals to those in your target audience who have never heard of you, those who need to build more trust and those who are close to a purchase.In order to create relevant content that fits the different stages your audience is in, you need to find out what your audience is looking for, what challenges they have and what they are looking for.By using tools like Google Search Console [LINK], Google Analytics, the search engines themselves and your social channels, you can gather information about your audience. You can find out everything from how they behave, how they found the website, what kind of content they interact with to their interests, other businesses and groups they like and their common searches.
Remember that content should not help you. Content should help your customers. You therefore need to make sure you know what your audience is looking for before you start producing content.
6. Be efficient in production
Content production is tricky and time-consuming. It's easy to think about writing a blog post or recording a video, but once you take the time, the inspiration often disappears.We also advocate creating content regularly, and constantly publishing more content. However, we don't mean that it always has to be new content.Reuse material. Write about a topic from a new angle. Take the same topic but adapt it to a different one of your target audiences. Take the same topic and write both for those who are new to the subject and for those who want more in-depth information. Publish content that your clients produce and link to them. Take a big topic and break it down into smaller pieces to create four videos or posts instead of one.Think through what issues you are passionate about, that your target audience is looking for and that your company solves. Then make sure to write about these issues based on all the audiences and all the possible situations the audiences might find themselves in.Once you've done this, you can think of new issues and topics. Or you can republish posts that you wrote a year ago. It's also possible to take the same topic and rewrite it in other words.Not all your customers will see everything you produce. By the time you feel like you've been nagging, your audience has only seen a small portion of the material you've put out there. Content may be cheap but it's not free, so make sure you're effective with what you have before you start thinking new. What we're saying is simply that you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
7. Create a content calendar
Create the structure for your content marketing strategy, and production will be a little easier. If you have a plan for the year, you don't have to risk the website not being updated for 3 months, or stress-writing a blog post on the last day of the month.
- Regular activities: is there something special happening every month that you should write a post about? Keep track of important dates that affect you. For example, if you have a newsletter that goes out on the 15th of each month, the content needs to be ready by then.
- Irregular events: are you attending a trade fair for the first time or are you launching a new product? Maybe you want to run a midsummer campaign or get in on Black Friday? Include it in your planning so you have it covered well in advance.
- Fill in the gaps: when the above is done, does any month feel empty? Schedule an extra post or see if you can move something.
- Save the excess: have more ideas that feel really good, but there's just not enough room right now? Save them down so you can pick them up next time you're planning content!
If you follow these steps, you should have a clear plan for what you will do during the year. Just remember to follow all seven steps instead of jumping straight to the content calendar. Following all the steps will also help and support you when planning your content for the year.
Summary
The secret of a really sharp content marketing strategy can thus be described in seven steps:
- Define a goal
- Think about the purpose
- Measure the results!
- Find your target audience and stick to them
- Find out what your target audience needs
- Be efficient in production
- Create a content calendar
Once you've gone through these steps, you're ready to get started with not only a content marketing strategy, but also have the support to begin content production.Are you ready to start planning your content but don't know how to structure the plan? We'll solve it. Download our content planning template for free below!Download your content planning template here!
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