5 Areas to Cover in Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is one of the most important factors in a business’ overall marketing plan. It is the link between brand awareness and lead generation. A content marketing strategy will research and analyze ways that content marketing can be implemented across the customer buying lifecycle. It looks at ways content marketing can be used strategically in conjunction with other marketing and sales strategies.

Your content marketing plan should be developed in concert with your overall goals in what you are trying to achieve and improve as part of your marketing plan. Your content marketing strategy should align to these overall goals. For example, some of your overall marketing goals might be building web traffic, email marketing, lead generation, etc. The content marketing strategy should complement these goals and your overall marketing strategy, not be developed separately.

Content marketing isn’t about selling. It is about providing interesting information to customers that helps build your audience and establish trust over time. Your content marketing strategy should cover several key areas.

1. Define Buyer Personas.

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer. These personas are based on thorough research and analysis. They define your typical customers and their preferences. For example, demographics, behavioral and buying patterns, what they are looking for, how they prefer to communicate, and so on.

You need to understand your customers in order to determine and provide the information they want and need. You need to understand their pain points and what gaps of information they lack and that you can fulfill. This will require extensive research to see what’s missing.

2. Identify the Formula.

Developing a strategy that helps your customers solve an issue or pain point is what will make your content marketing strategy more successful. It requires you to offer content that your customers want and need.

Remember, it’s all about the customer. You may think you’ve got a great product, catchy slogans, and great marketing materials. But if your website doesn’t satisfy a need or provide interesting and valuable information to customers who will buy from you, it won’t be very profitable.

Deploy your content on multiple channels and media. What works best for your buyers’ persona types? Do they like social media, blogs, video? Your content marketing strategy should define when, how and where you will post content for best ROI. And don’t forget mobile! Smart phones and tablets are becoming increasingly more popular to people looking for products and services to buy.

3. Plan to be SEO-friendly.

The primary goal of Google and other search engines is to satisfy the searcher. People are becoming more demanding in getting results they are looking for, which has made the search engines very stringent on what it takes to be at the top. It is no longer enough to “stuff” your content with keywords and phrases. Your content must be created with SEO built in from the start.

4. Maximize Your Content.

It is sometimes a challenge to keep up with the content necessary to satisfy the need. You can extend the life of your content in different ways.

You can distribute your content in multiple channels. For example, create a blog for your website and link to it from your Facebook page. If you have a lot of content on one topic, break it up into several pieces and in different formats, like video, webinars, white papers, etc. If you distribute your content this way, you can maximize its reach.

5. Measure Results.

Your content marketing strategy should track and measure costs, profit margins. It should monitor sales and revenue. Based on the outcome, you may need to modify your content marketing strategy accordingly.

In summary, your content marketing strategy should drive results. It will define a plan to create and promote content that builds your customer base, establishes trust and delivers high quality and useful information.

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Philadelphia SEO for Growth can help you create a content marketing strategy that will work for you. We also build content-driven websites that get you leads and will help you get found in search engines. We have the expertise to build your online marketing strategy so that you can concentrate on attracting and keeping customers.