1 October 2020
8 minutes
Aisling Larkin
Marketing Consultant
Today’s consumers have a big appetite for elevated brand experiences, they expect to receive personalised content at the right time through the right channel. It’s up to today’s marketers to push the boundaries of creativity and serve up campaigns that captivate, resonate and serve a purpose.
That’s why developing a content marketing strategy is key. It’s the single, best way to gain the attention of your audience and keep it until you land a sale. Let’s take a look at the steps you need to take to create a robust content plan.
At Engagement Factory we have developed a content marketing strategy framework which will help you to create the plan you need to develop successful and engaging marketing campaigns.
We have a full resource on this topic, but let’s cover this outline briefly to give you an idea.
As we know audience targeting is key. You are more likely to reach consumers interested in your products or services with relevant messaging and it also decreases time wasted on the spray and pray approach.
Here are a few things you can do to set yourself up for success.
Your campaign personas provide a lot of structure and insight for your content. A detailed buyer persona will help you determine where to focus your time, guide product development, and allow for alignment across the company.
Haven’t created your personas yet? Don’t worry here is your persona guide!
A simple journey is a path, while a methodology is a path and a lot more! It is created specifically for the customer, their wants and their needs. It defines the best format (journey) for the customer to take. It educates them, and it defines the steps they need to take in order to get there.
Top questions to ask at this stage are:
A content map is a plan to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time. We take into consideration a persona’s characteristics and the ways in which they will consume your content.
Ask some of the following questions to find the kinds of content you need to insert at each stage of the journey.
Content creation refers to creating the actual assets that will fit into the right locations in the buyer’s journey. For our purposes, all you need to know is that the more complicated and in-depth the content, the later down the journey it should be positioned.
For example, you don’t want to hit someone with a whitepaper after they’ve just found out about your company through a cute social media post. An infographic or even a quick video would be much better suited without scaring leads away.
Here some content examples to consider in order of complexity:
Measuring the performance of your content marketing will always depend on what aspect of the customer journey you are evaluating.
The content you use for the top of the funnel should focus on brand recollection, a lift in search results and general notoriety and interest. The content that finds itself more in-depth and more towards the bottom of the funnel needs to focus on conversion results such as lead and sales generation.
You can tweak and adjust the copy and calls to action to reflect your goals in each piece of content as needed.
I am sure you will agree, now more than ever developing a content marketing strategy is pivotal for success. If you would like help in setting up your strategic content plan or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or download this resource for more in-depth information about content marketing.