Content Marketing: A jumpstart to your success.

Content Marketing: A jumpstart to your success.

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.

Proven Steps to Your Success.

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.

• Identify your target audience.
• The customer journey methodology.
• Content and journey Mapping.
• Content creation.
• Measurement and reporting.

We have a full resource on this topic, but let’s cover this outline briefly to give you an idea.

Success Factor:  Identify your target audience.

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.

• Know your audience.
• Know your audiences’ pain points.
• Know how your audience likes to consume information.
• Know the type of language the resonates with your audience.

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!

Success Factor: The customer journey methodology.

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:

1. What does the current journey look like?
2. List out all the touchpoints and marketing channels available.
3. Set clear objectives for the map including where in the funnel you want to target.
4. How do you drive Demand Generation, Opportunity Management and Deal Closing?
5. Where is your contact/account in the funnel?
6. How do you move them to next stage, and the next?
7. What happens if they are stalled or drop out? Where is your safety net?

Success Factor: Content and journey Mapping.

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.

• What stage of the funnel are you content mapping?
• What is your overall story line?
• How do you use your content (format), in which part of the campaign?
• What should be the length of the content?
• To which audience is it targeted?
• What action should it trigger?
• Should it be gated content?
• How will the copy and design create synergy?
• What channel is best to promote your content?

Success Factor: Content creation.

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:

• Social media posts
• Infographics
• Videos
• Blog posts and articles
• Case studies
• Whitepapers
• Playbooks and eBooks

Success Factor: Measurement and Performance.

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.