What Exactly Is a Content Marketing Strategy?. But – what does a content marketing strategy look like? Define Your Content Goals and Priorities What do you want out of your content marketing strategy? Of course, you want to build your business, but what areas do you plan to focus on to achieve business growth? For example, if you already have a solid customer base and you really need to up your revenue growth in the next couple years, focusing on customer retention may be much more profitable than lead generation and lead nurturing. Establish Your Goal Posts What metrics will you use to measure how effective your strategy is along the way? Then use these metrics to continually assess your strategy – and your goals. Where your tactics and techniques establish the path you take on your content strategy roadmap, your personas, along with your brand story, make up the colors, symbols and depth of your plan. Your content marketing strategy is based on your: Goals and priorities – what you want to happen Buyers personas – who you are marketing to Brand story – who you are Resources – how much you have to spend and the skill sets of your marketing team Based on these factors, you can create a holistic plan to use over the next couple weeks, months, and the next year and beyond. And, what the content of your content will be, based on your goals, buyers, and brand.
Success in content marketing demands a well-planned, documented strategy. Identify what success looks like and then map out your journey to get there.
Having a general vision of what you want your content marketing to do, along with what types of content and tactics you’re going to use, isn’t a strategy. That’s called a vague idea.
Do you want tangible results? You need a tangible plan. Write it down. Develop it, and continually refine it as you review your content marketing analytics to ensure your growth metrics are growing and your ROI is returning.
Sounds logical enough. But – what does a content marketing strategy look like? What do top marketers use in their strategies to make sure they’re effective?
Define Your Content Goals and Priorities
What do you want out of your content marketing strategy? Of course, you want to build your business, but what areas do you plan to focus on to achieve business growth?
For B2C marketers, a 2017 survey shared by the Content Marketing Institute revealed the top organizational goal for the next 12 months to be brand awareness, followed by engagement, lead generation, and customer retention.
Lead generation and brand awareness are the top priorities for B2B marketers, followed by engagement and lead nurturing. Both B2C and B2B are clearly continuing to shift towards a customer-centric model. The focus is still skewed, however, towards driving new customer growth rather than long-term customer relationships – despite the well-known benefits of keeping existing customers.
When identifying goals, keep in mind the unique needs of your business today and in the long-term – not prevailing marketing trends. For example, if you already have a solid customer base and you really need to up your revenue growth in the next couple years, focusing on customer retention may be much more profitable than lead generation and lead nurturing. If your long-term goal is to scale, brand awareness and lead generation may be a smarter strategy.
Establish Your Goal Posts
What metrics will you use to measure how effective your strategy is along the way? Based on your top priorities, you can establish what KPIs you want to focus on to determine how well your strategy is working and where you need to make adjustments.
- Website traffic and engagement metrics like bounce rate, average time on page, and your social media metrics will say a lot about how well you’re building brand awareness.
- Your conversion numbers and conversion rates…
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