With the rise and importance of social media, content marketing has become an essential part of many businesses’ marketing strategies. Effective content marketing strategies can help businesses optimize their marketing activities and adapt their social media messages according to their target customers. Building a content marketing strategy might seem daunting at first, but it can be easily broken down into to 5 simple steps. By learning how to implement these steps, brand experts can greatly improve their strategies to optimize engagement and conversion on their social media platforms.
Determine marketing objectives
Understanding and defining your marketing objectives is a key step to building an effective content marketing strategy. Mastering this first step is essential as all following actions are determined according to the main marketing objectives. To set objectives, you must consider the stages of the marketing funnel: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty and Advocacy. These steps help businesses to attract new customers and build a loyal community. Setting clear S.M.A.R.T. objectives and setting OKRs according to the different stages of the marketing funnel will guide the types of content that a business will post to attract consumers based on their own stages in the brand’s marketing funnel.
Understand your audience
Having a clear and thorough understanding of your target customer’s psychology, needs and wants, expectations, preferences, habits and behaviors will help determine the messages included in a businesses’ content marketing strategy. Understanding their likes and dislikes will guide a brand’s decision-making when determining what type of content will interest their consumers. Building a list of different consumer personalities will guide social media specialists to adapt their content marketing strategies according to the unique consumer profiles. Utilizing consumer data is an excellent resource to help guide content marketing strategy. This data can help marketers to test and adapt their strategies more effectively by fully understanding their customer base.
Determine your content pillars
Content pillars are key themes or topics that guide content marketing strategies on social media platforms. A brand should aim to have three solid foundational content pillars that will help orient the types of content a brand will create. Knowing what the brand stands for, what its aiming to achieve, and who the brand’s audience is avoids any irrelevant or non useful content from being created, therefore saving the business time and resources. According to the brand’s objectives and their target audience, brands can leverage their knowledge and expertise to adapt their messages to their target audiences. For example, if a brand seeks to raise awareness, it might decide to adapt its strategy by posting more engaging, enjoyable and trendy content to appeal to gain a following. These pillars are extremely useful to help a brand to focus and organize their content marketing efforts.
Create a content calendar
Creating and having a detailed content calendar based on the previous elements is an extremely helpful tool for businesses to utilize. Often, content marketing fails due to poor planning and a poor understanding of the brand’s objectives and consumers. By organizing and focusing a brand’s marketing efforts into a strategic content marketing calendar, brands can reduce the risk factors limiting potential growth and engagement across social media platforms. By using the content pillars, marketers can plan their content deployment plan according to the types of content the brand wishes to post. Understanding the brand’s audience can guide content marketing efforts to post a certain type of content on the right platform at the right time to effectively reach the right audience.
Post, analyze, pivot, repeat
The last step in building an effective content marketing strategy is to analyze the data that a brand receives after posting to properly adapt their marketing efforts. Analyzing the data of a social media post will help marketing specialists to understand the success and failures of a given campaign. Determining if the content resonated with the brand’s audience is key to determining the effectiveness of the campaign. The data collected during and after the campaign will show if the content marketing campaign is reaching the set targets and objectives set previously. Once analysis is done, brands can look to pivot their strategy if the objectives were not met or to continue with the original strategy if it is effective. Testing and getting feedback are an essential part to this step as every iteration can provide different insights into a given audience and the effectiveness of the resonance with said audience.
Conclusion
Content marketing can be a time consuming and difficult task if not done properly. By effectively setting objectives, understanding the audience, determining the types of content to be posted, and effectively planning and analyzing data, experts and businesses can optimize their content marketing strategy. When done thoughtfully, these steps can empower businesses and truly make a difference for an organization. Following through with each of these steps will yield greater results, facilitate returns and build customer loyalty and advocacy by creating a community.
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