We all know that content marketing is an effective yet affordable marketing technique for both large and small businesses.
Due to this reason, around 54% of the businesses are planning to increase their content marketing budget this year, says SiegeMedia.
It can help brands to quickly build brand awareness, and trust and generate leads to stand out as an authority in the required market. However, keep in mind that businesses will only experience all these benefits when they follow a strong content marketing strategy.
A Content marketing strategy is basically a plan that tells how a business will create and distribute the marketing content to achieve the required results.
In this article, we have explained a step-by-step procedure to develop a successful strategy.
Steps to Create an Excellent Content Marketing Strategy
Some of the most essential steps that you need to follow to create a winning strategy are discussed below.
Set your goal
Answer this question…how you can come up with an effective content marketing strategy when you don’t even know your business goal?
Some common goals that small businesses usually have around the world are:
- Building a brand awareness or identity in the targeted market.
- Attracting maximum leads.
- Experiencing a good no. of sales.
- Expanding the business to new markets.
- Increasing their main website traffic.
And many more…
When you (the business owner) have set the goal that needs to be achieved, you can then tailor your entire content marketing strategy and efforts accordingly.
For Example:
Let’s say you have the set goal to increase the overall revenue of the small business, then you should consider creating a strategy that revolves around how you can reach maximum potential customers. You will need to create an effective pricing structure for your products and services. You can consider offering discounts occasionally.
Define the targeted audience
The next step towards creating a winning strategy is to define or determine the audience. Keep this in mind that, a brand or business will never become successful if it is promoting products and services to the wrong audience or customers.
To determine the targeted audience, you have to find the ideal audience or customers in your market. Apart from this, you should also understand the needs and preferences of the customers.
When you have a clear understanding of all this, you can tailor the marketing strategy according to the ideal audience and come up with marketing content that perfectly resonates with them.
Thinking how you can both find and understand the needs of the ideal audience or customers? For this, you can try a number of ways like
- Performing surveys/interviews.
- Creating buyer personas.
- Analyzing the competitors (who they are targeting & what type of content they are creating).
Determine the content type and its channel
Do you know?
Content marketing allows small brands to create different types of content, according to expertise, budget, or requirements. Some common content types are:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Newsletters
- And many more…
So, in order to create a winning strategy, it is necessary for businesses to also decide on the content type.
Remember, this step is totally dependent on the above one (your targeted audience). Let us explain how. If you have found that most of the ideal audience prefers reading blog posts to get familiar with the information, then you should create a blogging website against your business name to engage with the audience.
Obviously, when you approach the ideal customers through the content type and channel they prefer, there is a strong chance that they will read your message. This will further contribute to making your small business stand out, which is one of the primary goals of content marketing.
Focus on creating high-quality content regularly
Your entire content marketing strategy will be mostly dependent on this step. Your marketing strategy will become successful and provide you with results when it focuses on creating the highest quality content.
Now you are thinking what exactly is quality content? It is content that provides valuable information in a unique and easy-to-understand manner without being promotional.
We have seen many small businesses becoming successful in providing valuable content, but struggle to keep it unique and simple to understand for the audience. This is because there will be a lot of well-reputed brands that have already created content on the topics on which you plan to create. So, no matter how hard you try to be unique, there is still a chance that some of your marketing content may match with them.
On the other hand, simple content requires businesses to use common words instead of technical jargon. Since you have a small business, then you may not have enough budget to hire professional writers to craft the highest quality content.
So, what you should do? You can consider utilizing online writing tools like Paraphrasing.io, Linguix.com, or Paraphraseonline.io. Tools like these will quickly paraphrase the given content in a unique and simple way without altering the original meaning.
Promote/Distribute the content
A content marketing strategy will be incomplete, if it does not include how the marketing content will be distributed among the target audience. No matter how quality content a business has created, if it is not reaching the ideal customers, it will not provide the required results.
That is why, promoting or distributing content is necessary. For promotion, small businesses have multiple options. They can consider using different social media platforms like
Many more…
All these social media platforms have billions of active users, so you can take advantage of this wide usage and promote your marketing content.
Measure the success
You should closely monitor how your marketing content is performing. Doing so will allow you to find areas where you are doing great, and where you need improvements.
This will further allow you to make necessary changes in the content marketing strategy, to tackle the areas of improvement.
Wondering how you can monitor the performance of content? For this, you have to leverage analytics tools like SEMrush. Tools like this will provide you with many useful insights about how your content is performing across the internet.
Final Words
For small businesses who are planning to use content marketing to quickly stand out, having a strong content marketing strategy is crucial. In this article, we have discussed a step-by-step procedure that you need to follow to craft an excellent content marketing strategy.
