Perhaps you’re one of those business owners who are curious about content marketing but haven’t made the leap just yet. Or maybe you already have content marketing but you’re still not quite sure how to make it work to your advantage.
You’re already aware that “content is king” and other businesses have proven its efficiency as a marketing strategy, but you still don’t know exactly how to maximize the potential of content marketing as a tool for business success.
Content marketing is on the rise in 2020 and there are numbers to prove it. 70% of marketers have already invested actively on content marketing, but this year, 24% of that statistic will invest more on their content.
But while content marketing is growing exponentially, the reality is, only 77% of the 91% of companies using content marketing have a content marketing strategy in place, according to SEMrush’ survey.
This means that a lot of businesses are still not making the most of their content marketing and you could also be one of them.
So whether you’re just taking the leap towards content marketing or you want to improve an existing plan, here are seven tips for creating a content marketing strategy that works:
- Create a content marketing mission statement.
To start your content marketing strategy on the right track, you have to create a mission statement that will allow you to focus on what’s really important in creating your content.
A good content marketing mission statement should clearly state your target audience, the type of content that you’re going to put out and what people can benefit from them.
- Determine your goals.
If your mission statement defined what benefits your customers will get from your content marketing strategy, your goals should define what your business will get from it. What do you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy? Is it to improve revenues? Or maybe to get more traffic to your website? Defining your goals will give you a clear direction from the get-go, which will make everything else a lot easier.
- Establish your numbers.
To know if your strategies are effective or not, you’ll need to put numbers into your objectives. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should tell the timeline on which you want to achieve the different milestones in your content marketing strategy, say getting more traffic to your website, improve your SEO and increasing your revenues.
You also need to keep track of your marketing expenditure to know if you’re earning more than what you’re spending on your strategies.
- Understand your audience.
Of course, if you want to be effective with your content marketing strategy, you have to understand who you’re putting out content for.
Looking back at your mission statement, determine your target audience and gather data that will help you create strategies around them. You can use social media, web and email subscription analytics in getting your target audience’s age, income, gender and education.
- Know where you stand.
Whether you’re a newbie in content marketing or you already have content in place, you need to know where you stand so it’s easier to put together a content marketing strategy that’s effective and useful for your business.
A content audit should include all types of content you have and the gaps between them.
- Determine your selling point.
The truth is, you’re not the only business competing online. In fact, you could get easily lost in the crowd if you don’t know exactly what makes you stand out.
You have to determine what makes you better or at the very least, different. Although you’re not the only one selling the product, people will go to you for advice if you already know what makes you unique from everyone else.
- Work on your strengths.
Content marketing is such a competitive arena that any delays in your strategies could already put you behind the pack.
So instead of trying to do everything at once make sure to focus on what’s already working for you and grow from there.
At the end of the day, success in content marketing doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of focus, hard work, trial and error, determination and maybe even luck to get to where you want to be as a business.
With content marketing growing so rapidly this year, it’s the best time to jump into the bandwagon and embrace content marketing if you haven’t done it yet or improve your strategies to achieve your goals.
What’s important is that you now have these seven tips to get started with your content marketing strategy, which will make everything a lot easier than not having anything to guide you through this journey.
Again, make sure that you don’t only think about what will benefit your readers but also what will make your business better.