"It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”
Having a solid content marketing strategy in situ may be a must-have for an excellent content marketing execution.
That’s why we’ve decided to deep-dive into what good content marketing actually is. The results of that deep-dive is found in our latest ebook: Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing for 2021.
In this blog post, we’ll reconsider the importance of a good content marketing strategy and the way you’ll create one yourself.
Content Marketing offers an amazing opportunity for businesses to spice up their results. By delivering valuable and relevant content to users, you’ll improve your online reputation, build a community and grow advocates of your brand.
Your customers, leads, and audience members want valuable content from your business. which content must reach audience members in an exceedingly way that feels natural and organic versus being disruptive. Content marketing helps businesses do this, and it describes the strategy of attracting, engaging with, and delighting your target markets.
By honing in on effective content marketing, you’ll do exactly that — and as a result, increase conversions, improve brand awareness, boost revenue, establish yourself as an industry leader, and more.
However, Content Marketing isn’t just creating and distributing content. It’s a whole strategic approach that permits you to draw in and have interaction with a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, generate profitable customer action.
By following the guide below, you’ll have the in-depth information needed to develop a good Content Marketing strategy for your business.
What is marketing ?
Marketing is the process of getting potential clients or customers curious about your products and services. The keyword during this definition is “process”. Marketing involves researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services.
This discipline centers on the study of market and consumer behaviors and it analyzes the commercial management of companies to attract, acquire, and retain customers by satisfying their wants and needs and instilling brand loyalty.
The definition of selling is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including research and advertising. Today, marketing are a few things that each company and organization must implement in its growth strategy. Many companies use marketing techniques to realize their goals without even realizing it. Marketing refers to actions an organization or organization takes to push themselves and increase sales of their product or service. It’s one of the key aspects of business.
People often do not know exactly what marketing is and, when asked, they define it as selling or advertising. While these answers don’t seem to be wrong, they’re only part of selling. It involves many other things like product distribution, promotion, designing and creating materials like landing pages and social media content, building customer experience, doing marketing research and establishing target markets, and far more.
Marketing is incredibly broad and encompasses all strategies that help a corporation, brand, or individual achieve its objectives.
What is Content Marketing ?
Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to draw in, acquire, and have interaction with a clearly defined and understood audience – with the target of driving profitable customer action. (Or)
Content Marketing is the creation and distribution of digital marketing collateral with the goal of skyrocketing brand awareness, improving program rankings and generating audience interest. Businesses use content marketing to nurture leads and enable sales by using site analytics, keyword research and targeted strategy recommendations.
A content marketing strategy can leverage all story channels (print, online, in-person, mobile, social, etc.), be used at any and each one stage of the buying process, from attention-oriented strategies to retention and loyalty strategies, and include multiple buying groups.
Types of Content Marketing
Let’s understand how these varieties of content marketing can build your brand and leverage business:
- Blog Posts
- User Generated Content
- Content Curation
- E-book/PDF/White Paper/Industry Report
- Case Studies
- Templates
- Infographics
- Videos/Vlogs
- Podcasts
- Social Media
- Charts/Graphs/Surveys
- Memes/Cartoons
Importance of Content Marketing
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers surveyed use content marketing in some form or other. And it’s no surprise. If done thriving, an efficient content marketing strategy can grow brand awareness, usher in new customers, drive revenue, and most significantly, help guarantee brand loyalty, conversions, and growth, something we repeatedly tell you and can’t be emphasized enough.
Content marketing is vital, not simply because it works for building trust, generating leads, and cultivating customer loyalty, but because it’s become the new normal from the patron side.
It is, in itself, helping to evolve what customers expect from the brands they interact with. Neglecting it’s far more risky than investing in it.
What travel, food, or fashion brand can exist today without a vibrant Instagram page, videos, and some influencer campaigns?
Software companies became tech teachers with how-to videos and eBooks. Even the financial industry has come up with apps, online knowledge centers, and other tools to help both individuals and business customers better meet their financial goals and to try to do it with a level of transparency and convenience that was unprecedented 15 years ago.
Elements of Content Marketing Strategy
An effective Content Marketing strategy must have four core elements to be successful: brand positioning, owned media value proposition, business case, and strategic plan. Let’s see why these elements are essential for Content Marketing and therefore the way you’ll start implementing each of them.
1. Positioning your Brand
A clearly defined brand and merchandise positioning will facilitate your to produce an even experience for your audience and to create the proper image of your brand through all of your Content Marketing channels.
The following questions will facilitate your start brainstorming about your position within the market:
- Who are my existing and potential customers?
- What reasonable experience are they looking for?
- What is the competitive landscape?
- How do my top competitors market their brands?
- What is my brand’s unique value?
- What problems does my product help to solve?
- What makes it an improved choice over my competitors?
- How am I able to highlight my brand’s personality?
2. Owned Media Value Proposition
To establish your brand as a reputable content publisher, you wish to define your owned media value proposition. What unique value do I provide to your audience along with your content? How do I stand out from other content creators? Why should readers opt to follow your content channels?
Start researching your audience to spot the kind of knowledge they’re searching for and their favorite resources. Then, analyze your competitors’ content strategies to search out your editorial niche.
Too often, brands concentrate on their market rivals and don’t pay enough attention to other content creators. Once you opt to develop owned media, you must consider all publishers in your area of experience as potential competitors. So, ensure that unbranded media, like online magazines, industry blogs or influencers’ video channels, are an element of your competitive research.
3. Business Case
Providing value to your audience is an integral part of a successful content strategy. But additionally to attracting new readers and followers, Content Marketing should drive your business forward.
Identify business goals that your company must achieve and determine how Content Marketing will bring your business closer to those goals. What percentage resources does one have to invest in your content strategy and what results does one want to induce from this?
A documented business case will facilitate your better understanding of the advantages, costs, and risks of implementing a Content Marketing strategy in your company and convince decision makers of its value for the corporation.
4. Strategic Plan
A strategic plan should target your goals and the way exactly you may achieve them. it’ll facilitate your thinking through each step of your content strategy. This plan should facilitate your decision who you would like to succeed in along with your Content Marketing efforts, how you’ll deliver that content to them and, finally, how you may achieve and measure your targeted results.
Now let’s see how you’ll develop an ideal content strategy plan with some useful tips and tools that may facilitate your to be more efficient.
7 Step Content Creation Strategy for Epic Content Marketing
Here are seven steps which will take you closer to your goal:
1. Brainstorming a.k.a Ideation
The first step is to collect ideas for your content. While this step might sound sort of a no-brainer, it’s imperative you follow a structured ideation process to induce your hands on the proper ideas.
Preparation
The groundwork for an epic post has to be laid over the course of the many days, even weeks. so as to arrange for the ideation process, you need to ask your team to possess a handle on the heart beat of your audience and niche in the slightest degree of time. This may only happen if you and your content team follow the most recent happenings within the niche. Follow thought leaders, keep track of the most recent news, trawl through discussion forums, and hunt on social media; basically make every try and know all developments in your domain and also the reasonable information your target market is searching for.
Draft ideas
On the idea of your preparation, make a listing of ideas that are perfect for developing with exhaustive content relevant to your niche. They’re many tools you’ll be able to use to zero in on ideas you think that will work for your audience.
Curate ideas
Say you’ve got to come up with an inventory of ten ideas that you simply feel merit follow up. Excellent! Now you wish to curate these, to specialize in only those ideas you’re pretty sure will translate into an incredible piece of content.
Finalize ideas
Once you’re through with ideas curation, you’ll be left with 3-4 ideas that have epic content written everywhere. Pick one and save all others in your ideas bank for future reference and use.
2. Research
Buffer’s came up with a seminal post on content market research for a blog post. It’s also an ideal example of an epic post that provides comprehensive information on the topic of research. It’s a requirement to read.
You’ve to tap into various sources to induce your hands on the facts and figures you’re trying to find, which will facilitate your support of the points you’ll be making within the content piece. Surveys, infographics, podcasts, videos, news sites, forums, magazines etc. are ideal sources for research.
I’ve talked about ‘preparation’ earlier; revisit the sources you used for turning out with ideas. This helps you study research through the ‘idea prism’. It allows you to focus and offers direction to your research.
Collate this research, and make it easily accessible and consumable.
3. Define content format
Once you’re done, identify the content format that may facilitate your maximize potential of your content ideas, associated research, and understanding of the subject. Also, choose the format keeping audience preferences in mind and whether the format will allow you to try and do full justice to your idea.
There are two aspects of selecting the correct content format that you simply have to consider. The primary is your comfort factor with the format, for e.g. if you’ve chosen to make an infographic, you want to be able to create one with little or no difficulty.
Second, you wish to spot content formats that have proven efficacy backing them up. Think about it as a fine balancing act you want to perform keeping different variables in mind.
4. Defining content structure
This is one in all the mission critical steps of the method. you want to create a content wireframe that lists all details you would like to hide and also their flow. This ensures you don’t forget to mention anything that’s absolutely crucial for creating control on the target market. While creating the structure of your content, keep your research in mind and make key data a component of this wireframe. Again, this guarantees you don’t leave any important bit out of your content.
The structure of your content depends on the format you select. The structure of a blog post is markedly different from that of a video.
5. The brass tacks – creation
Short, focused titles work big time; they have to lay out the content’s deliverables clearly. Users must understand how taking a glance at your content will benefit them.
Once you’ve got the title out of the way, start the particular process of content creation. This content must justify the title you’ve come up with.
You have already got a structure; the broad contours of the content are already in situ. All you wish to try and do is start fleshing out the pointers. Fill within the details.
Let’s say you would like to jot down a blog post. The concept is to consider your post as a project and break it down into small, achievable milestones. Build your post, word by word, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph. Think about each pointer you would like to flesh come in the article as a separate task. This way, you not only will do justice to every and each pointer but also not get overwhelmed with the duty available.
Something else you want to detain is that EPIC content should be written confidently. The reader must believe that the author knows what he/she is talking about. A confident and assertive article backed by the writer’s strength of conviction, world examples and data citations from reputed sources, is infused with credibility. This is often the type of write up readers trust, gain from and share with their friends and followers.
The basic process for content creation remains true for all formats. The entire idea is to create valid arguments in support of your opinion on suggestions made in your content.
6. Testing
The next step is to check your content. ensure those who are invested in its success take an honest examination of it. It’s important to urge their feedback and make suggested improvements. Prepare a questionnaire for these “testers” and ask them to fill it once they’re done rummaging your content. Ask them whether:
- The content was readable.
- The user flow was spot on.
- They understood the points you were trying to create.
- The content went off-kilter at any point of your time.
- This content added value.
- They will share this content with their friends and followers.
- There was something about the content they didn’t like.
You get the drift. Ask questions which will provide you with an awfully clear idea about the effectiveness of your content and help make changes to that if you’ve got feedback about certain portions.
7. Refine
The final step within the process is to only look from the content piece for a few times. stay up on a daily basis or two and take a glance at it again.
Can you improve it further?Remember, you’ve already made the changes that individuals suggested you create. But you continue to might stumble upon a sentence or two that you just want to vary or add a source that you simply believe substantiates a degree you’ve made.
Keep refining the article until you’re absolutely sure it’s perfect and meets the standards demanded by EPIC content.
That’s it. Done! What you’ve got ahead of you now’s content that may make your brand proud. It’s the type of content that’s EPIC in every sense of the word!
Content Marketing Examples
Coca-Cola:
No one should miss the strategy of advertising when it involves content marketing excellence. it’s an awfully touchy feely sensation in consumers within the global market.
Coca Cola follows a really personalized and conversational content marketing model. Start with brand stories creating liquid and linked ideas provoking conversations. Then, consistently act and react to those conversations.
The perfect example of creating brand value through content excellence is “Liquid and Linked Idea”, ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign, “Open Happiness” tagline, “Share A Coke” and more.
Nike:
Nike uses social media like Facebook and Instagram very beautifully. Nike isn’t only rocking on social media with high-quality content within the variety of photos and videos, but they’re leveraging together with influencers likewise.
McDonald:
McDonald’s runs a wonderful series of content writing campaigns. “Hands Full”, “Your total is one big family hug”, “Ring your mum and tell her you like her” drove huge consumers to their stores.
Called ‘Search It’, the ad saw actress Mindy Kaling urging viewers to try and do a Google look for “that place where Coke tastes so good.”
In 2015, McDonald faced a rumour about their chicken nuggets and beef. McDonald’s used influencer marketing to dispel myths about the way its chicken nuggets are made. YouTube star Raphael Gomes created and ran a campaign on ‘What’s in McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets?’ with #GoodToKnow hashtag. This way, they broke the psychology and wrong perception of their consumers.
