Content strategy is one of the most important aspects for any business, big or small, as it forms the backbone of your brand, drives engagement, and leads to more conversions.
With valuable marketing content, you’ll develop authority in your industry to help drive future sales. Plus, more high-quality content = more opportunities for prospects to find your business and engage.
Whether you’re just getting started or want to refine your approach to ensure maximum reach in a crowded space – this article is for you.
We’ll teach you tangible tactics for creating a winning content marketing strategy that can help streamline your workflow and get better results. This will help you to scale your business and continue to focus on what matters in growing your company.
What is Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing strategy is the process of creating and delivering content that meets the needs of your audience. It’s important to have a strategy in place for online content marketing development. If you don’t have a plan, you’ll never know what works and what doesn’t. You’ll also never be able to measure the success of your content marketing efforts and generate new marketing ideas.
A good content marketing strategy will help you to:
- 1. Identify your target audience
- 2. Understand their needs
- 3. Create content that meets those needs
- 4. Measure the success of your content marketing efforts
- 5. Continuously improve the content to deliver higher quality material than competitors
- 6. Get organic lead generation and foster customer/client loyalty through engaging content.
It’s important to develop marketing content that resonates while fulfilling your business goals, like driving sales, growing your brand visibility, or something else entirely.
A strategic plan also allows businesses to evaluate the success of each content piece by analyzing user engagement metrics like likes, comments, shares, conversions (booked calls, for example), and time spent viewing. This feedback can help you identify gaps in the marketplace and refine your content marketing strategy for maximum impact.
Benefits of Creating a Content Marketing Strategy
Research shows that businesses who plan their content weeks or even months in advance, focusing on content marketing, increased conversion rates by more than five times.
With thoughtful planning comes clarity over key messages, themes, and topics to be covered within campaigns. This leads to greater consistency and a clearer understanding of the direction toward achieving desired goals.
Content marketing strategy doesn’t need to be a daunting task – it can be a collaborative and easy process when the right systems are in place.
More benefits of creating a content plan:
- Setting content goals and objectives help identify the target audience and the purpose of the content, as well as how the content will support the overall goals of the organization.
- Conducting content audits evaluates existing content, including its format, quality, and performance, to determine what is working and what needs improvement. That helps generate ideas for future directions.
- Developing a content calendar creates a schedule for creating, publishing, and promoting content, as well as identifying resources needed to execute the plan. This allows content that is generated not to be urgent and rushed, but instead well-planned and executed.
Types of Content Marketing
When we talk about content marketing strategy in the modern world, we generally think of digital content marketing strategy or online content marketing. Although there are more traditional forms – like print material – we are going to focus primarily on online content marketing in this article.
Online Content Marketing
Online content marketing involves creating and sharing digital content such as videos, blogs, and social media posts that are designed to attract, engage, and captivate an audience.
The goal of online content marketing is to create a connection between the brand and its customers by providing relevant information related to the customer’s needs. Online content marketing can also be used to build brand awareness, generate leads, and drive traffic to a website.
Examples of online content marketing include creating blog posts, creating videos for YouTube or other video-sharing sites, creating social media posts to promote products/services, and using email campaigns to reach potential customers.
Many businesses use SEO tactics such as optimizing content for search engines and creating backlinks in order to increase their visibility and rankings. By leveraging online content marketing, businesses can create an engaging relationship with customers while also driving sales. The below content marketing strategies fall under the category of online content marketing.
Social Media Content Marketing
Social media content marketing is the practice of using social media platforms to engage with customers and build relationships. Social media content typically includes images, videos, and text-based posts which are designed to promote a brand or product.
By creating content that resonates with audiences, businesses can boost their visibility and establish meaningful connections with potential customers. This helps to increase engagement and generate leads.
Examples of social media content marketing include:
- creating engaging posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms
- creating visuals such as infographics or videos
- conducting contests or giveaways
- running paid ads
- utilizing influencer marketing.
Infographic Content Marketing
Infographic content marketing is the practice of using visual elements such as graphs, charts, and illustrations to present complex ideas in an easy-to-understand format. Through infographics, businesses can efficiently communicate a message to their audience while also increasing engagement.
By creating visually appealing content that grabs attention, businesses can capture the interest of potential customers and encourage further exploration. Infographics can be used to improve SEO as they typically include backlinks that lead to other pages of the website.
Infographics are also often shared on social media platforms or blog posts, providing an even greater reach for businesses.
Blog Content Marketing
Blog content marketing is a type of digital marketing strategy that involves creating and publishing content on a blog. Blogs can be used to discuss industry topics, provide product or service updates, share success stories or customer reviews, or answer frequently asked questions.
By creating content that resonates with customers, businesses can build a loyal following and attract potential customers. Blogging is also an effective way to improve SEO, as it typically includes backlinks which lead to other pages of the website.
Podcast Content Marketing
Podcast Content Marketing is a form of content marketing that involves creating, sharing, and distributing audio recordings for the purpose of promoting a business or brand. Podcasts can be used to reach potential customers by providing them with valuable information and engaging stories. By creating podcasts related to their industry, businesses have the opportunity to reach a wide audience and build relationships with potential customers.
Podcast content marketing can be used to educate customers, share success stories, and build relationships with key customer segments. It is a great way for businesses to establish brand credibility and reach potential customers in an engaging way.
Podcasts are extremely versatile as they can be distributed across multiple platforms such as iTunes, YouTube, and social media. Businesses can use podcast content marketing to build relationships with influencers, industry experts, and the media.
Video Content Marketing
Video Content Marketing is the practice of creating, sharing, and distributing video content to promote a business or brand. It involves using videos for promotional purposes to create brand awareness and engage with potential customers. Videos can be used across multiple channels, such as on social media platforms, websites, email campaigns, and television commercials.
Videos can be used to demonstrate products, showcase services, provide tutorials, create entertaining content, and more. Furthermore, videos can be used to drive traffic to websites and help generate leads.
Video Content Marketing is also cost-effective and can reach many potential customers with minimal effort. Videos are easy to share, which makes it easier for businesses to spread brand awareness across multiple channels quickly and efficiently.
Paid Ad Content Marketing
Paid ad content marketing involves creating content such as video, text, or graphics and paying to display it in front of their target audience.
Ads are typically used to promote products and services, build brand awareness, and generate leads. By utilizing paid ad content marketing, businesses can reach potential customers who may not have otherwise been exposed to their brand.
Paid ads can help businesses target specific audiences and potential customers with increased precision. Paid ad content marketing is an effective way for businesses to quickly reach a larger audience while increasing visibility and generating leads.
Steps to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
Creating an effective content strategy can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few simple steps to help you get started:
1. Define your goals and objectives
Before creating content, you must decide what you want it to achieve. Do you want to drive website traffic, increase sales, or generate leads? Once you know your goal, you can start crafting content to help you reach it.
Set meetings with stakeholders, business owners, and department leaders to identify the purpose of your content and how it will support the overall goals of your organization. Consider your target audience and what they want and need from your content.
Without any clear goal, you’re creating content blindly and likely wasting energy on things that won’t drive more conversions in your business.
2. Define your audience
Knowing who will be engaging with the content is key to developing the right strategy. You’ll be able to come up with content ideas and tailor how it is made and shared based on reaching the right audience.
Define your audience by their needs, preferences, and behaviors. This is where having an avatar is helpful, as you can brainstorm the pain points, knowledge gaps, and needs of this avatar.
That gives you a greater chance of having people not only consume your content with genuine interest but also increase shares and engagement and eventually have these prospects convert to clients/customers.
3. Conduct a marketing content audit
If you already have content (social media, YouTube, blogs), review your existing content to understand what you have and how it’s performing. Using auditing as a first stage in content planning process is a common marketing approach. Businesses can identify gaps and areas for improvement. Look at metrics like click-through rate, watch/read time, likes/shares, and any other conversion metrics you might have.
4. Create a content marketing plan
Once your goals are defined and the audience is defined, develop a content plan outlining the stages of reaching these goals. You can break down higher-level goals into smaller goals and then match the content creation plan with these goals. Include in this plan topics, publication dates, distribution channels, and scheduling.
5. Define the content marketing workflow process
This relates to the idea formation, creation, reviewing, approval, and publishing process. Use collaboration tools such as Slack and Asana to set tasks, manage projects, and communicate with core team members to make this flow as efficient as possible.
You can also have automation tools in the workflow. We use Zapier in Scaling With Systems to reduce manual tasks and friction to save more time. A clear workflow also ensures consistency in how the content is created and published.
Learn more about how to integrate Zapier into your workflow by reading this article next.
6. Promote your content
There’s no point in having great content if you don’t share it! Develop a plan for how the content will be promoted across various channels. This means not only posting the blog article to your website but defining how it will be shared on social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
The content should be shared intelligently – use hooks to draw people in, link the content effectively, post according to a set schedule, and use engagement CTAs (e.g., share this post!). This is essentially the “marketing” part of content marketing!
Processes to Make Content Creation Easier
Content creation can be a time-consuming task, but there are several processes you can use to make it easier.
Time management is key: setting clear goals for the team and breaking up each task into smaller, more manageable components are all helpful strategies.
Additionally, stay organized by creating checklists and templates can save a lot of time that would otherwise be spent researching and starting from scratch every time.
Consider utilizing resources like AI and technology-driven tools that will make content creation faster while also helping to ensure accuracy.
The following tips will help you keep your content creation workflows smooth:
- Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guidelines for all of the content creation team to follow. This ensures less time and energy being spent on editing and approving content.
- Create templates (blog templates, featured imagery, social media post templates, captions, and more).
- Use project management software and automation for task management.
- Plan ahead of time with content schedules and have the content mapped out at least a month in advance.
- Hire a top-tier team of content marketing experts – creators, developers, designers – and regularly collaborate. Encourage team members to bring their ideas for optimizing processes. Keeping the team engaged and connected will streamline the content creation process, as well.
- Continue to use data to drive any changes and upgrades to content creation, as you can see which topics are more popular, which designs work well, and more.
Digital Workflows to Help Scale your Content Creation
There are a few digital workflows you can utilize if you’re looking to pump out large-scale content (like multiple blogs or social media posts a day). The first is using a content calendar to plan and organize your content. Using a project management app like Asana is great for this.
Another workflow that can help scale up your marketing content creation is using social media scheduling tools. These tools allow you to create and schedule posts ahead of time to ensure that your social media accounts are consistently updated.
A third workflow that can help you create more content is collaborating with the team over project management and online platforms. By outsourcing content creation, you can free up time to focus on other aspects of your business.
For digital content marketing – take blog writing, for example – delegating to a team of writers will ensure that your content is high-quality and consistent. That allows decision-makers to put energy into idea generation and more high-level development of your content marketing strategy.
Manage your team of writers through project management software like Asana (as mentioned previously). This lets you create digital workflows and content schedules that are easy to view and update as needed.
Content Strategy Tips: FAQ
Why is content marketing strategy important?
Developing a clear and effective content strategy will help businesses to achieve their goals, reach larger audiences, optimize marketing, and develop authority. Brand identity is strengthened, and there is more ease in the internal workflows for creating and sharing content. Without a content marketing strategy, time and resources can be wasted on the wrong actions, and marketing objectives may not be reached.
What are the components of a content strategy?
Key components of a good content strategy include numerous steps. Businesses can start by setting content goals that are aligned with core company goals, doing a content audit, creating a schedule, defining workflows, publishing to different platforms, and analyzing performance. Read this guide to content marketing for more useful tips.
How do you create an effective content marketing strategy?
It starts with having a keen understanding of your target audience and identifying their pain points. Knowing what challenges they’re facing may require doing in-depth research or simply asking them directly. Segmenting viewers based on shared interests, then crafting tailored content to address their needs is key. The best marketing strategies contain data-driven content planning.
Wrapping Up: Content Marketing Strategy Tips
Content marketing strategy is important for any business that wants to create and maintain a strong online presence while driving sales.
Effective strategies for content marketing require careful planning and execution to be successful. There are many ways to optimize your existing processes to make content creation easier, including using digital workflows and creating an amazing user experience.
At the end of the day, you want to optimize your content marketing strategy to scale your business. Just make sure you have the systems in place to handle this fast growth and have a streamlined process of acquiring and onboarding new clients.
We can help. Scaling With Systems builds profitable client acquisition systems for businesses, large and small, to find a profitable and consistent growth model. Book a free consultation call with us today, and one of our advisors will get back to you.
