According to the present scenario, content marketing and content marketing strategy are two new favorite buzzwords, which has become such a popular trend. Content marketing is all about delivering the right content, at the right time, to the right audience, in the right place, while telling the right story.
Smart marketers have already understood that there is a better way than the traditional marketing and that is online content marketing. So what exactly Content Marketing means? Content marketing can be defined as follows:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
What is the importance of Content Marketing?
The important word mentioned in above definition is “valuable”. Every piece of content cannot become the part of content marketing campaign. To be a part of the content marketing campaign, the content piece should be the one, which people want to consume it instead of avoiding it.
Content Strategy & Content Marketing Strategy
Content strategy and content marketing strategy are often considered as same but they are not. Yes, there is some overlap, but they are two different concepts. The Content strategy consists of strategies of how and which content you are going to create, publish, promote and track for results, that brings out the structure and role your organization plays. Content marketing strategy should be conscious of the of the story of the organization that needs to be told to audiences and should craft innovative ways to engage the audience.
Components of Content Strategy
To achieve the ultimate goal of content strategy i.e. satisfying expectations from users and meeting business objectives, following things are important to consider.
Content strategy considering peer-disciplines
“Content is the king”, we have heard this for a lot many times now, but content alone cannot make the digital project successful. The successful content strategy needs teamwork with its peer-disciplines. During content strategy, various peer-disciplines that should be consulted crucially are:
Design
Information Architecture
Development
Search Engine Optimization
Marketing
Brand Building
Framework for content and content creators
Content strategy should be designed keeping in mind the business objectives but at the same time, the content being delivered should be useful and engaging as well.
The content should have following components:
Substance – the message we want to deliver i.e. the topic, style and tone.
Structure – prioritization and breaking up the content into meaningful building blocks.
Governance – there should be integrity, quality and consistency throughout the content.
Workflow – to create and maintain the content, there should be standard tools, process and resources.
Components of Content Marketing Strategy
Now let’s dive into the components of content marketing strategy:
Business goals
The first step while creating content marketing strategy is to carefully consider the business outcomes of what you are aiming to accomplish. State these goals clearly and objectives required to achieve these goals.
Competitive audit
Research on your competitors and list them down. Try to identify where do they publish and market their content and which type of content they publish preferably. Check out their publishing frequency and the subject matter that they cover. You will need this data to identify that how your strategy should be different to compete with the noise made by competitors.
Customer profiles
Study and develop each type of potential customer you want to win and main points associated with them, regarding their desires, interests, etc.
Content distribution
Strategize how and through what medium you will display your content to audiences; through social media, video sharing sites, email, etc. Depending on this refine your approach.
Result measurement
To consider the result of your efforts as successful, you should have important KPIs (key performance indicators) in terms of shares, pageviews, time on page, followers, etc. The ultimate goal should be the qualified leads, sales, purchases and customer with higher values, which is important to prove ROI (return on investment).
Tools for content
Make sure about the tools that you are using to create content like any CMS (content management system) development such as WordPress. The resource for content creation should also be certain either your own writing staff or hiring content writing services. You should have a good analytics software to track and measure your content like Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, etc.
Yes, content marketing sounds like too much of work but it is crucial and worth for the amount of time and effort spent on crafting the strategy and executing it. Blindly publishing a ton of content is not the right way, you need to define your goals, plan tactics and then proceed with your strategy.
And yes, effective content marketing should involve testing and tweaking – continuous diligence brings more awareness, brand impact and profit.
Krify is a multinational Web, Mobile App Development and Digital Marketing Solutions Company. Are you looking for developing effective content or strategizing content marketing for your business? Contact our Content Marketing expert now for the consultation and complete content marketing strategy, to achieve your business goals.