Elements of a great content marketing strategy

Here are some of ways content marketing can benefit your business:

• Improved customer loyalty – Content allows you to build more personal relationships with your audience, which leads to stronger customer loyalty

• Enhanced brand reputation – If your content is informative and helpful, people will begin thinking highly of your brand. This could easily translate into higher sales
• Lower marketing costs – Compared to traditional marketing strategies, content marketing is very cost-effective. You can reach thousands of people at little or no cost, and make incredible returns in the long run

• Improved SEO – Publishing great content on your website regularly is the best way of getting your pages indexed faster, thus improving your search engine ranking

So what are the elements of a successful content marketing strategy?

1. Clear goals

The first thing you need to do is establish your goals for content marketing. Do you want to drive more traffic to your site or to a specific landing page? Do you want to get more email subscribers or simply increase brand awareness? Whatever goals you settle on, you must ensure that they are aligned with your main business goals. In addition, they need to be measurable in some way, whether in traffic numbers, currency or percentage.

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2. Targeted audience

To succeed in content marketing, you need to have a good understanding of your audience. Get as much information as possible about them. Find out which blogs, forums and social networks do they visit frequently and what kind of content they share. This will give you an idea of what strategies you can use to effectively reach your ideal target audience. You can also use your content marketing goals to come up with specific buyer personas.

3. Appropriate content

The kind of content you choose should help you reach your target audience and achieve your goals. For instance, content such as video tutorials, product demos and targeted social media campaigns can help you get more signups on your site. On the other hand, email newsletters, guest posts on popular sites and SEO optimised blog content can help drive more traffic to your site. If you lack the expertise required to create some of this content, it would be advisable to hire the services of a professional.

4. Content execution

After deciding what type of content you will create, you need to have a clear plan for execution. How many product demos will you create every month? How many blog posts per week? Your execution plan should also clearly define the roles of people involved in content creation, including copy editors, videographers, designers and managers. In addition, it needs to have timelines/deadlines for all the projects.

5. Content promotion

Creating great content is not enough. It should be promoted on as many platforms as possible to reach as many people as possible. You also need to think about how long the promotion will run and if you will require a budget for it. The best way of reaching a wide audience is through free and paid promotions on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Alternatively, you could promote your content through email marketing, influencer marketing and search/display ads.

6. Consistent tracking

To find out if your goals have been achieved, you need to measure your content marketing efforts. Tools such as Kissmetrics, Google Analytics and SimpleReach can come in very handy in tracking your content performance. However, the frequency of tracking will vary depending on the kind of content being promoted. For instance, a bi-monthly newsletter should be tracked bi-monthly to find out if open rates are decreasing or increasing. However, social media metrics should be tracked daily and adjustments made when necessary. You could compile a report which can be presented to the management or shared with your team.