One of the functions of content marketing is to generate value by attracting qualified leads that can convert into sales or customers.
Too often, we get caught up in the strategy that once the strategy is defined, we forget to build a framework to allow for intelligent decision-making and rapid implementation. So how does a content marketing professional or business owner go about putting together a marketing strategy?
Innovative marketing strategy-related questions asking is the fastest route to intelligent answers. After all, if you don’t try to know what you don’t know, you can’t get to the bottom of the problems you’re facing.
We learned that behind every conversation is a person’s personal request. Thus, you need content that meets the needs and interests of the target individuals and a content plan that will help the company establish a trusting relationship with its target audience. We do this by asking ourselves eight key questions whose answers will guide our content marketing efforts – it’s a powerful technique we want to share with you in this article.
So, before trying to assemble a strategy from scratch, here are the eight most relevant strategic marketing questions you should be asking yourselves.
1. What Objectives your Organization wants to Achieve Through Content?
Define what problems are you trying to solve – driving traffic to your website or increasing sales. Marketers often skip this step. Don’t make the mistake of acting without a clearly defined goal.
It sounds simple enough, but it is often overlooked. Define the final game. Marketing leads businesses to a different place than they are today. If the business has not defined what they are trying to sell and whom they are trying to sell to, the marketing strategy has no chance of success.
Start by clearly quantitatively defining your business objectives. Here are some examples:
- Maintain a profit margin of 14%
- Income from $100M to $155M . extend to
- Complete 200 fresh installations of our software
2. Who’s Going to Read your Content?
It is crucial to know how important it is for companies to define their target audience before launching any digital marketing plan. Understanding the habits and demographics of your potential customers will help you better tailor the messages through your content marketing campaigns. The more relevant your content is, the more willing your target audience will take the next step on your website to buy.
3. What Does your Marketing Team Need to Support Corporate Goals?
After documenting the answer to question #1, begin developing a list of objectives and associated metrics. Be specific in defining these metrics so that you can measure your progress.
4. What are the Pain Points of my Customers?
Ask yourself if your content addresses customers’ pain points. It means identifying the most common problems or bottlenecks your customer is facing. Your content should clearly address pain points and offer solutions to those problems. In return, this establishes your brand as a trusted resource and enhances the reputation of your business.
Content marketing should be customer-centric. Keep this at the fore of your mind when you start refreshing content. If your content isn’t already paying attention to customer pain points, this is the perfect time to address them. Start analyzing your content from the point of view of your customers.
Always ask yourself: am I providing value to my target person(s)?
Follow these simple research steps to keep your content customer-focused:
- Interview Customer Service Representatives: Take advantage of this opportunity to identify frequently asked questions from your customers. What are your customers confused about, and what are your demanding customers complain about?
- Get your messaging framework down: Make sure your messaging is on-brand at all times and across all channels.
- Do Keyword Research: What are your customers really looking for? Improve their target keywords and be precisely what they are looking for.
- Look at FAQs: Search frequently asked questions online for your target keywords.
- Monitor key metrics: Check which content and channels drive the most traffic and conversions, and implement a distribution plan accordingly.
5. What Qualifies as Ideal Content?
When people think of content marketing, they think of blogs. And blogs are definitely one of the easiest and most effective tools of content marketing available. But they are not the only forms of content that can be employed in a content marketing strategy. Any valuable information expressed in any medium may be considered as content. Videos, infographics, slides, PDFs, blogs, articles, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, webinars – the list goes on.
6. What will your Process be?
Find out how many people will be involved in creating the content? Will it legally have to be approved? Who will have final approval before some content is published? Will Freelancers be Involved? If so, who will manage them? Planning approvals and workflows in advance will save the headache of miscommunication and publishing mistakes down the road.
7. How can you Make your Content More Visual?
Society is moving towards a more visual form of storytelling. More than half of people are visual learners, and our brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text.
Keep these statistics in mind when creating your content strategy. Videos and other visual elements allow you to engage with your audience more effectively than other forms of content.
8. Where Should you Distribute your Content?
Planning for content delivery is vital to your marketing strategy. Keep the following practices in mind as you choose your delivery plan:
Find your Audience
If you want more hearts on your content, check out who will see and share it. The understanding of your target readers is the key to shaping your message.
Choose a Distribution Channel
It includes choosing the distribution channels like your blog, social media, email marketing, PPC (pay-per-click), SEO, and content delivery tools (such as IFTTT, Triberr, dlvr.it, or GaggleAMP). Influencer outreach will help increase your chances of being seen even more.
Target Content to Customers at Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
Every piece of content should serve a purpose and be addressed to the right people. Create relevant content and don’t drive people to buy your products when they haven’t heard of your brand before. Instead, use it as a transformation to understand the data of interested users and use retargeting advertising to capture their attention with a meaningful proposition.
Conclusion
Take a step forward and commit to creating high-quality content. Don’t expect noticeable results overnight, but keep in mind that you are working on a long-term strategy. If every page or video you publish serves a purpose and impacts your target audience, it won’t take long for the undeniable rewards to become apparent. If you are looking for some digital marketing solutions, you can contact us. Our experts are here to help you with planning your content marketing strategy. Call now!