Is a content marketing strategy essential?
After all, isn’t it just a case of publishing blogs now and then and pushing your products and stuff out through social media?
Oh boy, if that’s what you think, no wonder your content marketing is falling flat on its face.
Every business needs a strategy behind its content marketing activities.
Why should you have a content strategy?
I want you to think about something for a moment:
- Why are you producing the content you are creating?
- How do you measure its effectiveness?
- How do you decide what type of content to put out?
If you don’t have a well thought out content marketing strategy, you won’t be able to get the right content in the right format out to the right audience at the right time. It’s as simple as that.
Things to consider when creating your content strategy
One thing I have noticed (and I am guilty of it too) is that most of the content produced by companies is in the written form. It’s things like blogs, articles, reports, e-newsletters, etc.
That’s probably because writing is the fastest and most natural way of getting your information across. The problem is that not everyone likes to receive information in the written form because it can be time-consuming to read and, well, frankly a bit boring.
When putting your strategy together, you must think about your audience and how they engage with you. Mix it up a bit with infographics, videos, animations and even music across all your social media channels. This kind of content is very shareable (when done well) and will help widen your reach.
The next question is how do you measure the success of your strategy?
Do you look at your web traffic?
If you do, I have some bad news for you.
Traffic is great, but it doesn’t mean you will automatically sell more. If you plump for traffic volume as your prime metric all you’re doing is measuring an activity not results.
Far more effective forms of measurement are:
- Sales lead quality and quantity
- Direct sales
- Product awareness
These give you a direct correlation between the effectiveness of your content strategy and sales.
The top three goals of your content marketing strategy should be:
- Lead generation
- Customer acquisition
- Sales
Before you get back to work, think about your strategy. Make sure you are putting out a variety of content formats and measuring its impact using the goals above.
By focusing on the things that matter (i.e. the needs of your audience and tangible results) your strategy will become incredibly powerful.
Author: Sally Ormond, freelance copywriter, MD at Briar Copywriting and cycling nut.