How to Build the Perfect Content Marketing Strategy in 9 Steps

When implemented correctly, a content marketing strategy can greatly impact your brand awareness and credibility. It can also improve your relationships with your customers and drive high-quality traffic to your website.

Not convinced?

According to a study, researchers expect the content marketing industry to generate a revenue of?$137.2 million?by 2026.

Well, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering it is the most efficient and cost-effective way to?build awareness, boost sales, and grow your business. And that’s also the reason behind the increasing use of content marketing

Now tell me, do you want your share of this $127.2 million pie?.

How effective is your content marketing strategy?

If your answers are “yes” and “not enough,” respectively – it’s high time that you take a closer look at your content marketing strategy.

It will help you uncover what’s not working for your brand. And based on that analysis, you can come up with some clever ways to create an effective content marketing strategy.

But before we go there, let’s take a look at the advantages of having a content marketing strategy. We will then talk about some clever steps to build the perfect content marketing strategy for your brand.

Advantages of Implementing a Content Marketing Strategy

According to a?study, some of the benefits B2C marketers get from implementing a successful content marketing strategy include brand awareness, increased credibility, and loyalty.

But those are not the only?content marketing advantages.

Want to know what other benefits you can get from your content marketing strategy?

Well, let’s have a look at some of the best:

1. It’s a Platform-Independent Strategy

I’m pretty sure you are not using only one social media platform for your marketing.

Yes, having a presence on multiple social media channels can accelerate the growth of your brand while also boosting your content marketing strategy results. However, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s difficult to manage multiple social media accounts.

And you know what? I can feel that you are nodding along.

Well, let me tell you a little secret that’ll help you in situations like these.

A content marketing strategy can bind each of these platforms together like glue.

How is this?

You can always reuse and repurpose your content and tailor it according to the social platform you are posting on. Doing this then ensures that your messages and marketing goals are always in sync.

2. Enhances Your Relationship with Customers

You know how important it is to turn your loyal customers into brand advocates, right?

But how will you go about it if you don’t have great relationships with your customers?

Don’t fret.

A content marketing strategy can help you with this too. Informative and engaging content can help you build strong relationships with your customers.

Wondering how?

Well, here are some ideas you can implement in your content marketing strategy.

You can develop interesting content around any new updates about your brand or products with your customers.

Secondly, design exciting and personalized emails for frequent communications or write informative (not boring) blog posts and share them with your customers.

Attractive and appealing content is always a great way to interact and answer the inquiries of your customers.

Let’s consider an example to understand this better.

Leading broadcasting and publishing house?Cox Media Group?used content marketing to build their brand’s online image. But their usual advertisements were not able to reach and tap into medium and?small-sized businesses.

So the company decided to launch a “Success Kit.”

This was available online and was full of tips and tricks to run a successful business. The kit was available in ebook and video formats.

And the good news?

This innovative kit was a great success and got downloaded more than 5,000 times.

3. Generates High-Quality Website Traffic

Are you looking for effective ways to drive high-quality traffic to your website?

Let me tell you that a robust content marketing strategy can help.

Quality content enables your business or website to be found more easily by your clearly defined audience. People can search for and find your products easily and quickly.

And when you create useful content, it will motivate your users to visit your website again and again.

But ensure that the posts are informative, actionable, and, more importantly, relevant to your industry. These blog posts will continue to bring in high-quality organic traffic, month-on-month, even after being published.

4. Improve Your Brand’s Credibility

If the content you create in-house is of great quality and useful to your readers, it can boost your brand’s credibility.

But apart from creating engaging and informative blog posts, how else can you build your brand’s credibility?

Well, the answer lies in including reviews and testimonials in your content marketing strategy. These are the best ways to drive your users to make a purchase.

Your potential customers will always look forward to hearing from people who have already used your products and about the kinds of experiences they had. We are naturally wired to gather information about the performance of a product before investing money in it.

In fact, according to studies, 89% of shoppers check reviews before purchasing, while consumer-created content influences most buyers to purchase.

So don’t forget to collect testimonials, user-generated content, and reviews from your existing customers and share them with potential customers. This will improve your brand’s credibility and?lead to more sales.

For example,?Glossier, a makeup and beauty brand, can attribute most of its success to its effective content marketing strategy.

They have many stories from users on their Instagram account with most of them being really humorous and engaging. They also post updates and news about any new releases, collect honest feedback from their users, and post it to Instagram.

5. Position Your Brand as an Industry Expert

Every business should try to position themselves as experts in their niche.

To achieve this, you need to develop attractive, intriguing, and engaging content for your customers.

And, if they perceive you as an expert, they’re more likely to listen to you. This means that they’ll be more likely to take your recommendations into account when making a purchase decision.

But how do you go about positioning yourself as an expert when there are so many big players already competing in your niche?

It’s not so difficult if you have a working content marketing strategy.

You also just need to focus on creating content that is unique and different from those of others in terms of components, design, innovation, or target audience.

For example, everyone loves pizza, and there are already so many players in this niche.

But Domino’s used its content marketing strategy creatively to differentiate itself from others. They introduced an innovative Domino’s Wedding Registry. It’s a wedding registry for pizza.

They also had pizza registries for honeymoons, bachelor, and bachelorette parties.

Sounds exciting, right?

Which is why the company managed to make?$1 million?from these registrations. In a week’s time, the company got 3,000 registrations and and generated 1 billion impressions.

These are just some of the benefits of running a great content marketing strategy. However, the question still remains, how do you build one?

Find out below:

9 Steps to Build the Perfect Content Marketing Strategy

Now that you understand the advantages of having a content program let’s look at some smart ways to build an effective content marketing strategy.

1. Define Your Content Marketing Goal

The first and foremost step is to identify and define goals for your content marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if you are a startup or a well-known established company, you must?define a goal?for your content marketing strategy.

Furthermore, if you don’t know what you want from life, no matter how much you plan, you will never succeed.

The same thing applies to your content marketing strategy too.

Before you and your team of content creators can go ahead with “what” you want to create, you need to have an answer to “why” you want to create it..

So you need to start your content marketing strategy by identifying and defining an objective that ties into your overall business goals.

You may be wondering why it’s so important to have a goal for your content marketing strategy.

It’s because this will also act as a parameter to evaluate the success of your campaign. Otherwise, how are you going to evaluate it?

It’s easy to get carried away with all the strategies in your content marketing plan, but make sure to define a goal.

Without an answer to “why,” no matter how strong your marketing tactics are, they are likely to fall flat on their faces.

You don’t want that to happen now, do you?

Once your?goal?is thought through and well-defined, it will help you make quick decisions on other aspects of the campaign. These include issues like what key performance indicators you should track, content channels, and so much more.

2. Research and Understand Your Audience

Once you have figured out the “why,” the next step in your content marketing strategy involves researching and understanding your target audience. You need to understand “who” is going to read and see your content.

What’s more?

The key to creating an effective content marketing strategy is to involve your target audiences and take their feedback into account.

Furthermore, the best content marketing strategy aims at answering the questions of your target audiences. And the idea is to transform them into customers by educating them about your brand.

So, how are you going to do it?

Well, first you must understand the psychographics and demographics of your target audiences. Then you need to create buyer?personas?for your target audiences.

But wait.

Are you wondering what a buyer persona is?

It is a generalized interpretation of your ideal customers. It will help you relate with and understand the thought processes of real people. And for every?audience persona, you should write down their attributes, which include psychographics and demographics.

Also, if you want to amplify your content, you need to find out where your target audiences are spending their time.

Which social media platforms do they use most? Which websites do they read regularly?

What’s more?

Discover their pain points so that you can create relevant content that speaks to their needs and buyer’s journey.

3. Set Up Your Blog

With this step, you enter into the technical part of building your content marketing strategy.

Don’t worry, if you haven’t?set up a blog?yet, or if you haven’t found a host. Now is the right time to get it done.

And guess what?

Unlike the old days, now you have many easy options for setting up your own website. There are fully customizable templates and ready-to-use platforms as well.

Now the big question is: do you want to use a hosted service or develop your own platform?

Management tools like?Squarespace?can help you build your own blog powered by?WordPress. Or you can simply put your content on host platforms like?Medium, Apple Podcast, or YouTube.

There are of course, advantages and disadvantages to each of the aforesaid options.

For example,?developing your own website?or blog can be really taxing and costly. Also, if you have no audience to start with, it is difficult to get your content noticed.

But creating your own website gives you the freedom and flexibility of how you want it to be.

The host platforms will go easier on your pockets, making them the best suitable option for startups. Host platforms can also help you reach audiences actively looking for content.

The downside of this option is, there is little scope for customization of your content.

So, now that you have a fair idea about the options available, think through and decide whatever suits your content marketing strategy.

4. Update Your Current Content

You must?run a content audit?that allows you to re-evaluate your content marketing strategy and modify it. The content audit can also help you find out what articles or blogs you should?repurpose?to fit into your new content marketing strategy.

This step will become much easier to implement once you have finalized the type of content to produce. And by “types” I mean the topics you want to cover consistently.

What’s more?

The topics which you are going to cover are the foundation of your blog’s success. Whatever topic you select, make sure to address the three key attributes of content – engagement, events, and evergreen.

Engagement: Ensure the content kickstarts conversations.

Events: Write content focused on particular events.

Evergreen: Write content focused on key aspects of your business that you can go back and update whenever required.

If your already published content is working towards achieving your goals, then great! But if it is not, then it’s time to update and fit it into a new content marketing strategy.

5. Build an Email List and Figure Out How to Use It

If your content marketing strategy is not reaching the right people, then it’s a waste of resources.

But how can you get connected with the right people?

Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate directly with your audiences. And if you build an email list in the early stages of your content marketing strategy, it will help you amplify your content.

Wondering which tools are best for email marketing?

Continue reading this blog at Attrock.com.