How to develop a successful content marketing strategy?

Did you know that 82% of the marketers are actively using content marketing in 2021, which is more than 70% from last year?

Content Marketing is a great marketing asset for every business to develop its products and achieve better results. With a well-developed content strategy, you can easily improve your online presence and build a community around your brand. Content marketing is an inevitable part of every marketing plan. Your content should be truthful and relevant to create value and interact with your audience.

It is becoming vital for marketers to understand content marketing and learn how to use it efficiently. The advancement of advertisement blockers, the constant change in algorithms, privacy concerns, and many other factors increasingly limit our capability to reach our customers. But content marketing moves through these obstacles because there are ways to get the audience with genuine and creative content. You need to change your thinking and create marketing content that doesn't feel like marketing to the audience. That is the key to success.

What Exactly Is Content Marketing?

Content strategy is a plan in which we use different kinds of content like audio, text, and visuals to accomplish our business goals. Creating a successful content strategy will draw the attention of your target audience in every stage of the funnel and keep them engaged in their buyer journey.

Content Marketing is closely related to any other type of marketing, like Social Media, SEO, Email Marketing, and others. Whether you are a beginner in content creation or actively working on your content marketing plan, it won't harm you to get over your content strategy one more time. With detailed analysis, you will make sure that it is up-to-date, innovative, and engaging with your audience.

If you want to start creating a successful content strategy, you need to answer the following questions:

• Who will be reading your content?
• How will you help your audience?
• What makes your brand special?
• What content formats will you be creating?
• What channels will you post on? Where is your audience mainly located?

Even if you think that your content strategy is flawless, you should go over it again to analyze and modify it. We’ve prepared you a guide with the essential components of one good content marketing plan!

How To Develop A Successful Content Strategy?

Do a good research

Everything you create and visualize won't have value if you don't know your target audience! There are many ways to explore your audience, like creating focus groups, surveys, and polls on Social Media. With these methods, you will get a complete image of what your customers want, their interests, and how you can help them solve a problem. With the results from the focus groups, you will get quality information that you might not have known before and help you create a compelling buyer persona. Survey Monkey is one of the best tools for market research that offers you access to various templates created to get you relevant data.

Analyze your competition

As we already mentioned how important it is to know your audience, keeping track of your competition is equally important. If you don't know what kind of strategies they use and which direction they are moving, you won't be a part of the competition. Detailed and well-researched competition analysis will give you a clear guide for your content strategy. First, you need to research who your competitors are, analyze their online behavior and find out how they communicate with their potential customers.

Use this data and go over the social media channels and website to learn more about their products and services. With the results from the analysis, you can target your audience better and improve your content strategy. You can use their weaknesses, make them your strengths and stand out from the crowd!

Create killer content!

Now that you know your audience, competition, digital assets, and which channels perform the best for you, the next step is creating killer content, which is exactly the core of a good content marketing plan.??

Nowadays, there is an increased volume of various content that we cannot consume it all. It's called "content shock." Therefore, creative and valuable content will surely stand out from the crowd and be noticed by your target audience.

It's very important to focus on the things that bring the most value. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn focus on improving the Live Video option, while Snapchat and Instagram shifted their focus on how to increase the interaction with the users via video!

Mailchimp is an example of an excellent content marketing creation. It is an email software that uses creative ways to connect the brand with its consumers. They even have a mini academy with useful tips, tricks, videos, and an informative blog that educates the customers.

Analyze your data!

Creating good content alone won't make a huge difference in your marketing plan if you don't measure the results from the content performance. This is the only way to sustain continued success. For example, you can analyze the blog posts visits and find out what your readers love to read the most, how much time they spend on your page, and what type of content got a hold on them. Using this information, you can easily optimize your content strategy. You can also analyze the social media posts and the overall activity.?

A/B testing

When it comes to creating good, qualitative content, testing multiple options is the key to achieving excellent results. Every social media platform has its magic formula. For example, the headlines and the phrases that perform well on Facebook don't mean that they will have the same impact on Instagram or LinkedIn. It is essential to understand that it takes time to analyze every social media channel and determine which channel performs best for your business.?

Never underestimate the power of a catchy headline because it is the first thing that catches your eye when you read some content. You should test multiple variations of a headline or a catchy phrase on one platform to identify which will perform the best. Use some A/B testing software to try more variations of your website content to see which brings you better results.

Creating content that will bring you new clients is constantly changing. Still, the basic principles remain the same - developing a top-notch content strategy based on relevant data. The best way to nurture your customer relationships is through providing relevant, valuable, and consistent content. Is content marketing a part of your marketing strategy?

Examples of excellent content marketing!

Amazon's Garage Delivery Service

Amazon added a service that provides the local Amazon driver with a digital key to the customer's garage door so their packages can reach them securely. Ideal solution for customers who aren't home.

They studied consumer behavior and psychology for a long time. As a result, they created a great video campaign with slight undertones of psychology.?

If you pay attention to the video you will notice that the garages have big, caring eyes, and they talk to each other, just like the neighbors. Amazing!

Spotify’s Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped is a year-end reflection activity of their users, going viral every year, bringing tremendous results for the music app company. Spotify Wrapped is an excellent example of influencer-driven social media content marketing. Using visually appealing elements, they drive more engagement, shares and, mentions.

Now that you know what content marketing is and the importance of developing an effective content marketing strategy, start working on it. If you want to learn all the know-how, strategy tactics, relevant content information, sign up for the Content Marketing module on the DMI program! You will learn everything you need to create innovative and educative content that will scale up your business and strengthen customer relationships.