A content marketing strategy can be vital in building your online business and helping you reach your target customers. Whether you have just started creating content or are using the same strategy for a while, it can never hurt to revisit and rethink your content plan and make sure it is innovative, up-to-date and engaging for both your customers and your prospects.
However, do you have a documented content marketing strategy for your business? If your answer is no, you aren’t alone! According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute, more than 60% of online marketers and business owners do not have one.
Read on to find out why documenting your content strategy is so important and how you should go about it.
What is a documented content marketing strategy?
A documented content marketing strategy or DCS as it is more commonly called is a content plan laid out on paper, that indicates your business marketing objectives that you are keen on accomplishing with your content. It also includes your approach as to how you will get over there.
A documented content marketing strategy can be a key indicator of your campaign’s success, with around 65% of successful marketers having one in place, as compared to 14% of the rest, who are least successful in their campaigns.
Thus, the short answer is: Having a well-documented content marketing strategy will allow you to work smarter, more efficiently and more effectively. The act of documenting your marketing strategy helps to align you with your stakeholders. You will be defining your marketing goals, the steps you will use to reach them and the way in which you will measure your success.
Now that you know what a content marketing strategy is, let’s have a look at the benefits it offers.
Benefits of a content marketing strategy
It is a well-known fact that writing your goals down can help you differentiate between failure and success. Thinking about your marketing strategy and neglecting your goals to put them on paper is not enough for your campaign. It is believed that writing your goals down helps you to remember them always.
Thus, documenting your content marketing strategy is essential for achieving success with your content marketing. Your documented strategy provides you with a roadmap that can direct you towards a successful marketing outcome.
Ask yourself, will you try memorizing a map that shows you the route to your destination? Or would you rather carry it along with you and avoid losing your direction in the process?
Below, are some benefits of a well-documented content marketing strategy.
- You feel more confident in the effectiveness of your campaign.
- You tend to worry less about complicated marketing aspects.
- Your content marketing techniques become more effective.
- Helps you stay on track and reach your marketing goals with ease.
Need any more assurance? Another study found that marketers who put their content marketing strategy on paper are 293% more likely to achieve their marketing goals.
How to create a documented content marketing strategy?
Before looking at creating a documented content marketing strategy, let’s have a look at the essential components of one.
- Purpose – Your business goals and challenges.
- Brand Identity – Your brand’s personality and voice.
- Customers – Your target audience or customers.
- Supply – Your plan for creating more content.
- Distribution – Your strategy for getting organic traffic.
- Measurement – The KPIs you will be measuring to track your success.
- Technology – The tools you will be using to execute your marketing strategy.
Now that you know the key elements of a documented content marketing strategy, let’s see how you should create one.
- Overall mission
The first step to creating a documented content marketing strategy is to define your purpose or mission. What is the reason for creating your content marketing strategy? Are you looking to increase your followers? Are you looking to optimise your existing content? Are you looking for sales?
Having a clear and well-defined purpose helps you get a solid head start in documenting your marketing strategy. Also, this step is essential as it helps to guide the rest of your documenting process.
- Target audience
Although you have a generalized idea of who your target audience is, it helps to get more detailed with it. Before you start creating any marketing plan, you should know who exactly are you trying to reach. You are not creating your content for the general public to see. You are creating it with the sole aim of attracting certain individuals who will contribute to the goals of your company.
Thus, you should be researching more about your audience. If your audience informs the content you are creating, you will do a better job of speaking to the exact group of individuals you need for your company. For example, if you are looking to provide coding assignment help to students, you will have to research to find out the best audience for your needs.
- Content plan
Next, you should be deciding on the type of content you want to create. There are different types of content that you can use, all of which serves a different purpose. Your content can be in the form of blogs, articles, white papers, emailers, sales engagement materials, and much more.
You should also be keeping in mind the various types of media you can have – Paid, Earned and Owned. This will help you to increase your prospects of doing a much better job with your content plan.
- Content Creation
Now that you know what content you should be creating, it’s time to have a look at the process of content creation. You will have to determine which workflows, processes and resources can have the best outcome for your content.
You should be looking to explore a variety of content creation tools that will make your job easier. It can also be a good idea to partner with an agency who can advise you with the same.
- Editorial calendar
An editorial calendar helps you become more consistent with the content you publish. This helps to keep your audience engaged and informed about the type of services/goods you are providing.
You can try using different content calendars online till you find the one best suited for your needs. Your content calendar should include all types of information about your content like deadlines, content publishing platform, optimizing strategies and more.
- Distribution plan
Distribution in content marketing terms means getting your content to the right kind of people, at a right time. This can include publishing content in places where your target audience is already present, using paid distribution plans or even just including your contents in emailers or newsletters.
Your distribution plan helps you plan how you distribute the content that you create, how often you go about it and the type of processes that you use.
- ROI Calculator
An ROI calculator will help you measure your metrics to see how well your content plan is performing. You can look to set some benchmarks that you want to hit concerning your web traffic, the total number of leads generated or even the opportunities that arise from creating your content.
You can look to use popular analytics software out there or even head on to the metrics and insights part of some popular social media platforms. Measuring your ROI helps you understand how well your content marketing strategy is performing and whether you should be optimizing your current one or looking to create a new one from scratch.
Final thoughts
If you are ready to get more traffic to your website, get more followers and increase your brand’s visibility, then its time to create a documented content marketing strategy for your business. After all, putting things down on paper can certainly help you remember them when you need them the most.
