Read our latest blog to help you build an engaging B2B Content Marketing Strategy
A content marketing strategy is a plan for building an audience by planning, publishing and spreading educational and engaging content across your channels. It encapsulates why you create content, who you help and how you help them in a way no other company can.
However, don’t confuse a content marketing strategy and a content strategy. While often used interchangeably, the two are not the same.
Put simply; a content strategy focuses on what content will be created and when, whereas a content marketing strategy includes dissemination and maintenance as well.
In this blog, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about:
Did you know that 78% who felt their content marketing strategy was exceptionally effective in 2021 had documented it?
Developing a content marketing strategy helps you build an organised system with specific goals, success metrics and processes that allow you to continuously improve. No more chaotically creating content for limited results.
Read on to learn how to create your own strategy.
Follow our steps below to help you create a powerful content marketing strategy for your business.
First, determine what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. Create a brief mission statement that outlines:
Setting your goals and mission first makes it easier to focus on what’s important (and what’s not) to ensure your content marketing strategy stays on track.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) also help you stay on track by providing milestones you can check off to determine when you have achieved your goals. Include what you plan to achieve in terms of revenue, sales, traffic, SEO, traffic and other aspects relevant to your goals.
Typically, KPIs have specific numbers attached to them. For example, you might want to:
Clear targets make it much easier to stay on track. You’ll also feel empowered and motivated each time you hit a target.
To succeed with your content marketing strategy, you’ll need a clear understanding of your target audience. Knowing your audience helps you create the right content to reach them.
Start by collecting demographics on your website visitors, email subscribers, and social media followers. Use tools like Google Analytics to define your audience’s age, gender, education, job title, income, and location.
You can also get insights into your audience’s key interests in Google Analytics. Simply go to Audience » Interests » Overview to see which market segments your web visitors fit into.
To get a deeper understanding of your audience, collect feedback from your current customers. Doing so can help you understand:
Collecting customer feedback allows you to understand your audience’s priorities and determine the best ways to reach them. You can also use the information to develop your buyer personas.
A buyer persona or customer avatar is a fictitious profile of your company’s ideal customer. Most businesses will target more than one buyer persona.
The technology sector is a fast-moving environment. With the rapid changes, it’s easy for your brand to lose sight of what’s most important: catering to your customers. Building buyer personas helps ensure that your brand continues to speak to the right people, increasing your chances of engaging with them.
This way, you can adopt a more customer-centric marketing approach that personalises your efforts and allows you to reach your target audience — even as the company evolves.
Not sure where to start? Download our free B2B buyer persona template here.
Running a content audit lets you assess your highest and lowest performing content already in existence. This information is very useful when creating your content marketing strategy by informing which direction to take next.
If you’ve been running your business for a long time, only review content efforts and results from the past year. Anything published before that will be much less relevant.
Use the information to decide how to do better in the upcoming year. Whatever stage your business is in, a content audit will help you determine what already resonates with your customers. You can also identify gaps in your topics and brainstorm fresh content ideas.
Next, consider what types of content you want to include in your strategy. Most successful strategies have a central core of content published on your own site, which you can repurpose and share on other platforms.
In other words, blog posts are an essential part of the content marketing mix. Blogs deliver strong results as long as they’re actionable, valuable, and shareable.
There are other types of content you can include, such as:
Content calendars are crucial to your strategy as they help you stay on top of what content to publish when and on which platforms. There are several ways to develop a content calendar.
The easiest way is to use Google Calendar and simply add the due dates for each piece of content there. Alternatively, you can use a spreadsheet. Include deadlines, progress stage, and other information to help you and your team stay on course.
However, if you have a large team publishing a lot of content, you may want to use a content editorial tool like Trello, Azana, or HubSpot.
It’s no use creating amazing content if no one sees it. So the next step is to decide how you’ll share your content with your audience.
By this stage, you should begin to get a sense of where your audience is active and where you have a successful online presence. However, to be absolutely sure which channels are more effective, take another look at your web analytics.
In Google Analytics, you can go to Acquisition » Social » Overview to see the social networks your content is being shared the most. With this information, it’s easy to decide which networks to target when sharing your content.
Examples of dissemination methods you can use include:
Learn more about how to create a content dissemination strategy in our recent guide.
Once you know what type of content you want to create, who it’s for, and where to share it, it’s time to ensure you can deliver on your content marketing strategy. Doing so involves answering questions like:
Once you’ve completed these steps, follow the advice below to ensure your strategy is as effective as possible.
The key to an effective content strategy is to ensure it always aligns with your customers’ needs and your company goals. So take time to assess your strategy’s success every once in a while. Return to your KPIs to ensure you’re still hitting your targets.
Monitoring your progress enables you to tweak your content marketing strategy regularly so it’s always up to date.
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