Content Marketing Strategy

What do we mean by content?

Any material that tries to communicate an idea, product, service, or offers to the customers may be considered content. The medium of communication could be printed material like newsletters, brochures, etc.,  or online media like websites, blogs, emails, etc. It may also be in the form of audio like a podcast or videos/gifs etc. Let’s understand content marketing.

Importance of Content Marketing

Why is it important to create content?

Creating the appropriate content that can create a dialogue with the customers is essential for the success of content marketing.

What is Content Marketing Strategy

The content marketing strategy is a plan designed by marketers to create content (written, audio, gifs, video) for achieving a set of goals along with deciding the channels to use to propagate the content. The success of the strategy is determined by whether or not it can achieve the desired goal at various stages of the marketing funnel.

So eg, if the objective is engaging customers, the business may focus on creating engaging content for social media that generates more likes, shares, and comments. An example of this can be polls, games, creating user-generated content

Most new business owners understand the importance of content marketing strategy is good to have, but considering the time & effort required, do not consider it a priority. But at whatever stage, the business is, relevant content is always a plus to have.

The importance of a good content marketing strategy is felt by most marketers and invariably becomes a part of the marketing plan. This gives one more reason for businesses to invest in content marketing

Some key points to consider while creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Customer Segmentation & targeting is of prime importance. Understanding the audience not only helps in reaching the right audience & avoiding wastage but also enables marketers to design content that has the likeliness of getting more engagement & conversions.

Different audiences at various levels of the funnel can then have different content strategies. Thus, a variety of content types can be used for these varied personas.

The goals for any business would be different at different levels of the funnel. Understanding the problem/ challenges would make marketers create content that addresses them and thereby reach the goals. Relating products or services to solve customer problems helps establish a connect with customers.

What format to use for creating content? Do you make videos/ gifs or use images? To answer this critical question, one needs to understand what media your audience consumes. Also, which channel do they frequent? This forms the basis of one’s content creation strategy. 

In the competitive marketplace, there are a lot of brands offering similar products/services vying for the same pie of market as yours. In this case, it’s important to understand the uniqueness of the business, or one should be able to differentiate themself from the competition to be able to make an impact. This then becomes the key essence for creating content that highlights your uniqueness and differentiates you from the competition.

On which channels are your customers active? This drills from the TG that you have segmented and help you decide on the channels that you have to be present on. The channel in turn also decides the format that one should use. An example of this is if you are a youth brand, then you may identify tiktok, and Instagram as the channels and the formats would be largely videos to reach these audiences.

Based on the content format you would need a team to create this content. This team can be developed in-house or outsourced to an agency. The creative teams have to be given proper briefs along with the timelines so that the content can be created & published as per your schedule.

Drawing a social media calendar to determine what content goes on which channel, in what format & when from the basis of your final content marketing strategy. There would be 3-4 different content pillars on which you want to build content. The frequency of each of these contents has to be drafted in the plan

Content Marketing Application

Great content is essential & part of any marketing process and finds it uses on various platforms

Hence a good content marketing strategy should be able to attract new target customers, keep them engage, and drive them to purchase. Inbound marketing, it should be able to generate leads and website traffic.

Your content helps you to communicate your USPs, your product/service offerings, and also engage the existing customer to stay with your brand.

Thus, in the crowded marketplace, your content strategy should be able to differentiate you from your competition.
It also serves the purpose of educating your customers and prospects and creating brand awareness.