What is Content Marketing Strategy?

Thriving in the noisy online environment is challenging for absolutely all business, no matter if they are big or small. Therefore, being able to get thru that noise is necessary for companies to be able to reach potential clients.

This is why currently having a Content Marketing Strategy than can attract new clients and convert, is urgent for all business. So we wanted to map briefly, what are the requirements to have a successful and efficient Content Strategy for your products or services.

Understanding the buyers

Step 1: Buyer Personas Mapping

It’s necessary to map out not only current buyers but also people to understand who are the potential users.

Therefore we need to do several actions:

• Using the Buyer Persona Empathy Map (wants, needs, beliefs, etc.), create a profile of 3–6 current company clients, to better understand their needs and why they are buying. (Graphic)
• Create a secondary Buyer Persona, thru the same empathy map to understand what kind of customer we WANT to attract. (Graphic)
• Finally, create a demographic profile of them to understand them beyond behavior and in a more numerical way (age, location, etc.). (Graphic)

Step 2: Create a keyword list based on this buyer personas

Define how this buyer personas would be looking for questions online, here it’s a good exercise if possible to interview some users to understand better how they do it in real life.

Some good practices are to:

• Pick a niche, to define one line or vertical or products, because user motivations can vary.
• Pick some long-tail keywords, thing 5–10 word phrases that come up in SEO tools, even if the volume is not too high, they will shine a light. (Show Example)

Step 3: Do an online audit

Take a check up on how your brand and competitors are looking online, ask yourself questions like:

• Am I easy to find?
• Is the information I’m providing helpful?
• What good practices do my competitors have?
• What problems are they looking to solve?
• Which content makes them click?

Step 4: Identify what content the buyer persona likes

Go into social media, and use tools like Buzzsumo to track down clicks and levels of interest. Use social listening tools to understand mentions.

• Find where your brand shine’s, what are the assets you have.

The storytelling begins

Step 5: Define a brand narrative

Humans love stories; all of humankind’s history was built on this premise. This is why it’s crucial to create a personality and story that can be parallel to your brand values. Users will then connect with the brand in a seamless way, full of curiosity and empathy.

Step 6: Decide on main objectives and milestones

Creating clear goals is one of the toughest stages. Here is where we start defining the stepping stones of our work. Identifying which are the main milestones your brand will face in the upcoming periods, can be the make it or break it off your strategy.

• Here it’s necessary to build SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) objectives for each vertical or line of product.
• Afterwards, building the calendar that accompanies the strategy is simpler.

Step 7: Produce the content

Whether you are doing this inhouse or a digital agency (like us) is doing this for you, it’s important to have a clear idea of not just how the content will be placed in time, but also in which locations.

Ask relevant questions:

• Will my user consume this content in this package?
• Is it created with their needs in mind?
• Will we be able to source it?
• Which types of content will be used and when (blog posts, articles, whitepapers, videos, animations, memes, etc).

Now the measurement

Step 8: Select your main KPIs

Determine which will be the main key performance indicators to track, it’s essential to stay away from vanity metrics as they don’t produce actual results, and focus on ¨selling metrics¨ (or what helps convert).

• Within the calendar, it’s required to have a tracking plan, as well as clear and straightforward reporting.
• It’s also important not to get swamped in millions of KPI’s and instead look for the most relevant to each brand.

Step 9: Optimization is key

No matter how long ago content was written, its necessary to be on the constant lookout to see how ranking better can be done. It’s vital not to be afraid of revising those older blog posts to find out new ranking factors that can make them shine.

• It’s also a good practice to do effective content curation, to lead no only with our content the user, but also with valuable content others create.

We are ready to take on your Content Marketing Strategy challenges, soon more to come on this :D

We are PengYi Labs, a creative digital web design team focused on creating online solutions for all sorts of clients ranging from web development to content marketing planning, visit our web site PengYiLabs.io or find as in Up Work, LinkedIn, Dribbble or Clutch