I’ve talked a fair amount about content marketing in the past – why you need to do it, the benefits and so on. But I haven’t really told you the most important bit – how to actually do it!
In general, a content marketing strategy looks at the details of your overall marketing strategy. It looks at what the message will be and how to make sure you get it across effectively – on other words, managing all of the tangible assets of your campaign. You need a good strategy in place to let you plan an effective marketing campaign that will drive traffic, boost sales and really achieve what you want it to achieve. To do that, you need a few things.
Setting Goals
The first stage in producing a content marketing strategy is all about setting goals. You need to define exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve before you set out. This is the step most businesses overlook; but in reality it’s more important than you might realise. After all, how will you know whether you have been successful if you haven’t defined a clear set of objectives? Or in English – how will you know when you reach your destination if you don’t know what the destination is?
For most businesses, the goal of a marketing campaign is to sell more products. But this is far from the only goal you can have. For example, marketing campaigns can be used to increase brand awareness, for public relations or to challenge public perceptions of a company. Whatever the case, a well-defined set of objectives is the first step. And to make them work, they need to be specific. Rather than saying “we want to get more sales”, your goal should be “we want to increase sales in the South West by 40%”. Setting clear and measurable objectives help you be more precise in your planning, and allow you to measure your success in a more tangible way.
Demographic Research
Going back to basics, a demographic is the fancy word for the composition of a population. When it comes to marketing, your demographic means your audience, or more accurately the make-up of your audience. Understanding who your customers are, what they like and dislike, and what motivates their buying behaviour is one of the most important aspects of marketing.
Picture this. You’re at a networking event, wondering through the crowd, handing out business cards and generally schmoozing with everyone. You’re chatting with someone about your business, and they ask you;
‘So, who are your customers?’
What would you say? And let me tell you now that if the answer is ‘everyone’, then you are not only wrong, but your marketing doesn’t stand a chance. Even the biggest companies in the world can’t say that! Healthy eaters don’t like McDonalds, PC users don’t by Apple computers, and not everyone drives a Mercedes. No. Your company provides products or services to a certain demographic of people, and if you don’t know what that is yet, then you need to find out, pronto.
This is because professional marketing campaigns are targeted at specific demographics, and that’s a big part of what makes them successful. For example, a company selling feminine hygiene products might notice that they sell particularly well to women ages 25-35. Using that information, they can craft a message that appeals to that kind of customer, and display it on a channel that is popular with that group – Twitter or Facebook perhaps. They would also know that placing an ad in a classic car magazine would be a waste of time and money, since that demographic isn’t really represented strongly in that market. It’s an extreme example yes, but it does highlight the kind of decisions that come from your demographic research.
We’ll cover the steps of conducting demographic research and what you need to do later in the book. For now, a basic idea of what demographic is and why it’s important is enough to be going on with.
Content Planning
Once you’ve done your demographic research, you should have a really good idea of the type of people that make up your audience, and what makes them tick. Now you can start to plan your content around them. This is an important step, since the type of content you develop is going to be heavily influenced by the kind of person you’re trying to attract. For example, if your core audience is retired people, you’re unlikely to reach them on Snapchat.
Planning which platforms you will use and the content you’ll post in advance means you can create a coherent and effective marketing campaign that will actually deliver results. Blogs, videos, podcasts and other long-form content can be a great way to communicate your message – while social media is a great way of amplifying the content and getting it our into the world. There is a sort of symbiotic relationship between all of these different mediums, so you need to take some time to understand their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how you can use them effectively.
When creating a content plan, it’s important to be specific. That means planning your blog titles, define the content and frequency of your tweets and so on. Most importantly, define a publishing schedule (how often and what time/days you’ll publish) and stick to it. Your plan should make special note of important holidays, like Christmas and Halloween, which can be a great opportunity to break from your normal content and add a seasonal flavour.
Scheduling is one that tends to stump newbies (and some of the seasoned veterans, though they won’t admit it). And there is no exact science to it – the right schedule looks different for everyone. What we can tell you is that regular, timely content performs much better than marketing materials haphazardly flung out into the world at random intervals. So it’s important, especially early on, to crease a realistic content schedule that you can stick to – with time built in for you to plan and produce the content, brainstorm ideas and actually upload content to platforms. Build every element of content into your plan, and it will be much easier for you to stick to.
Content Production
We talk about the ins and outs of content production for each specific type of content later in this book. But at the stage of content planning you’ll need to address some of the “who, what and when” questions about the production of content for your marketing plan. If you enjoy these tasks and have the time to dedicate to them, then taking on the content production yourself can be incredibly rewarding. However, for some business owners, finding time to produce the amount of content they need just isn’t possible. That’s where outsourcing can save your life.
A lot, if not most small business owners are pretty reluctant to outsource business tasks, particularly in the beginning. And it’s easy to see why. Their business is their pet project – their baby that they have poured their heart and soul into for a long time. Which can make it difficult to let go of some things. But there are only 24 hours in a day, and most people need to sleep for about a third of them. So when you’re doing your planning, you should be completely honest with yourself. Do you really have the time and skills needed to produce the content you need, at the quality you need it, in the right quantities and at the right time? If the answer to any or all of those is no, then you have two choices – hire someone, or outsource it to a third party who does it for a living. There are plenty of content creators for hire out there – copywriters, designers, videographers – so all you need to do is find them.
Publication and Management
In your plan you should also have a vague idea of how you plan on publishing and managing all the content you’ve lovingly created. This includes things like:
- Who will upload the content?
- Who’s responsible for images?
- Where will it be uploaded?
- Will your content be uploaded live or scheduled?
- Who will respond to comments?
And so on. All of these things are important to consider, otherwise you will quickly lose track and then stop doing anything at all. But managing content across multiple platforms can be complicated and time consuming, particularly for beginners. So having a clear plan of what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it and what your end goal of doing it is can be a big help.
The good news is, if you have a look around, you will find some great tools to help with the automation of a lot of these tasks. For example, Hootsuite, which is one of the most popular tools for social media management out there. This tool allows you to schedule social media posts across most of the major platforms, so you don’t have to hop between each one to schedule your content. IFTTT (or If This Then That) is an automation tool that integrates into all sorts of services and lets you create rules. For example, you could create a rule that duplicates anything you tweet and posts it on your Facebook page as well, or another that can recognise when you publish a blog post and automatically post about it to Instagram. These are just two of the tools out there to choose from. There are simple free tools, all the way to all singing all dancing content solutions. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you which one to use – the best way to find out which combination works for you is by trying some out and seeing how they feel. In this case, there really is no substitute for first-hand experience.
Ultimately there is no set format for your content marketing strategy. It’s as unique as your business, and should be tailored to suit your preferences and style. For some, intricately detailed plans with charts that map out timelines, dependencies and resources is their idea of heaven – while others prefer a few key notes jotted down on a notepad. What’s important is that you work in a way that makes sense for you, and gets you the results you need for your business.
Need someone to help that make sense? Or just want to chat through your content options? Get in touch and let’s have a coffee.