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How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy in 2016

Reading Time: 5 mins

Content marketing is at the heart of any effective digital marketing or SEO strategy – but developing a content marketing strategy before getting started is the best way to ensure the best results.

Ensuring you know what is ahead, and who it is you are targeting, is an essential part of content marketing.

What is included in a Content Marketing Strategy:

  • Your overall business plan
  • Goals you wish to achieve with your content
  • What unique value you wish to provide to potential customers
  • How your content will help your business model
  • Obstacles and opportunities that may come about

Developing a content marketing strategy

Research

When it comes down to creating your strategy, in-depth research into what your customers are looking for is essential.

There’s a number of ways to research what will make your content marketing strategy a success.

Useful information for research can come from:

  • Analysing search queries your site visitors are using
  • Customer surveys
  • Pain points your customers often mention
  • Information that customers look for during the buying process

Audience Persona

When considering what content would appeal to readers, you will need to create audience personas for your content, in order to specify content that would appeal to them.

Consider:

  • Specific audiences to appeal to
  • The needs of your audience
  • The content engagement cycle your audience will adhere to
  • How your content fits into your buyer’s journey
  • How to move potential customers closer to the end goal of conversion

Brand story

Throughout your content, it should adhere to a brand story that represents what your business is about.

This includes any ideas, thoughts, or messages you wish to communicate to your audience.

Ask yourself – what is it that differentiates your business from the competition? Why should a potential customer choose to do business with your company? This can help inform the messages you need to convey to your audience, and what you need to reiterate throughout.

This can help inform the messages you need to convey to your audience, and what you need to reiterate throughout.

Channel Plan

Creating and publishing content is one thing, but you need to have a plan on how to share your story or information.

This means choosing particular platforms that work with your brand, and will be used by your audience.

Platforms include:

  • Social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Snapchat, and more.
  • Slideshare
  • YouTube or Vimeo
  • Press releases
  • Downloads – Whitepapers, guides, ebooks

You will need to consider the objectives you will have for each platform, and what you wish to achieve.

Marketing your content

Another issue to tackle in your strategy is how you will actually connect with your audience.

How will you ensure content is found? It’s all very well to share your content on social media, but if no one can find your content, or is following your account, no one will be reading it.

Consider paid advertising on social media in order to gain an audience, or drive traffic to your website in other ways in order to gain a readership.

Ways to market your website includes:

  • Paid social advertising
  • PPC Ads on Google or Bing
  • Social media campaigns
  • Email campaigns
  • SEO-friendly content

Updating your content

Once your strategy is in place, consider how often you will need to update your content.

Whether you are writing news articles, or evergreen content that remains relevant for a while, it will need updating at some point.

Alongside updating your content, it’s worth thinking about how often, or when you will need to, update and change your strategy. While your business goals may stay similar, they may change within a few years.

You should at least review your strategy on an annual basis to ensure it remains on target, how your different digital channels are performing, whether you need to cover new topics, and whether your processes are effective.

 


Many businesses understand that content marketing is an essential part of any successful digital marketing strategy, but simply do not have the time to implement it.

If you need a helping hand in increasing the performance of your content marketing, or are looking at getting started, then get in touch with the team today who will be happy to help.