Step One: Audience Research
Let’s start with your audience and current customers.
Once you know who your audience is, each piece of content you create later on will be much more authentic and useful for them. It will also be more likely to drive results for your business.
Remember that your content marketing audience can be wider since you’ll want to attract people at different stages of their journey. Hence, zoom out of a product-centric vision and focus on a broader set of pain points and topics.
It’s also important to:
- Develop a good understanding of the different types of customers you are targeting (audience segments) and content they might be interested in
- Compile a list of their goals, challenges, and doubts
- Find out where they consume content: Which social media platforms are they using? What blogs do they read? How do they search online?
- Explore their preferred content formats
So, how can you go about this research?
You’ll need to carry out market research and speak to members of your own team (especially if you have a sales or customer care department).
You can research your customers in many different ways, including surveys, focus groups, keyword research, and website and social media analytics.
You can also analyze Facebook and LinkedIn groups and Quora and Reddit threads to understand what topics your audience cares about.
For example, imagine you are targeting social media managers. Head to Reddit, type “social media” and explore communities that pop up.
Each of those communities will be full of questions asked by real people. You can use those to discover your customers’ pain points and come up with relevant content ideas.
Step Two: Research the Competition
Like it or not, there are lots of other companies vying for the attention of your audience.
Thus, you need to know who they are, what they are trying to do, and where they are putting out their content.
That’s where competitor content strategy research comes in. You can start by googling topics relevant to your business and analyzing websites appearing high in search.
Try answering the following questions:
- Which topics do they cover with their content? Which content formats do they opt for? For example, do they have many blog posts, videos, templates, or something else?
- Which channels are they distributing their content on? For example, most websites have outbound links to their social media profiles, which can help you analyze their social presence.
- Where do they get the most engagement? For instance, you can see likes, shares, and comments on their social posts to get an idea.
- What keywords do they rank for? And which of their pages generate the most traffic and rank highest? For this, you can use the Organic Research tool.
To do this, simply type your competitor’s domain in the tool and check out the “Positions” and “Pages” reports to see their top-performing keywords and content.
Step Three: Define Your Objectives
At this point you should be well-informed and able to put together your high-level content marketing goals.
These goals should be aligned with what your business hopes to achieve in the near future (e.g., increased revenue, customer numbers, more brand awareness, etc.).
Ultimately, such goals give you a benchmark and show whether your content is successful or not. From there you can work on optimizing and improving what you produce.
Ideally, your goals should follow the SMART framework: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Here are some content strategy example goals:
Brand awareness: You want to create content that connects with a new audience.
SMART format: By the end of the first quarter, we will achieve a 10% increase in website visitors. We’ll also see a 15% increase in social media followers through our new content campaign.
Lead generation: You want to build a list of potential clients. That means your content should be oriented toward getting your website or social media visitors to sign up for your mailing list, download an ebook, or book a call. These leads can become paying customers down the line.
SMART format: By December, we will have curated a mailing list of 250 new qualified leads. They will be interested in purchasing items from our home technology product range.
Increase engagement: You want your audience to interact with your business through comments, likes, and shares to reach new audiences. You also want to build trust and a positive brand image because this can help your audience choose your product or service over those of a competitor.
SMART format: By the end of Q3, our social media engagement rate will have increased by 25%. We will achieve this through interactive quiz content on our Instagram and LinkedIn channels.
Client retention: You want your customers to come back again and again. You can do this when you produce valuable, actionable, or practical content. You can integrate sales-focused calls to action here or include discounts and referral codes to keep things aligned with your other marketing tactics.
SMART format: We will increase our client retention by 40% through actionable content, upsells, and exclusive deals on our new product ranges. This will all be delivered through our segmented newsletters on a weekly basis.
Lower customer acquisition costs: You want to drive more qualified leads to your website. SEO content in particular has a long life span and encourages organic traffic (website visitors you don’t pay for). As a result, you can lower your ad spend and convert more customers simply by being a valuable resource for them.
Step Four: Establish Message and Voice
Content strategy also takes into account what you want to say and how you want to say it. In marketing terms, that’s your message and brand voice.
When it comes to messaging, there are two main factors:
- What you want to achieve (e.g., your eco-friendly interior design firm wants to sell more sustainable products)
- What your audience needs (e.g., your audience wants to know about home decorations)
When you can marry these two, you’ll know what you need to say.
Your brand voice is akin to your personality. A brand voice will help convey your brand and values. You can learn more about how to define it in our dedicated guide to defining a brand voice.
So, think about the sort of company you have. Are you a go-getter like Red Bull, an inspiring innovator like Apple, or a soothing guide like Headspace?
Step Five: Build a High-Level Plan
A content marketing plan helps you see what you need to execute your strategy. When creating it, consider the following:
- Content topics you are going to cover
- The content formats you will create
- Any tools you will need to use for content production or management (e.g., Canva for design, Semrush for SEO, Trello for project management, Google Analytics for tracking, etc.)
- The human resources you will need to produce, edit, and publish the content
- The budget you will need
- Your metrics and key performance indicators
- Promotion channels you will use to distribute your content
Determine How You Will Share Your Content
You need to think about how to get your content in front of as many people as possible.
- Which social media channels are they on?
- Do they prefer using a smartphone, desktop computer, or other devices?
- Do they like to read blogs, or are they more about podcasts or Pinterest?
These are all points you will have defined in your audience and market research.
Ultimately, these questions will help you decide where to put and promote your content. The channels will also dictate the content formats you go for.
Pro tip:
You will also be able to repurpose the content you have created for maximum visibility.
For example, a blog post could become an infographic. A podcast could be repurposed and turned into a blog.
This way you get as much from your content as possible, reaching your audience in different ways on their preferred channels.
Step Six: Have a Clear Way To Track Content Performance
It’s no good having a content strategy if you can’t track your results. As we hinted at in step five, you’ll need a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are metrics that tie directly in with your objectives. That means they will always vary depending on what you want to achieve in the short, medium, and long term.
Some common content marketing KPIs include:
Traffic: This refers to the number of people visiting your website or blog as a result of your content marketing efforts. You can track other related metrics, such as referral source (where the traffic came from), whether it was paid or organic traffic, which campaign led the visitor to your website, etc.
Leads: These are your potential customers; visitors tend to become leads when they sign up for a mailing list, provide their email address in exchange for a download, fill in a form, use a chat box, etc. Your content tactics will determine how people become leads, and your metrics will show you what’s working and what’s not.
Conversion rates: This is the percentage of visitors who become clients (or convert in some other way). It’s sometimes more interesting to know this than simply the number of leads you get. A conversion rate can tell you which types of content get lots of traffic (and no clients) and, in contrast, the types of content that convert at a higher rate.
Social media engagement rates: This shows the number or percentage of comments, likes, and shares on social media. You can use it to determine which type of content performs best—and on which channel.
Onsite engagement: Here you look at how visitors engage with your website, the pathways they take from page to page, and the links they click. Understanding this can help you optimize your website and digital sales funnels.
Cost per lead: This answers the big question: How much money are you spending to generate each lead through your content marketing efforts? You can find it by dividing content marketing spend by the number of leads generated.
Return on investment (ROI): Finally, we have ROI. Simply put, it measures the profitability of your content marketing efforts. It takes into account the costs of creating and distributing your content as compared to the revenue it generates. Some argue that ROI is too difficult to measure because the benefits of content marketing are compounding and related not only to revenue but also to market share and brand awareness. This guide will help you better track your content marketing ROI.
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