Content strategy to ignite your marketing

Content strategy refers to the planning, development, management and execution of your message.

The term is often used in relation to digital content, but it can refer to all content held within a business. Typically, organisations use content marketing to build an audience and to achieve at least one of the following: lower costs, increased revenue/number of customers or positive brand awareness.

So how can a solid content strategy help you achieve your marketing goals?

With a clear understanding of your objectives, quality content will ensure that you build credibility with your audience and always see positive returns from your investment.

Swap “set and forget” for long-term gain

One of the biggest challenges facing businesses is adopting the right approach to content strategy as an inbound marketing process. This is not a “set and forget” activity, but rather the consistent delivery of quality, focused content.

What we’re seeing

We often see prospects who are falling foul of one (or many) of the following pitfalls and challenges:

Measuring effectiveness

Marketing teams can find it hard to prove the value and return on investment of content to senior managers. For example, it can be tough to attribute customer spend or lead generation to an individual social media post or webinar.

Producing engaging content on a regular schedule

Whether this is due to a lack of resource, or internal knowledge, it can be difficult for businesses to find the inspiration to write engaging content on a regular basis.

Limited time and resource

Having enough time to produce content your target audience is looking for, especially if you have multiple segments to your audience. For example, you may wish to communicate to your prospects differently to how you would with current customers.

Being too self-promotional

You don’t build trust and credibility with your audience by constantly trying to sell to them. Many marketers see writing content as a “valuable” way to promote products and services, however consumers are now savvy enough to see through this and will disengage.

The purpose of content strategy is to supply information where there is an interest and natural demand.

Being afraid to get started

This is incredibly common and we see those who are just simply too afraid to get started for fear of getting it wrong!

Build it and they will come

When used in combination with a well-developed website, robust integration, and watertight guidelines and policies, content management will deliver a successful return on investment.

Our 7 tips below will get any content marketing campaign well on its way to success:

Understand your audience

Put some time aside before doing anything else to consider what it is your audience will find valuable. This will save you time in the long run and lay the foundations for your entire strategy.

Produce timeless content

Try to produce content that is timeless and can therefore support you in the long term. A good creative team can help with this, as well as being able to build reusable graphics to help save you time.

Repurpose content

Think about how certain content can be altered to another content type and be used again. For example, you may wish to take something you sent out as an email and turn it into an infographic to post out on social media. This will help increase your reach to potential customers.

Focus on quality over quantity

You do not have to post every day. Many businesses are time poor so it’s much more important to focus on the quality of the content you’re posting. It helps you post regularly, but be realistic and if you don’t have time, consider outsourcing to someone who can write the content for you and post it under your management.

Save all content in one place

Be sure to save all the content you are producing to one place, preferably a content management system that you may already have access to with your website. It can then be used to share to other platforms such as social media. This will ensure nothing is lost and all members of staff can locate content easily.

Build an email list

Building an email list for your audience will allow you to distribute content on your terms, but more importantly, enable you to deliver the content they would like to receive based on their preference.

Over time you can show that you’re experts in your field and that you’re sharing content that is valuable to the individual. This will boost your credibility and engagement from potential and existing customers alike.

Allow time

Be patient, content marketing is a long-term strategy and it takes time to demonstrate results.

To sum up...

Content strategy has become a leading marketing tool and is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow a business. However, as we have explored, companies face real challenges when trying to develop a strategy they can execute successfully and yield results.

Learn more about how we can help you create a winning content strategy and get in touch to discover how we can help.

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