How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy ?

By / Content writing
How to create content marketing strategy

Content marketing strategy is the framework, a roadmap to achieve your marketing goal. 

Whereas the content marketing plan is the process. 

We know what is content marketing and How it works. 

But we also need to know how to apply content marketing to create a solid brand and maximize returns.

And so here comes the concept of the Content marketing strategy.

Indeed, Content marketing and content strategy are two different concepts, relying on one other. The success of both ultimately result in marketing goal achievement. So what is the major difference between these two, let’s have a look…

Difference between content marketing and content strategy. 

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and promoting the researched content. 

The role of content marketing involves identifying the target audience, their needs and presenting the customized content (solution). 

In simple mean Content marketing is…

  • Curation of content topics and ideas
  • Content creation
  • Content promotion

 

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing strategy is the roadmap of achieving the end goals of content marketing. 

Like a map, the content strategy combines all essential factors required to reach a specific destination, a targeted marketing goal.   

In simple mean Content strategy is…

  • Goal set-up
  • Marketing research
  • Audience targeting
  • Content planning
  • KPIs and content reporting

 

Why content marketing strategy is important?

Your business needs to have a content strategy. Because it helps you to outline how to apply content marketing for maximum benefits, also to optimize the process in between. 

Without a content strategy, content marketing fails to meet its core purpose. As it becomes difficult to understand the actual performance. 

Having a content strategy ensures that your marketing resources are utilized optimally. Additionally, that notifies for profitable outcomes from content writing and content marketing.

Content marketing is a detailed process and involves many other factors in the process. Content strategy makes sure that each essential factor is included in a better way.  

It’s always better to have a content strategy, aim at delivering the content with a specific purpose. Creating and posting the contents without a defined goal, is not an effective practice anymore. 

So now let’s understand how content strategy works and how you can create for your business. 

 

How to create a content strategy framework?

1 Goal Setting: answering WHY content strategy

Content strategy answers why you implement content marketing. 

Every content you publish on social media or your blog should have a specific goal. A purpose, of where you want to go and what you want to achieve from it. 

Without a goal, there is no content strategy. 

Having goals from content makes it easy for content marketing consultants to guide your efforts in the right direction. 

So before anything else, you have to set the primary goal that you want to achieve with content. And why you want content marketing for your business. 

 

2 Research: To find WHAT factors to look for in a content strategy

Once having a defined goal on the list, the next step is to take some research. 

Industry and competitors’ research are always a great source of learning. You need to know what your competitors are doing and what content channels they rely on. 

If you are a startup and small business, this step is essential for you to craft your content marketing better. 

You can also use some competitor’s research tools to identify their strategy to get inspiration from. 

Just like competitors research, your internal insight is also needed in the process. 

Internal business analysis in terms of identifying marketing needs and available resources will guide you on how to strategize your content.

Because no matter how much industry research you do, it’s always your budget and investment that matters the most, at last. 

 

3 Audience targeting: For WHOM content strategy will be

At this stage of content marketing strategy, you determine who will be your target audience. And to whom you want to present your ideas. 

The process of audience targeting involves…

  • Demographic factors
  • Psychological factors
  • Target locations, areas
  • Their information needs
  • Devices and media they are using the most
  • Anything and everything that your audience seeks

Creating a target audience or buyer’s persona, make you realize what their actual needs are and what you are offering. 

In the time when information is freely available and competition is high, you better craft your message according to the audience’s needs. 

Simply creating content or products, without knowing their needs will cost you more than money and time. That also impacts inversely on your brand reputation. 

Just like buyers’ persona, your content has to be customized as per the particular stage’s information needed. As each funnel has specific content calls, you need to create a content aim at that precise goal.

 

4 Types of content: Strategies to define what to publish and WHERE

Now you know who your target audience is and what information they require to make a purchase. 

So your next stage includes the decision of how to reach them. 

Here you determine which type of content you will produce, to present your idea effectively. 

There are multiple types of content you can choose from.

It can be informative blog posts or a persuasive landing page, or also social media posts with a creative message. 

You can also share the content for your website, on your social profiles or the other high authority website via guest post writing and paid promotions. 

The decision to create which content to produce, you better look for where it’ll be posted and especially for whom. 

Content strategy helps you define what type of content fits your business goals the most.

Also Read: Digital marketing or Content marketing or Social media marketing ??

 

5 Content creation: WHO will create contents

On deciding, which type of content you want for your content plan, the immediate question arises is who will create the contents.

As a small business, you can create content on your own. Most organizations have their content marketing team who plan and implement the process as per the content strategy. 

The better option for most companies to save own time and budget is to partner with a content marketing agency. 

Content marketing agencies have their team of writers, marketers, and strategists who operate content marketing on behalf of you. That is not limited to cost-effective solutions only, but also a professional marketing approach to have. 

Having an expert on your side, also feels you confident about your marketing plans. 

 

6 Content KPIs: HOW to measure content marketing success

Now you have defined goals, also the ready plan to achieve that. But how can you measure that your efforts are in the right direction?

The short answer is, Content KPIs. 

Key Performance Indicators of content marketing, lets you identify how your content process is going on. 

This is the stage that differentiates the content strategy from content marketing. To set the performance metrics you decide standards to measure your content success. 

Setting content KPIs is important for you to identify and analyze how your various campaigns are doing. Also which campaign to optimize for positive returns.

You can measure your content performance using any given matrics such as…

  • Website traffic
  • Website ranking
  • Lead acquired
  • CTAs
  • Online inquiries
  • Newsletter subscribers
  • Post engagements
  • Profile engagements, and many more…

In setting up key performance indicators, look for which type of content you are marketing. As every content has its unique message delivery and media preference. You can see the difference in the impact of every content type separately. 

Not every content drives you the same results, that’s the power of content. You decide the content strategy based on which content to produce and how to measure their effectiveness.

Also Read: Content marketing strategy for Startups [8-steps Process]

 

Close content: 

The success of content marketing is not dependent on a single factor, and it never should be. It’s an outcome of the audience targeting, content types, media selection and all together. Only having a content marketing plan is not enough, your business needs to have a solid content marketing strategy documented. 

Along with it, one more thing to look for is, who handles the content process. Who strategizes and manages the content marketing really does matter a lot. You can have your internal team to handle the process, who are specialized and well- trained. Or else you can have content specialists on the side to take your marketing responsibility. 

As a content strategy agency, we at wordzyx partnering with the businesses wanting to promote their brand with creative content. Feel free to contact us, if you are looking for expert marketers to strategize your content plan and help to reach your marketing goals. Considering your business needs, we present you with a customized content plan that your business must-have.