How to create a successful content marketing strategy

Content marketing can help your business achieve its goals. Before you start creating content, however, you should develop an effective content marketing plan

In this article, we will show you how to develop a content marketing strategy. We have divided the process into the following steps:

1. Defining the goals of your content marketing strategy
2. Define your buyer persona
3. Determine the type of content to be created
4. Determining the place of publication
5. Creating a content calendar

Read on to learn more about each step.

1. Defining the goals of your content marketing strategy

The most important aspect on the way to a successful content marketing strategy is to define your goals.

Without clearly defined goals, you have no way of knowing if your strategy will be successful or not. Ultimately, this can lead to wasting time creating ineffective content.

Below we look at some of the most common reasons why brands produce content. Of course, it is also quite possible that your company has several goals. Perhaps you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field as well as attract traffic to your website.

Make a name for yourself as an expert

If you want to make a name for yourself as an expert in your field and increase your brand influence, then your content must offer new knowledge and insights into your industry.

For example, you can publish reports or surveys or draw on your specific expertise or opinion on industry topics. If your content is interesting enough, other people will link to it and people will come to know you as a competent provider.

A good example of this is App Annie, a data and analytics platform for smartphone apps.

Part of App Annie's content marketing strategy is to publish reports and data on app trends . These reports are regularly brought to the attention of technology news sites, which then link to the report on the App Annie website.

This helped the company build a reputation as one of the most trusted app data providers.

Increase your presence in search engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the main reasons websites produce content. But it is probably also one of the most misunderstood.

Getting a good Google ranking requires a lot more than just writing articles about things people are searching for.

Instead, you need to invest time in identifying keywords that have the potential to rank well. Then you need to produce optimized content that targets those keywords exactly. You also need to invest a lot of time in building backlinks, which boosts the trustworthiness of your website. Here is a list of the best free SEO tools that can help you identify keywords.

Initially, you will be most successful as part of your SEO strategy with so-called long-tail keywords, i. H. with relatively specific search terms where there is hardly any competition. As your business grows and your website becomes more popular, you can also use more general keywords that can bring more traffic to your website.

There are plenty of examples of companies with an effective SEO strategy. TransferWise , a provider of international money transfers, is one of our favorites.

TransferWise has a wealth of great content related to sending money abroad and has a good Google ranking. The following screenshot shows what happens when you search for "transfer money abroad". Two of the top results are from TransferWise.

generate leads

Content is often used to generate leads, whereby interested parties receive access to reports, case studies, e-books, courses or white papers in return for their contact details.

The key here is that your content needs to be compelling and helpful enough for people to give their contact information for it.

Here at TeachWiki! we offer our website visitors a Marketing Automation Guide designed to help businesses learn more about the benefits of marketing automation and choose the right software. You can download the guide here .

2. Define your buyer persona(s)

The second step towards an effective content marketing strategy is to define what types of people you want your content to target. This is probably your “ideal buyer”; a fictional persona that represents your target audience.

If you don't already have a buyer persona, you need to create one. You can include the following information in this persona:

• biographical data such as age, gender, location, industry, income, interests, etc.
• Problems of potential customers that your solution can address
• Goals that customers can achieve with the help of your product
• Challenges your buyer persona must overcome before purchasing your product

You can find this information in your existing customer data, website analysis, competitive analysis or market research study. This data can then be used to help you with all aspects of your content marketing strategy, such as the type of content produced and where it is published.

For example, let's say you want to attract qualified middle-aged professionals as leads. In this case, it's a good idea to publish blog posts or case studies on LinkedIn. Instead, if you want to get more exposure among millennials, consider posting daily on Instagram.

For more information on who is using which platforms, see Pew Research's 2019 Social Media Usage report.

3. Planning the types of content to create

Next, you need to decide what type of content you want to produce. This content should appeal to your buyer persona while bringing you closer to the overall goals you are pursuing with your content marketing strategy.

You might publish the following types of content:

• Blog Posts: Blog posts are probably the most commonly produced type of content. They're great for boosting a website's SEO rankings and are quicker and cheaper to produce than videos, case studies, etc.
• Videos: Videos are also a popular type of content. Videos can be more difficult to create than blog posts, and the cost can be higher if you don't already have the equipment. Learn more in our video content marketing guide.
• Case Studies: Case studies are usually designed to show how your product helps a company overcome a specific problem. They use a real example to illustrate how good your product actually is.
• Infographics: Infographics and images serve to spotlight statistics about your product or industry. The great thing about infographics is that they are very popular when they are well done and contain interesting data.
• Online courses, games, etc.: Content can take many different forms. Companies have already developed games, courses, apps or even complete websites as part of their content marketing strategy. Your options are unlimited - produce any type of content that could help you achieve your business goals.

It also has to be said that certain content can work in several categories at once. For example, if you have a great idea for a blog post, you could turn it into a video or podcast.

A well-crafted infographic can also often be paired with a blog post that elaborates on specific points. Once you've created a case study, you could later split the insights into a series of blog posts and encourage readers to download the entire report.

An example of a combined content marketing strategy is a recent study published by Ahrefs comparing Wix SEO to WordPress. Ahrefs also used the results to create a detailed blog post , lots of graphs with data from the study, and a YouTube video.

4. Where will you publish your content?

When deciding what type of content you want to produce, you should also think about where you will publish it. Consider your existing platforms (if you have any) and places your buyer persona is likely to enjoy visiting.

A sticking point here is whether you are publishing the content on your own blog or on an external website. If you're new to the market, chances are your site doesn't get a lot of traffic yet. As a result, content posted there may not be read by many people.

However, if you post everything on external sites like YouTube or Medium, you will never build an audience of your own.

A combined content marketing strategy is perhaps best here. You could start by publishing a few authoritative blog posts on sites like Medium or LinkedIn, and then SEO-optimized content on your own site.

5. Creating a content calendar

Last but not least, you need to capitalize on the information you've gathered by creating a content calendar or editorial plan . This contains an overview of all content that you will produce and publish in a certain period of time.

The calendar includes information from the above categories, e.g. B. the place of publication and the desired goal, also practical information about the authors and the publication date. This basically helps you stay on top of your content marketing strategy and actions.

Closing words

Investing time in a well thought out content marketing strategy will help you produce better content. This, in turn, helps you achieve your content marketing and business goals. And who doesn't like to be one step ahead of the competition?