“Content marketing strategy isn’t a nice to have, it’s a requirement.
Recent research from the Content Marketing Institute found that more than 80%
of B2B marketers say they have a content marketing strategy, but only a third
have documented that very same content marketing strategy”.
If you’re a marketer, among the goals you need to accomplish there must be a strong content marketing strategy. Mike Corak (Vice President and General Manager at DAC Group) has asserted that the brands that understand what their targeted audiences want from them and then create a plan with their unique opportunities and future in mind, will beat those who are simply concentrating on what their next social post should be about. You have customers and prospects. They have people they trust when they want to buy something and they take decisions. Customers and prospects and people can make unexpected moves. So, to put them all together you need a strategy.
Content marketing is about using content in a planned and strategic way to fulfill different business goals. The best way to achieve that is by knowing your customers and prospects and by having “contact moments” with them on the Web and elsewhere. Some of those contact moments are between you and a prospect or customer in a direct way, for instance when someone comments on a blog post or replies to a mail you sent.
A content marketing strategy involves approaching content marketing in a customer-centric, connected, planned, and strategic manner. As not all customers are the same, customer-centric means that you need a few plans to make sure that those different ‘types’ of customers like and what makes them act.
The first and most fundamental step is to have an actual reason, an actual purpose across your marketing efforts. You must be able to see it clearly.
After that, know who the types of customers and prospects you want are, how they act and what they want. Remember: no one wants to spend more money than what’s needed. You might lose your job or, in a worst-case scenario, ruin your future career. Look at what you already have to grab potential customers by the hand and to entertain them. The best content for your customers and business is already in your customers’ heads. You just need to get it out of their heads and present it in a way that everyone understands.
Once you identified what you have, know what you don’t have and find it. You also want to check out the different formats of content your prospective customers use and there are some good tips and tricks to make sure that your content is what we call “engaging”. Most of them originated a long time ago, but on the Web, all those channels people use have their specific rules and typical usage scenarios. So you will have to take a bit of training into account as well and if there is one particular channel or source of information your customers and prospects really use a lot, you can even develop a strategy for that too.
You’ll have to make sure that the content is found or used. Keep track of it. You’ll find yourself very satisfied by the results you will get.
Guzman Gonzalez is a Staff Writer