This guide outlines six important ways you can improve your content marketing strategy, many of which are too often overlooked when it comes to content.
If you are completing any type of content marketing like social media, eBooks, blogging, etc. You will have a content marketing strategy. It might not be an official strategy that you have documented, it’s more likely that you are producing content just for the sake of it.
You will probably have a content goal even if they are vague, a rough publishing schedule and a roundabout idea of the types of content you are planning to publish. If you have any of these in place, then you have some sort of content marketing strategy.
6 ways to improve your content marketing strategy
It’s time to make your strategy even better. Let’s have a look at six ways you can improve your content marketing strategy and make it more effective and intentional:
Document the content marketing strategy
You should make sure you document your content marketing strategy. It needs to be fancy, just a three-page document that plans out your goals, and your plan is much better than having nothing.
It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Marketers who don’t document their content marketing strategy are much more likely to think their content marketing isn’t right for them. If you want to get the best results, you need to take the time to write down and strategies. There is plenty of resources online to help you with this.
Have regular meetings with your team
You might have a dedicated team of people who deal with your content marketing or you may have spread it across different people across the company as part of another job role. Either way, you should arrange to meet either in person or on Skype, It’s important you are able to catch up and reiterate your content marketing strategy with them in order for them to create relevant content, promotions and do it well. The most effective marketing strategies are those that are looking at regularly, this ensures that important tasks aren’t left to fall through the cracks. But what should you be talking about in these meetings? Let’s have a look:
- Recap and talk about any content that was created and published since the last meeting. Did it work well? Is there anything that could have been done better? Should you have focused more on your niche such as physical therapy marketing to get more patients?
- Have a look at the next week or month ahead and plan the content marketing tasks or responsibilities that each team member will have.
- Have a look at your competitors, have your employees spotted anything they’re doing that you aren’t? Can you improve on what they are doing?
- Have a good think about future topics, discuss trends and think about what should be covered as a priority. How long is it going to take you to get the content out and published?
Have business goals in mind when creating goals for content
You need to have a real good think about what you actually want to accomplish from your content marketing strategy. Most of the time the answer will be ‘to increase sales’. This is fine but it shouldn’t be your only goal. You should be looking at other focus points too as no amount of content is going to directly result in sales. Set realistic business goals, that you know you can get out of your content such as increase leads, improve your brand awareness and improve your customer retention. Remember some of these can be quite difficult to track, this is where tracking metrics come into play.
Look at the metrics you want to track
You need to monitor the performance of your content marketing strategy in order to determine whether it’s helping you or not. You should be using metrics such as leads, traffic, sales and social media engagement to do this. Some of the metrics you can use include:
- Consumption – Downloads, visits, page views, etc.
- Sharing – How much has tour content being shared on social media?
- Lead generation – Hoe many visitors opt-in to your subscription list? Submit a form? Or ask for a quote?
- Sales- How common do these leads turn into sales?
In your marketing strategy you need to clearly set out the metric you plan to track, you might not want to track them all as this can be time-consuming. But remember you can always track different ones across a few months at a time.
Make sure your customer is number one
When looking at your content marketing strategy you need to think about your customers first. You can track as many metrics as you want but if you don’t think about your customers as a priority you’re not going to get it right. You should understand how your readers, clients, and customers interact with your content and what they want to see. Thress things that are ket include:
- Gather an understanding of what motivates your customers buying behavior and what types of content they prefer and how they want to access it.
- Be aware of your visitor’s path to purchase, you can then use your content to direct your customers on this path.
- You should always monitor and pay close attention to your website analytics, these are the key for you figuring out how your content marketing is affecting your customers.
Promotion and distribution are key to a content marketing strategy
It’s very common for owners of businesses to spend the majority of their time allocation on creating good content. While you do need to high have quality content that involves great use of SEO and strong topics, it’s equally important to think about how you are going to get it seen. You need to have a plan to get your content in front of your audience. You need to work on a content distribution plan. Many businesses find this part of content marketing the most difficult, and it can often be about trial and error. Try not to just hope for the best, and think people are going to see and respond to your content, you need to plan for how, where, and when you’re going to distribute and promote each new piece of content you create and publish.
Conclusion
These six tips should help to get you on track to a strong and successful content marketing strategy, do you have any other tips that could help? Please share them below.
