Content Marketing Strategy Archives -

How To Create a Content Marketing Strategy in 2024

Content is the most important thing in the marketing world. But sometimes, a lack of planning and thoughtful strategy can result in scattered content, leading to a highly ineffective approach.

Content marketing strategies aren’t about being present on every possible channel. Their success hinges on how effectively a brand gets the best out of its available resources and integrates them towards a common goal. Ultimately, the objective is to guide prospects smoothly through the sales funnel.

Content marketing strategy focuses on creating a marketing machine that aligns buyers’ journey and marketing funnel stages towards the same goal (conversion). This blog will outline some of the important aspects of content marketing strategies.

Content Strategy Vs. Content Marketing: The Key Difference

Content marketing relates to creating different content in multiple marketing channels, such as writing articles, gated content, videos or publishing social media content.

Content strategy, on the other side, plans how to tie different content formats and channels that lead toward the same goal. Content strategists analyze customer personas and devise a roadmap that reaches them perfectly across the different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Ultimately, content strategists linked all the content from blogs and e-books to webinars. They tested different scenarios to predict which strategy would bring them success in creating initial brand awareness, converting leads, closing customers and eventually developing the overall brand success.

How Does Content Strategy (A.C.D) Model Work?

Now we know the content strategy is not all about publishing content in different marketing channels. Let’s see how it takes the existing content resources and repurposes them into cohesive marketing collateral that drives conversions and leads.

According to 74% of companies, content marketing boosts lead generation rate.

Content marketing strategy focuses on buyer journey stages and ensures how to move their prospects from Awareness A, Consideration C to the Decision D stage.

Now, let’s see how these different stages work with marketing channels to provide tailored messages and a unified organic marketing experience to every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Awareness Stage -> Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU) Content

The awareness stage usually deals with top-of-the-funnel sections to drive visitors to the website by capturing their interest, eventually setting the stage for them to potentially become leads as they progress through the sales funnel.

Now, in this stage, various strategies come into the stretch, including Outsource SEO services and B2B content writing across blogs, social media and other website content. This stage marks the beginning of the buyer’s journey and addresses their pain points with messaging that resonates with their business problems.

This stage works on highlighting the challenges and helping potential customers get the right solution. The goal is to create a content marketing strategy that aligns current topics with business goals.

Top of the funnel content usually includes:

Series of Blog posts.
E-books
Social media posts
Short-form videos

Consideration Stage -> Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) Content

Now that the potential customer has moved beyond the awareness stage indicated by actions such as signing up for business lead magnets or downloading an ebook, they are entering the consideration stage and actively evaluating your product or service.

However, hardly half of the work has been done yet. The potential customers might be exploring solutions to their problems, visiting your business website, or managing to see branded content. But they are still not ready to make a decision.

Businesses must provide content that educates and gives valuable information that impresses their prospects and converts them from general leads to Marketing or Sales Qualified Leads (MQL or SQL).

Some of the middle-of-the-funnel content can be:

Product demos
Webinars
Case studies
Testimonials
Email newsletters

Decision Stage -> Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) Content

The bottom of the funnel is to get hands-on conversions and grab the opportunity to earn customers.

After building awareness and consideration among prospects with aligned strategies such as e-books, webinars, and a series of related blogs or email messages, it’s now time to engage in a direct conversation with the customer.

However, this is not an easy stage. Most marketers lose their qualified leads at this stage. Direct responsive content and personalized messaging tone are crucial in this stage.

Bottom of the funnel content types are:

Consultation session
Product workshops
Pricing pages
Free trials

Remember, lead generation magnets like discount coupons, email newsletters, and workshops are core components in increasing leads-to-customer conversion rates, complementing revenue marketing goals.

Now that we have discussed the combined working of the buying journey and marketing channels under content marketing strategy.

Let’s discuss how to create a flawless content marketing strategy.

Steps To Create Your Next Content Marketing Strategy

Set SMART goals
Find the target audience and their buying journey
Decide types of content formats
Pick relevant marketing channels
Plan your event-based content
Assess and measure results

Many content marketers allocate over 10% of their marketing budget specifically to content.

1. Set SMART Goals

The first step of digital content marketing is to set SMART goals. All the content initiatives and efforts aim to achieve these goals. This saves them time and resources to keep marketers glued to their content marketing goals.

One example of a SMART goal that should be attained in the next quarter is:

5 New Customers

20 New Leads

2,000 Monthly Visitors

2. Find the Target Audience and their Buying Journey

Creating a content strategy without clearly knowing the target audience is absolutely baseless.

Instead of considering a broad audience, content strategists should focus on tailored building buyer personas and creating content marketing solutions that clearly identify their buyer journey.

Creating their buyer personas and understanding their buying journey helps them create content that rightly resonates with them. Examining their problems and needs helps them create specialized content.

3. Decide Types of Content Formats

The next phase is to decide which content format will highly resonate with their target audience. Businesses conduct content audits and see which resources and materials they already have to put under their strategy.

Types of content can be blog posts, user-generated content, and other technical gated content to see which one makes more impact at different stages of the buyer journey.

4. Pick Relevant Marketing Channels

Once the content is decided, it’s time to pick marketing channels that will prove effective for content marketing strategies.

Content strategists will decide on different marketing channels like b2b email marketing, social platforms or website blogs based on the content they are going out with.

5. Plan Your Event-Based Content

This stage involves event-based audits to outline content according to upcoming priorities, setting future blog topics, social media campaigns, and other inbound marketing efforts tailored to buyer personas.

This helps them schedule content to cater to specific events while distributing them on the right content channels.

6. Assess and Measure Results

The last stage is analyzing and measuring results. Examine which strategies work and what adjustments need to be made to achieve their set goals and metrics.

This stage also includes the A/B testing phase to see which content marketing strategy or process needs improvements to earn SMART goals and (Key-Performance-Indicators) KPIs better for the future phase.

Wrapping Up: What’s Next For Content Marketing World

Many B2B content marketing agencies provide expertise in writing exceptional content marketing strategies that take the visitors from leads to customers and eventually make them brand evangelists. According to Seth Godin, “Content marketing is the only marketing that is left”, and their impact certainly vouches for that. To conclude, content marketing strategies have the power to align businesses with different marketing collateral and optimize them for better lead generation results.

With Market Pro, you can craft a content marketing strategy that pinpoints your ideal customers and boosts lead-to-customer conversion rates.

Content Marketing Strategy: Top 10 Ingredients of Crafting Compelling Content

Writing great content that drives traffic has become a subjective term over the last several years, and it has become challenging to understand how to get the most out of this content marketing strategy. Whether it’s writing emails, blog posts, or ads, there are different opinions on how to do them. However, using the proper ingredients in your content writing can help drive the targeted audience.

1. Craft a Compelling Headline

Crafting an attention-grabbing heading is crucial in Business-to-Customers (B2C) and B2B content marketing strategy, as 70% of readers share articles just by reading the headline. Thus, it is essential to create headlines compelling the readers to scroll down. When readers find a heading convincing, they like to read the full body of the article. They love reading informational and valuable content. Ensure that the headline is precise, otherwise, the reader will get confused about what the content is all about.

2. Hook the Reader With an Intriguing Introduction

The heading compels the reader to click on the article. The next step is convincing them to read on, and it’s a bit challenging. If the introduction does not grab readers’ attention quickly, do not anticipate them to remain engaged. One of the smartest ways to keep readers engaged is by jumping right into the content that is promised in the heading.

3. Keep Your Audience in Mind

An interesting introduction may help keep the readers engaged, but it is not a silver bullet. Keep in mind the target audience. For example, write for a particular niche rather than a broad audience. Tailoring your content according to your reader’s specific requirements helps them believe that you understand their issues and aspirations. Audience-focused content is what provokes responses from readers. It encourages them to share, comment, or take another action, which is the ultimate objective of B2C and B2B content writing.

4. Keep the Focus of Your Content Tight

Each piece of content must focus on a single and clear idea from the heading to the conclusion. This strategy can assist in creating logical arguments, writing content that has a natural flow, and providing the readers with actionable insights. Keep the focus of your content tight unless you write a pillar post that acts as a central point to discuss a comprehensive topic. Narrowing the focus of content can help you give proper information about a specific topic through your B2B content marketing services.

5. Be Engaging

No matter how interesting the headline is, if your content fails to engage the targeted audience after landing on your page, it will increase the bounce rate. There is a possibility that content performs better on Facebook than on Twitter or vice versa. This highlights that the audience on different platforms has different preferences for content. Then, there comes the writing itself. Being a digital marketer, you might have been told that effective content writing is using very simple language. However, it is not like that; always keep your audience in mind and change the complexity of language accordingly while crafting a good piece of content. So, engaging content is one that uses the language your target audience will understand easily. Therefore, avoid overcomplicating or oversimplifying content; just tailor it, keeping the audience in mind to make it engaging.

6. Use Your Brand’s Unique Tone

Have you ever thought about why companies offering content marketing services stand out more than others on the market? It’s because of a number of factors involved in it, and most of them are directly linked to your brand’s tone. Figure out who is the target audience and what they find captivating, and just keep doing it. Consistency is the key. While handling content writing tasks for a team, it is crucial to clarify your brand’s unique tone, core values, and which words to use and which not to use. Otherwise, there’s a possibility that writers use conflicting tomes and perspectives, damaging the reputation of your brand.

7. Give Readers the Information they Need

Imagine you are searching for an effective content marketing strategy, and you find an article with the same heading discussing everything in detail but not exactly the plan of how to do it. You prefer avoiding the site in the future, not providing the information you need. That’s why it is essential for SEO content services to figure out audience needs before starting to write through keyword research. For example, if the team is writing about SEO but hasn’t decided on the topic yet. They must do keyword research that people are searching related to SEO and then include it in the article.

8. Make a Proper Outline

Create a proper outline after doing research and working out what the audience expects from your article. This will help in writing a well-structured and valuable article. It also facilitates you in finding authentic statistics to back the arguments. Make proper headings and subheadings like H1, H2, and H3 to make your content easily digestible for the reader.

9. Include Actionable Tips

The ultimate goal of content marketing campaigns is to ensure that readers get valuable information. That way, there is a great possibility that they will share and visit your site again and again. They might feel so satisfied that they subscribe to your newsletter or download exclusive content. One of the simplest ways to attract your readers is by providing actionable tips explaining how to do whatever you are talking about. To excel in this, you must have expertise in a particular field. Write what you know better and discuss how to tackle issues in the real world step by step.

10. Add Trust Factors

Websites are flooded with different types of content in this digital era. Even if your niche is quite unique, there are hundreds of articles talking about the same topic. Why should the audience prefer your content over others? The best way to stand out is to offer your audience content that is trustworthy. When the readers know that the article is well-researched, properly backed with the latest stats, and authoritative, they will automatically click on it. In case you are new in the content marketing field and want to prove your worth, backlinks can help. Here is how:

Support the points written in the article by linking them to authentic and authoritative sources. Linking to government sites and high-profile brands helps make your content marketing strategy more credible.
Insert the link of credible sites to your content. Adding the link to a high-authority website, such as the New York Times, to your article helps to establish your trust. Moreover, it can help in ranking your content better in organic search.

How Can Market Pro Help?

Are you looking for an innovative digital marketing company to help you create compelling content? Market Pro is your go-to option! Our content marketing strategy helps you stand out from competitors, increasing your site’s traffic conversions and generating massive revenues. We offer customized content writing services to deliver your brand story to the audience across the globe. If you still have any confusion, you can contact us, and our team of professionals will guide you on how to successfully navigate the digital marketing landscape.

Tip #1: Generate Content with a Purpose

The primary objective of content marketing campaigns is to provide the correct mix of information that resonates with ideal customer profiles at various phases of their purchasing journey. However, it’s easier said than done, particularly if your firm has Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who are enthusiastic about producing content and prefer to produce many pieces every year in their respective fields of expertise.

One of the last things you wish to do as a content strategist is suppress an SME’s enthusiasm by requesting them to stop crafting content. However, if your firm has content development silos, consumers will find it more challenging to get the details they need to back up their buying choices.

Devote time to regular content planning to relieve the pressure and pay attention to your SMEs’ content creation efforts. Define the purpose of your writing, as well as the content topics that your business will focus on during the planning and marketing cycle. For example, 41% of the marketers’ goal was to create brand awareness through content marketing activities in 2022. This critical information, when combined, will determine the sort of content your business requires and aid in the elimination of “random acts of content production” occurring in your company. During the planning stage, ensure that each piece of written material you develop fulfils customers’ needs and educates a client or prospect in a certain way.

Tip #2: Let Data Influence Your Decisions

Does your B2B content writing business have a mechanism in place for analyzing content metrics on an ongoing basis? Or are your content creators too busy crafting material to devote time to metric evaluation? You aren’t alone if you responded yes to the query. You need a method for assessing content performance to verify that it can assist you in accomplishing the strategic goals set throughout the planning phase. Create a content scorecard for all of the marketing initiatives as part of the planning phase, outlining the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are required to be tracked. The scorecard must indicate where your company is now and where you want it to be in the future. By analyzing the data every three months, you can determine what is working and what’s not to make data-driven changes to your content writing strategy.

Tip #3: Ensure the Content Continues to Meet Your KPIs

Unlike several other marketing strategies, like search advertising, which expires when you stop making payments for a campaign, your writing may remain on your site permanently. Yet, not all stuff should remain forever. Your company and its services will change gradually, as will market trends and innovations, which may ultimately render earlier top-performing articles obsolete. Adopt a content life cycle management method to analyze current content at least once a year to boost popular topics and remove irrelevant or outdated material from the website. A well-established content life cycle strategy will eventually make it methodical for your team to continuously assess and optimize your material, ensuring that your best content dominates.

Tip #4: Make Content Creation Manageable

Making the content creation more manageable entails more than just reducing volume. To create a really sustainable content strategy that fuels your advertising plan, you must first assess the resources at your disposal, as well as any previous issues that your company has had with content generation. Is it, for instance, difficult to get SME time to attend sourcing sessions, or is it more challenging to obtain input during reviews? Or are you a solitary marketer who wears multiple advertising hats for your company and finds it tough to devote time to content development?

To avoid these circumstances hampering your marketing efforts, ensure having the resources to carry out the strategy you established. For example, if you want to involve the SMEs in content creation, it may require working with the relevant management staff to determine if metrics for success can be related to content generation as needed. If it is difficult to devote advertising resources to content production and evaluation activities, consider making a collaboration with a SaaS content marketing agency.

You can contact us if you still have any queries.

Why is there a Need for a Winning Content Marketing Strategy?

A strategic and flexible brand content marketing strategy should be at the heart of your marketing plan to fuel growth effectively. It is going to be easier for the audience to find the information they are searching for if whatever material you publish has a mission and that aim is constantly reaffirmed through regular examination. The material you publish as part of a dedicated content marketing plan, rather than a series of one-time initiatives, is much more likely to attract traffic, generate leads, and contribute to qualifying sales prospects.

Let Market Pro Help You!

Are you tired because your content marketing plan is not up to the mark? Let Market Pro, a digital marketing company, help you. Our team of experts will help you make a content marketing strategy that generates leads and results in a significant ROI. From content planning to optimization to measuring performance, our content marketing consulting services cover it all.

Tag: Content Marketing Strategy