Business owners aren’t expected to know everything about content marketing. After all, they have so much to handle in their daily operations, so becoming a content marketing expert probably isn’t up their list of priorities. Thankfully, there are experts who have the skills and creativity to market your brand with absolute efficiency!

Here, we will talk about the 10 essential elements your content marketers will employ to take your brand to the next level:

 

But first, what is content marketing?

Content marketing is your need for content and how to deliver that need. Why are you making content? Who are you helping to make a purchase decision? And, how can you help them with their purchasing problem? Content marketing is designed to answer these questions and convert them into fantastic results for your brand.

Covering channels like blogging, eBooks, newsletters, social media and video, content marketing is designed to build your audience through higher leader quality, generate quicker conversions and grow your revenue stream.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? But this is a comprehensive approach to your content campaign, and comprehensive approaches require imperative fundamentals, the likes of which your content marketers will use when producing your robust content strategy:

1. Business guidelines

No winning content strategy can exist without forming your brand identity. This should include your voice, tone and personality. This is designed to successfully communicate your brand identity and is essential to your digital campaign. Consistency is key: you want your audience to easily identify with your content and without the content straying from who you are as a brand.

2. Marketing goals

What do you aim to achieve through your content strategy? Having a clear set of goals in place will help direct your content marketing team to a robust strategy and clear key performance indicators (KPIs). You should always align your goals with your audience and create a thorough content production strategy.

Your goals should include/be:

• Objectives: Know exactly what you want to achieve.
• Metrics: You must define metrics for your strategy’s success.
• Realistic: Goals should always be realistic. They can be challenging, but they shouldn’t be outrageous.
• Concise: Ensure your objectives facilitate your content marketing strategy.
• Time-sensitive: You should develop an ideal timeline for your online success.

3. Know your audience

You have to know your market to create content that addresses their needs. Therefore, content marketers create fictional customer personas that seek to identify your target audience and their needs. This includes elements like:

• Challenges
• Role
• Responsibilities
• Purchase decision influence
• Life goals & objectives
• Required solution

What’s more, you must work to discover an important element of your target audience that your competitors overlook. This can then become your point-of-difference, the thing that sets you apart from your competitors who so naively overlooked what you discovered!

4. Market research

Data and market research help your business understand your industry and its future trends. This can then help mould future content that you have fine-tuned to an artistic standard.

What’s more, data and market research are one of the best ways to learn about your competitors and their content strategies. After all, knowing your market means knowing your competitors, and so you might gain awesome insights into what kind of content your audience loves through how they engage with your competitors.

One of the best ways to gain insights into your competitors’ strategies is through the Social Listening tool. Here, you can track posts, engagements and future trends to develop a content calendar that is sure to give a jumpstart in the digital marketing arena!

5. Create your customer journey map
   

Okay, so you know what you want and you know who you want to make it happen. Now, it’s time to create a customer journey map that can help your audience reach the conversion stage. This is where you create a visual map that outlines each stage of the journey based upon what your target audience thinks and feels about your product. Upon creation, you can then use this map to create content based around the following elements:

• Problem: What does your customer need resolved? For example, if you run a safety equipment company, your customer may need it for legal requirements.
• Research options: They may search “safety equipment Melbourne CBD” so they can access it without any hurdles.
• Your online store: This could include price points & helpful online assistance.
• Purchase: They may be looking for a website that makes purchasing bulk orders easy.
• Support: They may be seeking a supplier that can provide training for their particular product.

Ensure that the journey is always tailored to your customer’s persona. Through creating a vision of how they feel and think when engaging with your online store, you can then create content that directly targets them and their searches.

6. Make it market fit

You can create the snazziest content in the world, but what good is that if your customers can’t find it? Or, you may have written wonderful content, but is it currently relevant to your audience’s needs?

Each of these problems can nullify your content, and so it’s important to cover the following bases before publishing:

• Findability: Is the content easy to find? Here, think back to your customer journey. Does it relate to any of the thoughts and feelings that drive a customer’s search? You might want to consider a redo if it appears completely off-topic.
• Relevant: Is it relevant to your customer’s needs? Basically, will they search the keywords you’ve placed in your content?

Essentially, you want to create unique content that is still relevant to your audience’s needs. Be on top of digital trends and how customers engage with content – this will help ensure that your content is relevant and easily findable!

7. Create an effective process
   

Every successful content strategy needs an efficient process that allows your team to create engaging content. To make this happen we recommend doing the following:

• Group your content into categories i.e. blogs, eBooks, Instagram posts, videos etc.
• Create a best practices workflow for each content category. Consider the brief development process, who owns the business requirements, where you need to allocate your resources, how you receive customer feedback on your posts and who is going to actually create the particular content.
• Collaborate with team members and stakeholders to determine which process is possible and is ideal for them. What are you missing from your content plan? Is there something that could set your content apart that you simply haven’t considered yet?
• Test your creative process. How does it work time restrictions? Does it fit with your content calendar scope?
• Make this content creation process a habit. This is how you can truly gauge whether your content strategy is within scope. Whilst creating this process be sure to keep an eye out for what’s working well and what areas need improving.

8. Create an internal communications plan

You need an internal communications strategy to coordinate your content. This will help keep team members and stakeholders collaborating effectively. What’s more, an internal communications plan ensures that your team is aligned with your content strategy and that everyone knows their role.

 

9. Create a content calendar

It’s time to create your content calendar. The legendary content calendar will help you create a consistent roster of engaging content that will help build your online stature. They help you schedule your content to ensure that you are always producing the goods that your customer wants to see.

Your content calendar can include information regarding channels, content format, posting dates, updates on existing content and more. Content calendars can ensure a consistent vision across your departments and themes.

 

10. Produce & analyze

You’ve done all the fundamentals, and now it’s time to start producing that awesome content you can’t wait to share with your customers! But your content team must undertake ongoing analysis to ensure that your brand’s narrative is effective and engaging your audience.

This is done through trial and learning. Collect information on your posts’ success, finding out what kinds of posts are working well and what could use some improvement. You must be patient when creating your content marketing strategy, but also driven enough to continuously analyse your successes and what could use improving.

 

    You can always call in the pros

We get it: this is a lot of work. And, we also get this, too: you already have so much to do with your business’s daily operations. If content creation isn’t the reason you got into business (it likely isn’t), then you’re probably overwhelmed at the sound of terms like “content calendar”, “internal communications plan” and “market fit”.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and that is why the experts exist to produce a stunning content marketing strategy for you. They will create a content marketing strategy that will reach your target audience and have them making those all-important conversions.

While business owners may not be content marketing experts, it’s crucial to recognise its importance in driving brand success. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, our professionals are here to craft and implement a strategy tailored to your brand. Reach out for expert assistance at 1300 663 995 or visit our contact page. Let’s elevate your content marketing to the next level together!