Whether you’re a marketer, a budding entrepreneur, or a small business owner, understanding the intricacies of content marketing and building a winning strategy is the key to unlocking success in the digital realm.
This is especially true if you want to gain more leads and boost the growth of your business. According to studies, 67% of marketers report that content marketing strategy generates leads while 63% say that it builds loyalty between their existing customers. As you can see, content marketing is indeed a very powerful strategy.
In this article, we’ll give you a step-by-step guide on how to build your content marketing strategy from scratch and discuss how you can create more compelling content for your audience.
Let’s get started.
Why Content Marketing Matters?
Content marketing is crucial in the digital world for several reasons. It allows businesses to develop and maintain customer relationships, as customers expect high-quality and consistent content, leading to increased trust and credibility. Providing value and solutions for their needs increases your online visibility and engagement with the audience.
A successful content marketing strategy helps businesses establish themselves as industry authorities, attract new customers, and generate leads and conversions. It is a versatile and essential component of digital marketing, enabling them to tell their brand’s story, share their values, and attract sales leads.
20 Steps To Build A Winning Content Marketing Strategy From Scratch
Building a content marketing strategy from scratch involves careful and strategic planning, plus consideration of various factors. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started:
1. Identify Your Audience
A critical part of your content marketing strategy is your audience. After all, they are the ones that are going to be reading your content. You’ll need to understand them first in order to create the right content to reach them.
Figure out the basic demographics of your audience, such as their:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Income
- Educational Level
And since most content marketing strategies are now digital, we also recommend digging deep into your audience’s internet habits. To do this, know the following:
- What social media platforms do they use
- How frequently they use it
- The time of day they are usually online
- Sites they visit
- Apps they use
- What kind of content do they prefer
- Which influencer/content creator/industry leader they trust
By knowing your audience’s habits and preferences, you can create content that they will find relevant and appealing. This will lead to increased engagement and, down the line, hopefully, convert them into a paying customer.
2. Set Your Goals
Goals provide a clear direction that you are moving toward, and you are not just coming up with random content just because.
Goals will vary depending on your business, but some examples of common goals are:
- Increasing website traffic
- Building brand awareness
- Generating sales and revenue
- Building audience and followers
- Establishing yourself as a thought leader
- Getting more qualified leads
- Improving SEO
Once you have your goal, you should also set a metric or KPI (key performance indicator). This is done so that you can measure the performance of your content marketing strategy.
Just like with goals, metrics will vary depending on your business. However, based on surveys, 66% of marketers mainly tracked page views, while 55% mainly monitored email open rates.
Some example metrics are hitting a certain number of Facebook followers in a month, getting more post comments and shares, an increased number of email subscribers, getting to a certain spot on search rankings, or seeing an increase in site traffic.
Having a solid goal and KPI in place will serve as your foundation for all your content marketing strategies.
3. Analyse Competitors
Understanding your competitors provides valuable insights to refine your content marketing strategy. First, identify your main competitors and then delve into their content.
- Analyse their content: Examine the type of content they create, its frequency, the channels they use, and how they promote it. It can help you understand what draws their audience in.
- Engagement metrics: Look at how their audience interacts with their content. High engagement can signify content that resonates with the audience. Metrics like comments, shares, and likes are a good starting point.
- SEO tactics: Utilize SEO tools to understand their SEO strategy. Look at the keywords they are ranking for, their backlink strategy, and how they structure their content for SEO.
- Strengths and weaknesses: Identify where their content excels and where it falls short. It can highlight potential opportunities for your content.
- Innovation: Keep an eye on any new strategies or content formats they are experimenting with. If they are successful, consider how to incorporate similar tactics into your strategy.
Remember, the goal isn’t to copy their strategy but to learn from what they’re doing right, understand how they’re targeting the same audience, and find opportunities to differentiate your content.
4. Find Your Unique Angle
One of the most crucial aspects of content marketing strategy is finding your unique angle. In a world where information is readily available, it’s essential to stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself.
To do this, you need to find gaps in existing content and fill them with your own original ideas. This means researching what content already exists on your topic or niche and identifying areas where you can provide a different perspective or add value.
By finding your unique angle, you can create content that is not only original but also relevant and valuable to your audience. This will help you establish yourself as an industry authority and attract more engagement and conversions.
5. Create a Content Calendar
Now that you have identified your audience, set your goals, analyzed competitors and found your unique angle, you’ll need to create a content calendar.
A content calendar will serve as your guide for your content schedule. It should detail the content that you are planning to post, when and where you are planning to post it, as well as the person who is working on it. It should also contain important dates and events for your business.
A content calendar will help you get organized and ensure that you won’t lose track of deadlines. It’s also important to keep you consistent and help you spot gaps in your content.
6. Choose the Right Content-Type
The right type of content is something that your target audience will find engaging and relevant. For example, do they find short-form videos more engaging? How about infographics? Depending on your audience research, you’ll need to prioritize content that you know your audience will enjoy.
Still, you should be varying your content from time to time so that your audience won’t get bored. Even if they enjoy your images or articles, they’ll get tired if they only get that kind of content from you.
Try to create a mix of images, videos, infographics, blog posts, GIFs, and memes (if applicable to your branding). Or you can vary your content format. For example, if you are focusing on video content, you can try posting in various formats such as YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Live, etc.
7. Content Creation Tips
Engaging content should be included in your content marketing efforts. It captivates the audience, sparking their interest and fostering a connection between them and your brand.
When content is engaging, it encourages audience interaction, promotes sharing, and can significantly boost your visibility online. Not only does this increase website traffic, but it also helps to build brand awareness and reputation.
Engaging content aids in customer retention, keeping the audience hooked and coming back for more. It drives conversions, turning your audience from passive readers into active customers.
Here are some tips to make your content more engaging:
- Use Headers and Sub-headers: They draw readers’ attention and help organize content.
- Be Concise: Keep information short, sweet, and to the point.
- Use Graphics: Pictures, videos, charts, and graphs can increase engagement.
- Use Lists: They are easy for readers to engage with.
- Write in a Friendly, Informal Tone: This can make the content more appealing.
- Add a Call to Action: Encourage audience interaction and engagement.
- Address Something Your Audience Cares About: This is essential for creating engaging content.
8. Choose Between In-House and Outsourced Content
In-house content creation refers to developing content with an in-house team working full-time for a company, while outsourcing content creation involves hiring freelance contractors or content agencies to create content on behalf of the company. In content marketing strategy, it’s essential to determine which option works best for your business. Here’s a comparison of the two options:
In-House Content Creation
Pros:
Control over quality: In-house content creators are more familiar with your brand and can maintain consistency in style and messaging.
Cost-effective: Creating content in-house can be more cost-effective in the long run, as you don’t have to hire external writers or agencies.
Faster turnaround: In-house content creators are more likely to understand your needs and deliver content quickly, which can benefit time-sensitive projects.
Cons:
Limited resources: In-house content creators may need more skills, time, or resources to produce high-quality content consistently.
Skill gaps: Finding and hiring skilled content creators can be challenging, especially if your in-house team needs more expertise in specific areas or industries.
Outsourced Content Creation
Pros:
Expertise: Outsourced content creators can bring specialized knowledge and experience in specific industries or niches, which can be beneficial for creating high-quality content.
Scalability: Outsourcing allows you to scale your content’s production to meet your business needs, even during busy periods.
Time-saving: Outsourcing content creation saves time and effort, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
Cons:
Loss of control: Outsourcing content may result in a lack of consistency in style and messaging, as the content creators may need to be more familiar with your brand.
Costs: Hiring external content creators or agencies can be expensive, especially if you need a large amount of content or ongoing support.
9. Boost Your Content with SEO
SEO can enhance content visibility by improving a website’s likelihood of appearing in search engine results pages. It is achieved by targeting relevant keywords, optimizing content that aligns with search engine guidelines, and improving rankings through user experience, content quality, and backlinks.
By implementing best practices and SEO guidelines, businesses can ensure their content receives maximum visibility and reach across the digital landscape, ultimately attracting more organic traffic and potential customers.
10. Focus on Keywords
Keyword research is crucial in optimizing content by helping align content with user intent and improving its visibility. It involves identifying relevant keywords and understanding the search volumes and user intent behind them.
This process empowers content strategy to create valuable, engaging content that addresses users’ needs and questions while ensuring that the content is optimized for the right keywords to improve search engine rankings.
11. Choose the Best Platforms
While it’s a good idea to be present on multitudes of platforms to increase your reach and visibility, it’s more advisable to focus on platforms that you know your audience is predominantly at. This way, you lessen the amount of content that you have to create. This saves you time, money, and resources, which is helpful, especially if you are just starting out. This also means that you can focus on creating better content, therefore ensuring quality and consistency in your content.
12. Cross-Promote Your Content
Cross-promoting your content can significantly bolster your own content marketing strategy as a powerful tool to amplify your reach and increase audience engagement. It involves two or more businesses promoting each other’s products or services to their audiences, tapping into a larger and more diverse audience base. It’s a process that offers mutual benefits, as both parties can gain from the increased exposure and resultant audience growth.
Cross-promotion enables you to leverage the networks of other businesses that cater to an audience similar to yours, facilitating greater visibility and potentially attracting more leads. Such a strategy supports promoting your content and fosters relationships with other businesses.
To get started with cross-promotion, start with the business goals, choose the right partner, and select channels their audience prefers, such as social media, email marketing, and organic content.
Some effective cross-promotion ideas include offering reciprocal discounts, creating joint advertising campaigns, developing new products, and writing guest posts for each other’s websites.
Social media is also an excellent platform for cross-promotion, and businesses should establish themselves on all popular social media platforms and tailor their content to each platform.
13. Optimize for Social Media
Social media optimization (SMO) involves enhancing the visibility and reach of a website or web content through social media channels. It helps manage and enhance an organization’s message and online presence through social media. Various techniques for optimizing social media for content strategy include:
- Identify Social Media Goals: Identify the ultimate goal of your social media presence, such as increasing engagement, generating leads, or boosting sales.
- Fill Out Your Profiles Completely: Ensure that your social media profiles are complete, including profile pictures, bios, and contact information.
- Use Hashtags: Use relevant hashtags to increase content visibility on social media platforms.
- Create Short Videos: Use videos to create engaging content that is quick and easy to consume.
- Create Interactive Social Content: Create content encouraging interaction and engagement, like polls, quizzes, and contests.
- Evoke Humor: Use humour to create engaging and shareable content.
- Develop a Consistent Process for Creating Content: Develop a consistent process for creating content optimized for social media platforms.
- Optimize Links: Optimize links to ensure they work correctly and direct users to the right pages.
14. Increase Social Media Engagement
In content marketing, interaction on social platforms refers to communication between a brand and users, such as likes, comments, direct messages, and tags.
You can develop a specific engagement strategy to increase interactions, know your audience, create and share compelling content, encourage discussions, ask questions, and run interactive campaigns.
Repurposing your best content, using timely questions, and conducting media upload contests are proven strategies to keep people interested and coming back. It’s important to focus on creating entertaining and valuable content that resonates with your audience and to maintain a regular posting schedule.
15. Promote Your Content
Promoting your content for your content strategy is crucial, especially if you are starting. It involves getting your content in front of as many eyes as possible to attract potential customers and create brand awareness.
To effectively promote your content, you need to know your target audience and regularly update your content strategy. You should also use various channels such as guest posting, influencer marketing, email marketing, and social media.
Additionally, ensure that your content is easily shareable by adding social sharing buttons within the content and optimizing it for different platforms.
16. Utilize Email Marketing
Email marketing is critical in content distribution by providing a direct and personalized communication channel between businesses and their audience. It allows content to be delivered directly to the target audience’s inbox, bypassing the reliance on social media algorithms or search engine rankings. This direct line of communication increases the likelihood of the content being seen and engaged.
Email marketing also enables businesses to reach a large group of people who have willingly provided their email addresses, making it an effective tool for distributing content and driving website traffic. Best email marketing and content distribution practices include personalization, automation, interactive content, and integration with other marketing channels.
17. Maintain High-Quality Content
High-quality content attracts and retains the business’ target audience. It is content that is relevant, engaging, and useful for the audience and meets their needs. High-quality content is well-researched, well-presented, and tailored to meet the audience’s needs. It is comprehensive, accurate, and educational.
Creating high-quality content requires understanding the audience, addressing their needs, and solving their problems. It is also important to keep the content up-to-date and relevant.
High-quality content helps businesses achieve their marketing goals, generate more returning visitors, and improve their search engine ranking. It is crucial to maintain quality in content by defining clear goals, gathering useful data, and setting up processes and checklists that suit the business needs.
18. Stay Consistent with Posting
Consistent posting can maintain and grow your audience’s interest, trust, and engagement, ultimately supporting your content marketing efforts.
- Building Anticipation: Regular posting creates anticipation, and the audience starts to expect and actively seek out your content, which can boost engagement and drive traffic to your profile.
- Staying on Your Audience’s Radar: Consistent posting helps you stay on your followers’ radar, making your brand or message more memorable.
- Showing Reliability: It demonstrates reliability, and your audience is likelier to trust a brand or content creator who consistently delivers valuable content.
- Maximizing Engagement: The more often you post, the more opportunities you have to engage with your audience, which can lead to increased engagement.
- Algorithm Rewards: Social media algorithms reward content that keeps users on the platform, and consistent posting plays a key role in this.
19. Monitor Content Performance
To evaluate content performance, you can use a variety of metrics that help you understand how well your content is engaging your audience and achieving your marketing goals. Some key metrics to consider include:
- Traffic sources: Understand where your audience is coming from, such as search engines, social media, or referral websites.
- Impressions: Measure the number of times your content is displayed to users.
- Click-through rate (CTR): Track the percentage of users who click on your content after seeing it.
- Content shares and backlinks: Monitor the number of times your content is shared on social media and the number of backlinks it receives.
- Email opt-in rates: Assess the effectiveness of your content in encouraging users to sign up for your email newsletter.
- Bounce rate: Measure the percentage of users who leave your website after viewing it.
- On-site time: Track the amount of time users spend on your website and individual pages.
- Conversions: Monitor the number of users who complete desired actions, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
- Site traffic: Analyze the overall traffic to your website and the performance of specific content pieces.
- Materialization of your SEO efforts: Evaluate the impact of your content on your search engine ranking.
- Comments: Monitor the number of comments and user interactions on your content, as social media comments can be a measure of engagement.
20. Get Your Tools In Order
The final step is to get your content marketing tools ready. This could be a scheduling tool, a content management system, a keyword research tool, social media post templates, a hashtag generator, an SEO analytics tool, and many more.
Content marketing tools can help improve the quality of your content. They can also help you save a lot of time and money since you can automate some of the more time-consuming tasks. This is helpful if you have a small content marketing team or if you are just starting out in your marketing journey.
Conclusion
In today’s digital landscape, content marketing has risen as a powerful tool for businesses. In fact, 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. If you want to keep up with all your competitors, you’ll need to have an effective content marketing strategy in place.
While it may be tedious to do, it’s essential that you build a well-crafted content strategy. This is because not only will you attract potential customers, but you also build a long and trusting relationship with them and potentially convert them into loyal brand advocates in the future.