Content marketing inevitably requires a strategic approach or a plan in order to be successful. The fact that relevant content is so crucial in different marketing tactics and for customer experience, it requires a more coordinated, planned and collaborative approach than many businesses have.
Whether you are new to
content marketing or doing it for a long time, you need a strategy with goals and ways to achieve them. A content marketing strategy is about knowing the WHY and the HOW. There are some important questions that need to be answered before you act out on your plan.
Answer these four questions. If you have or can come up with good answers, chances are you are going to have better success with your content marketing program.
Q.1 What is the Problem?
The best content marketing programs address a clearly defined problem or a challenge. Whether it is sales, lack of awareness of your brand or customers are not certain how your products can help them, you need to define it in the beginning.
A clearly defined problem to solve brings clarity to your content marketing purpose. It gives you the reason behind using
content marketing in the first place. Without a well-defined purpose for content marketing, you won’t be able to target the right problem and consequently find the right solution.
As a result, your content the team lacks focus and team members will incorporate fill in the gaps with their own agenda, ideas, or content.
Q.2 Do You Have the Right Tools?
If you are investing in the field of content marketing, you need the right tools to deliver and track your content to make sure you reach the right audience.
You need to keep in mind to not get lost in the hunt for the perfect tool. There is no perfect tool. If you are just learning about this space, get advice from someone who has been in the filed for a long time. Focus on the tools you need, not the ones you want. Your budget and implementation timing is the main deciding factor of choosing the tools.
Basic tools you should have: Email platform, Website platform, CRM platform, and Marketing Automation.
Q.3 Do You Have the Right Team?
The content creation process isn’t easy, you need people in your team who are curious, dynamic, and who can overcome obstacles. Hire your content marketing team members on what skills are required first or most. We generally see content teams fall into the following structures below:
• Content Manager- Develops the primary content marketing strategy
• Content Writer- Who generates the content
• Content Editor- Helps ensure content quality and consistency
• Content Distributor - Posting content on the appropriate channels
Many small businesses don’t have the budget for an entire content marketing team and have only one person focusing on content. Regardless of the structure, you choose, formalizing the organization of your content marketing team will help you create a more efficient
content marketing strategy that will provide the desired results.
Q.4 Does the Content Drive your Customers?
In the past, marketing determined what messages were most important. Modern content marketers know the best approach is to follow what the audience is looking for.
Today, content marketing is influenced and sometimes even dictated by your audience.
You need to consider giving up the control of your content. Your content should fill a need. You need to engage with your customers in order to understand what they need help with.
Make sure your content marketing team understands the importance of creating customer-centric content, not promotional or product-focused content.
In Conclusion
Content marketing is challenging and can not be done on impulse. It requires a long-term commitment. You may witness some success in your first couple of months. However, don’t expect anything big, and certainly, don’t promise anything you can’t deliver.
If you’re leading a content marketing program, getting your team to understand that it takes time to show results will be paramount to your success. Set aggressive but achievable goals.
At Cogniter Technologies, we provide authoritative and powerful
content marketing strategy and services in India or abroad for our clients by developing the best content for your website and product. We are a content marketing agency with the expertise to create content for businesses in virtually any industry and of any size, from small and mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies.
Write to us at consultation@cogniter.com and let's talk about your product.
