How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide

Every brand needs a good content marketing strategy. Now, what is a content marketing strategy you may ask? A content marketing strategy is a well structured content plan that enables you to successfully reach your business objectives, keeping your target audience (TA) interested.

Before creating a content marketing strategy, you must identify which content strategy your brand will need—this could be a digital content marketing strategy, an SEO content marketing strategy, or even a blog marketing strategy. After identifying the right content marketing strategy for your brand, you must review the four key components before creating the content marketing strategy: 

1. How is your brand positioned? What is your unique tone of voice and why is your brand better than your competitors?
2. What is your brand value? How much value do you offer your audience with the content you’ll be posting and how does this content differ from other creators?
3. What are your business aims? How will your content strategy bring you within reach of your overall business objectives?
4. What is your strategic plan? Who are your target audience, how will you deliver your content, and how will you document and analyse your results?

Developing a content marketing strategy

After understanding how the first four steps impact your brand, it’s time to execute a more detailed plan of your brand’s content marketing strategy. 

Step one: Review your brand’s current content. Which posts are gaining the most engagement and which posts aren’t getting much engagement—you will want to generate content related to the higher engaged posts.

Step two: Develop clear content marketing aims. What is your long-term aim and what are your short term aims? Once your brand has clear goals in mind, there will be nothing stopping your drive and motivation to nail a content marketing strategy.

Step three: Who will be consuming your content? Who is your brand’s target audience? Your content must be relevant to the entirety of your target audience, not just one consumer. Providing a range of content and platforms will assist your mission to target your entire audience.

Step four: Think about the issue your brand is solving, the content you’re posting must highlight the problem you aim to solve. The content should amplify the solutions, gaining trust from your target audience.

Step five: With your brand’s solution in mind, you must think about how this allows your brand to stand out from their competitors. Once identified, let your customers know what makes your product unique compared to your competitors, this will set your brand up as more appealing – your USP could even be a tone of voice that creates differentiation 

Step six: Identify which content formats you’ll be using to promote your brand—the choice must target the social channels your audience uses most. Once the content formats are chosen, begin to produce a budget in order to carry out your strategy. Whether it’s an SEO content marketing strategy or a blog content strategy, you need to produce the correct content in order to optimize money and time.

Step seven: Identify which channels you’ll post content to—these channels must be the dominant channels your target audience use. For example, TikTok is for a younger audience.

Step eight: Before posting, make it clear who will create what, which platform it will be posted onto and when will the live date be. You’ll need a clear assigned team to ensure the process is smooth and successful. With the dedicated team, a content calendar must be created to ensure the right content goes onto the right platforms. 

Now that everything is planned, content can now be produced, promoting your brand’s key message within the content. You’ll be able to now reinforce your brand’s tone of voice consistently with a solid content marketing strategy.

FAQ’s

What is an example of a content strategy?

Travel Planner is a travel agency for newly wed couples, helping them select the right honeymoon for them. They developed a marketing content strategy through identifying their target audience – grooms (primary) and brides (secondary), viewing the primary audience’s main problem – the groom seeks a stress-free honeymoon. With research and planning, Travel Planner then offered 3 different pieces of content which provided a solution to the groom’s problem. An example of their content was ‘15 unique, non-cliche Honeymoon Ideas’. A good marketing content strategy will always solve their TA’s problems or needs, generating unique content that allows them to stand out against their competitors. 

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