In-Depth Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

Must have heard a lot that content marketing is important but do you know why? If not, then have a look at these stats below:

• As of 2020, 89% of content marketers used blog posts as their main content strategy.
• In 2021, marketing spending is projected to grow by 14%.
• About 40% of marketers consider content marketing a very crucial part than other marketing strategies.
• Approximately, 94% of marketers use their social media handle to distribute content.
• To measure the success of content marketing, around 67% of businesses/companies utilize organic traffic.

Content Marketing Strategy is vital for every business to obtain goals and become successful. Moreover, in this competitive era, businesses put huge efforts to make substantial investments in building content marketing plans. However, there are many who still underestimate the power of marketing and strategizing.

The perks of a content marketing strategy can never be matched with anything. In order to gain great brand recognition, traffic, and leads, a content marketing strategy is a must. In fact, content marketing is now an essential part of every brand’s or business’s marketing strategy.

In this article, let’s discuss an in-depth guide to content marketing strategy. Let’s get started!

Elements of a Content Marketing Strategy

There are 4 elements of content marketing strategy:

#1. Brand Positioning

Brand positioning has been defined by Kotler as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market”.

A very vital element of content marketing strategy is brand positioning. When a brand and product are positioned correctly, it becomes easy to target the right audience.

Moreover, this enhances the user experience. Success has a lot to do with how many people are aware of your brand. It is impossible to be successful in the marketplace unless a company has established a brand position.

Basically, brand positioning refers to how a company differentiates itself from competitors by owning a place in the minds of potential customers.

• Who are my existing and potential customers?
• What kind of experience are they looking for?
• What is the competitive landscape?
• How do my top competitors market their brands?
• What is my brand’s unique value?
• What problems does my product help to solve?
• What makes you a better choice than my competitors?
• How can I highlight my brand’s personality?

#2. Owned Media Value Proposition

The term owned media refers to digital marketing channels that a business controls entirely, including its own branded website and social media presence. Your trademark as a credible content publisher depends upon your owned media value proposition.

To identify your editorial niche, you should conduct research on your audience to understand what type of information they are seeking and what sources they prefer. Next, analyze your competitors’ content strategies.

#3. Business Case

It is very important to cater to services that the target audience desire throughout. In addition, it is also necessary to keep the audience engaged to drive the business forward. And, it can be easily possible with a well-planned content marketing strategy.

However, it is vital to first identify the desired business goals, then planning how content marketing strategies can help you obtain those goals. Also, consider the resources that would be required to achieve the objective. In such a scenario, a written business plan is always beneficial and helps attain goals more effectively.

#4. Strategic Plan

From the start, strategy is a must as it helps you acquire the business objectives effectively and efficiently. A strategic business plan helps you keep track of every detail step by step.

Moreover, a documented plan helps to take necessary actions on time that further helps to obtain huge success.

“Without strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff.”
– Arjun Basu

Steps to Create Content Strategy Plan

A brief theoretical, as well as practical knowledge, is necessary to make a complete content marketing strategist plan. In addition, make business plans for the long term as it helps to focus on goals, forecast challenges, and allot available resources effectively to achieve success.

Below, we have shared the steps involved in creating a full content marketing strategy plan. Have a look to build your own business content marketing plan:

Step #1. Audit Content

It is a must point to consider always from start to middle and middle to end. A simple content audit can help you savor a lot of benefits. Also, this simple strategy can help you effortlessly stand out amongst your competitors and win in the business race.

The major reason why the content audit is important is that there are millions of options available in the market out there. However, there are very few on the top of the list that rules the customer base. How? The mystery behind this is that the top businesses’ content matches with the customer’s query or concern.

Step #2. Establish Goals

In order to achieve business goals, it is a must to establish business objectives. However, there are criteria to be followed step by step to create goals.

When milestones are set, it becomes easy to achieve them. On the other hand, it’s quite impossible to obtain a goal that is unclear. Basically, a vision alone without any planning is considered a waste of time.

Step #3. Determine Audience

Another important aspect of content marketing strategy is determining the target audience. Many businesses don’t correctly target their audience. As a result, they fail even after putting in a lot of effort.

When a business targets the audience correctly, then it’s easy to strategize and execute the plan. This process further renders great outcomes that further help to succeed in the market.

Step #4. Build An Editorial Plan

A simple step in planning every step to obtain success can do big wonders. Still, there are people who underestimate the power of content marketing planning.

The best advantage of strategizing is that it allows you to allocate the available resources. It also helps to utilize the resources properly. You can also check which plan or strategy worked and which didn’t, then you can accordingly modify the plan if needed to receive desired outcomes.

Step #5. Plan Content Production

Before you start working on any content marketing strategy or production, make sure you know the purpose of each content or plan. Also, ensure that the content covers every aspect of the customer’s requirements from start to end of the journey.

This process helps to maintain a healthy customer relationship. There are various stages involved that need to be covered when planning content production. For e.g. Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, Advocacy. However, there are many other factors that should also be considered as neglecting a single vital factor can cost a lot.

Step #6. Plan Content Distribution

As discussed above, owned media is one of the major aspects of content marketing planning. For a business, Facebook or Instagram, etc. present the basic elements of content distribution. To boost your content distribution, you can consider these points. Create Omni channels, identify relevant channels, social media posting, etc.

Step #7. Analyze Your Content Performance

Putting efforts to achieve business goals or success is undoubtedly important as well as necessary. However, analyzing the efforts timely is also equally important and necessary.

Basically, it helps to check the performance of the content. It means that you will get to know which content did great in the market and which couldn’t. Later, with the content analysis, you can make amendments to obtain the goal.

Main Form Of Media Used For Content Marketing

The most traditional form of content or media is text; however, presently there are many forms available in the market. Moreover, nowadays, users are quite bored with text media.

On the contrary, these days, users are more driven towards non-text media forms such as images, video, GIF, infographic, ebooks/kindle, blog/article, case studies, white papers, etc.

These forms of media are very popular and highly in trend for content marketing strategy as people are loving it. This way, it’s very interesting to find the information. Moreover, it’s time-saving, convenient, and fascinating.

What Content Marketing Strategy Determines?

• What you’re trying to accomplish – Goal/Objective
• Who you’re trying to reach – Target Audience
• What types of content you’ll publish – Niche
• How your content will support the brand – Awareness
• The ways in which your content will be differentiated – USP (Unique Selling Point)
• How you will promote and amplify your content – Marketing/Advertising
• The metrics that define success – Benchmark

In a Nutshell

Without planning or strategy, success or failure is just a matter of luck. For some, planning is giving great results. On the other hand, some are happy without planning as their luck is supportive. However, with luck, you cannot go a long way.

Therefore, planning every step to relish the taste of success is crucial. There are many businesses that feel overwhelmed about where to begin the process of content marketing as it’s quite complex. Not to worry, consider this article to get over all your content marketing strategy-related concerns.

Since content serves as a magnet, never underestimate the power of good content marketing because it’s presently the best tool to convert leads and generate more revenue. Moreover, re-checking the marketing strategies never hurts.

In fact, it often caters to bigger outcomes. Content marketing is also considered as the first step up in the competition. In order to create effective content marketing, you must identify the questions, desires, pain points, and challenges that drive your audience to action.

About the Author!

Sahil Sachdeva is a tech blogger and a content strategist currently engaged in projects for BootesNull, a well-known software & web development company. He carries valuable experience in the respective industry.