Content marketing is now a key element of the marketing strategy of many companies. Audiences expect valuable, personalised content to help them make a purchase decision. Why else is it worth planning and implementing a content marketing strategy in your company?
Fill in the gaps in your strategy
Providing users with interesting content may seem obvious during marketing activities, but not all companies have a properly planned strategy. Ad hoc actions will not help to achieve the expected conversion and significantly affect the company’s sales results. The marketing strategy should be thoroughly planned and implemented step by step. Content marketing must deliver value to the recipient while generating purchasing needs. The most important step towards an effective strategy is to create a marketing persona, i.e. a model of a representative of the target group. The better we get to know our audience, the easier it will be to build relationships and deliver value to them. A marketing persona allows us to recognize the way in which a potential customer makes purchasing decisions, and even when an intention to buy is born.
Appoint a content marketing leader
To move to the next level in content marketing, you need to appoint a leader who will manage all activities within the department. A good content marketing strategy is not the result of hasty content creation and random selection of topics. It should rely on a document that will enable the implementation of individual tasks step by step. Without the suitable marketing team structure, you can waste your budget. The manager should ensure a good flow of information and efficient cooperation of the marketing department. The roles and responsibilities of individual employees should be well defined. Marketing teams have a huge impact on a company’s sales performance, operating in many fields – from generating demand to engaging customers at every stage of the sales funnel.
Use modern tools
New technologies support content marketing campaigns, allowing you to achieve impressive results. One of the most effective tools is marketing automation, which allows you to customize marketing communication with the audience and provide them with content in appropriate channels. The marketing automation tool allows you to collect data about users, create their behavioural profiles, and then use them in automated content marketing campaigns. However, it should be borne in mind that marketing automation will not work without proper configuration of the tool, supervision and marketing strategy.
Combine your content promotion strategy
The most successful marketing strategies use different types of media to communicate with your audience, including owned, earned and paid options. Owned media include all the channels that belong to the company, such as a website, social media profiles, company blogs or newsletters. Own content can be promoted by paid media, i.e. paid advertising, most often settled in the PPC model, as well as sponsored articles or promotional activities in social media. Earned media are the content generated by users, e.g. comments, memes and gifs related to the brand, reviews about products or opinions about the company. The amount of content published can determine brand recognition. In content marketing, all the above types of media are used, but owned media are considered the most effective.
Determine the right metrics to measure
In all marketing activities, including content marketing, it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of activities. In the analysis of the effectiveness of articles, key factors will be such as the number of views, time spent on the page, the number of returning users, the number of pages per session, bounce rate and CTR in the CTA of the article. In the case of earned media, i.e. the publication of content on external sites, it is important to identify which sites generate the most traffic. It is also worth measuring content marketing in relation to organic traffic, i.e. SEO. When creating content on your own website, you should pay attention to such metrics as the amount of traffic on the website over time, the CTR of individual keywords in search results and the position of the page in search results (e.g. TOP 3, TOP 10). To effectively measure the results of your campaign, it is worth using the available tools, such as marketing automation or Google Analytics.
