Whether you’re new to content marketing or have been using the same strategy for a while, never fail to examine your content strategy plan and make sure it’s up-to-date, unique, and engaging for your prospects and consumers – regardless of when or how they intend to buy.
Read this article about A Complete Guide to Content Marketing Strategies in 2024 if you’re having problems planning for the future year 2024 or if you’re looking for some new ideas to incorporate into your plan.
What is Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing is a strategy for producing, publishing, and promoting valuable content to current and potential customers. Its importance can be measured in terms of humor, education, knowledge, entertainment, or inspiration, and it can be composed of:
- Blogs
- Videos
- Newsletters
- Guides
- eBooks
- Social media posts
- Podcasts
- Courses
- Infographics
- Case studies
- Webinars
The first and simplest step is to create content. Next, it’s time to publish and promote. It doesn’t matter how amazing your content is (or how much it costs) if nobody ever sees it.
Depending on your content and budget, you might drive pay-per-click (PPC) ads or email marketing campaigns to your high-value content pieces. SEO is an influential driver, too, often sitting as the highest (or second-highest) revenue source for businesses.
Assume that one of your company’s objectives is to raise brand recognition. To do this, you may execute an SEO-focused content strategy to improve your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and generate visitors to your products or services.
Source: Contently
Early on, new business owners may believe that a content strategy is a nice-to-have but not essential. Producing high-quality content, on the other hand, maybe extremely beneficial in terms of establishing trust with new audiences and achieving long-term success.
Let’s assume that one of your company’s objectives is to raise brand recognition. To do so, you may adopt an SEO-focused content strategy to boost your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract visitors to your products or services.
A content strategy may seem like a nice-to-have, but it isn’t crucial for new businesses. Producing high-quality content, on the other hand, can be extremely beneficial in terms of gaining new audiences’ trust and long-term success.
The following are the reasons why 82 percent of businesses utilize content marketing:
- It is 62% less cheap than regular marketing.
- Traditional marketing generates three times as many leads as content marketing (per dollar spent)
- Consumption of content on a global scale continues to rise.
- It could be limitless.
- It has the potential to pay off in the long run.
Without a strategy, content marketing may be costly. Partnering with a big-name influencer and producing buckets of high-quality videos can quickly deplete your marketing budget. We want to assist you in taking a bootstrapped strategy that is just as effective (though more strategic).
Fortunately, you don’t need a large budget or a world-class video marketing team to establish a lead-generating, money-making content marketing plan. All it takes is a little hustle and know-how.
We’ll walk you through all you need to know about creating a content marketing funnel that will help you grow your business in the sections below. We’ll also throw in some pointers, examples, and things to think about to help you fine-tune your plan.
Why Content Marketing Strategy is Important?
Companies can use content marketing to plan for sustainable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads.
If you can write only one blog post with consistent organic traffic, an embedded link to a free e-book or tool will continue to generate leads for you over time.
Bonus Read: 17 Amazing Content Research Tools For SEO
Your great content will generate a steady stream of visitors and leads, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
Furthermore, your material will not only assist you to get leads but will also educate your prospects and raise brand recognition.
How To Create a Content Strategy Framework
- Define your objective.
- Conduct persona research
- Conduct a content audit
- Decide on a content management system.
- Decide what kind of material you’d like to make.
- Ideas for content brainstorming
- Manage and publish your content
Now let’s go into the details of how to develop a content marketing strategy.
Source:visual.ly
1. Define Your Purpose
What are your goals for creating a content marketing strategy? What motivates you to create content and develop a content marketing strategy?
You’ll have a simpler time deciding what’s best for your approach if you know your goals before you start planning.
2. Conduct a Persona Analysis
You must precisely define your content’s target audience — also known as your buyer persona — to create a successful plan.
This is especially true for people who are just getting started in marketing. You can create more relevant and valuable content that your target audience will want to read and convert on if you know who they are.
Your objective may have shifted if you’re a seasoned marketer. Do you wish to expand your current market or reach out to a new demographic? Do you want to maintain the same target audience? You should conduct market research every year to evaluate your audience’s qualities to expand your audience.
3. Conduct a Content Analysis
Most businesses begin with blog posts. You can undertake a content audit to examine your top-performing and lowest-performing material if you wish to branch out into new formats. Then, based on that information, decide which path to go next.
If you’ve been in the company for a while, take a look back at your content marketing efforts and results from the previous year.
Determine what you can do differently in the coming year and set new objectives for yourself. Now is an excellent time to match your team’s objectives with those of your corporation.
A content audit will assist you in determining what connects best with your audience and identifying holes in your topic clusters, regardless of where you are in the process.
4. Decide on a Content Management System
Content generation, content dissemination, and content analytics are all important aspects of content management.
You want to invest in a content management system (CMS) so that you can easily develop, manage, and track your material.
5. Decide What Kind of Material You’d Like to Make
There are several types of material you can develop, ranging from written content such as ebooks and blog posts to audio content such as podcasts.
In the next section, we’ll go over some of the most common content formats used by marketers, as well as some tools and templates to help you get started.
6. Come Up with Content Ideas
Now is the time to start brainstorming content ideas for your next project.
Top 6 Content Marketing Tools for 2024
1. Feedly
The Feedly RSS feed is a great method to keep up with trending subjects in your sector while also getting content ideas.
You start by telling the software what topics you’re most interested in, and its artificial intelligence (AI) will handle the rest.
You won’t have to browse the web for new article ideas anymore. You can instead read through your curated list, which you’ve built from news sources, newsletters, and social media.
2. BuzzSumo
Do you want to find out what’s hot in terms of content and content ideas? This organization offers a variety of market research techniques, one of which analyses social media shares to determine how popular and well-liked a piece of content is.
This data aids you in determining which content ideas might be successful if you were to build content around them.
3. Blog About
Use IMPACT’s blog title generator to get your creative juices flowing. This program operates in a similar way to Mad Libs, however instead of joke lines, it displays typical headline forms with blanks for you to fill in the subject of your choice.
This kind of brainstorming allows you to place basic thoughts in situations that will appeal to your target audience. Once you’ve found a headline that you like,
4. Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule
HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator will provide you with blog post ideas for an entire year. Simply add basic subjects or terms that you’d like to write about, and this content idea generator will do the rest.
This program evaluates headlines and titles for length, word choice, grammar, and keyword search volume, among other factors.
Run a few title ideas through the Headline Analyzer if you have an idea in mind to see how you can improve it and move your concept forward in the brainstorming process.
5. Website Grader by HubSpot
When you want to see where you stand with your website and SEO efforts, this is an excellent tool to use. The Website Grader assigns you a grade based on key aspects of your website’s performance and provides you with a thorough report to help you improve.
You can use this tool to determine how to make your website more SEO-friendly and identify areas for development.
Publish and Manage Your Content
Your marketing strategy should include not only the types of content you’ll create but also how you’ll organize it.
You’ll be on the right track for producing a well-balanced and diverse content library on your website if you use an editorial schedule. Then, to promote and manage your material on other sites, develop a social media content schedule.
Many of the suggestions you make will stand the test of time (i.e.: just as relevant months or years from now as they are today). Having said that, you should not ignore current events. They may not make up the majority of your editorial calendar, but they can help you produce traffic surges.
Most individuals plan their marketing efforts around famous holidays like New Year’s, but you don’t have to stick to these essential marketing dates.
If there are niche holidays that might appeal to your audience, it could be worth publishing content on your blog or social media
Is Content Marketing Strategy Template Necessary?
Make yourself a fresh content marketing strategy template so you don’t get lost in the flood of content and context that needs to be delivered in a month. Include readings and activities in your template to help you fine-tune and develop a good plan.
Put these suggestions into action:
- Come up with content ideas.
- Make pillar pages and subject clusters.
- Make your stuff more visible.
- Repurpose your content to meet your specific requirements.
Source: sketchbubble
Examples of Content Marketing Strategies
Let’s look at some instances of real-life content strategies based on a few different business goals to better grasp what a content strategy is.
To give you an example, Evernote, a note-taking program, created an SEO-driven content strategy to attract new visitors to their website.
I’m a big fan of Evernote’s blog, which has a lot of useful information about productivity. The blog piece, How To Stay Disciplined When Things Get Tough, made me laugh out loud – and prompted me to pick up a notepad and jot down some of the most useful advice.
Bonus Read: How Content Marketing Can Help To Achieve Digital Marketing Goals
But why is a note-taking app manufacturer writing about discipline?
Because when I Googled “How to be disciplined,” I came across their website.
People who are interested in reading information about productivity are also likely to be interested in Evernote’s note-taking app.
On the other hand, if Evernote’s marketing team merely published content to increase traffic – such as releasing “Our 10 Favorite Beyonce Songs” – it wouldn’t be considered a content strategy at all, but simply content.
Content must be aligned with company objectives in a plan. In the instance of Evernote, the strategy connects content with the company’s goal of attracting leads.
Let’s look at another case study to show how a smart content strategy might aid sales enablement.
Consider the case below: A potential customer calls Wistia’s sales department with queries about the company’s video hosting service. As the Wistia sales agent interacts with her, he discovers that her company uses a few different products, including Intercom, to convert leads into sales. Following the call, the sales representative sends the prospect a follow-up email with a link to a blog post on Wistia’s integration with Intercom, which allows Intercom users to personalize messages to prospects based on Wistia video-watching statistics.
This is an excellent illustration of how a content strategy can be used as a sales enablement tool.
On the surface, it may appear strange that Wistia contains information dedicated to another company’s tool. On the other hand, this content is a fantastic resource for Wistia’s sales team, especially when prospects have queries. addressing Wistia’s solution utilization of existing tools or techniques
Now that we’ve looked at a few different content strategies, let’s look at the different types of content marketing assets you may create.
Types of Content Marketing Formats in 2024
These are the eight most common sorts of content marketing for your readers and consumers that you can develop.
1. Blog Posts
If you haven’t noticed, you’re currently reading a blog post.
A website’s blog postings are permanent and should be updated regularly to attract new visitors.
Posts should supply your audience with quality content that encourages them to share them on social media and other websites.
Blog entries should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words long, but you should test to discover whether your readership prefers longer or shorter reads.
Always work to enhance your own blog’s standard by publishing excellent how-to, listicle, curation, SlideShare presentation, and newsjacking entries.
2. Ebooks
Ebooks are lead-generating resources that website visitors can download after submitting their contact information on a lead form. They’re usually lengthier, more detailed, and published less regularly than blog postings, which are meant to draw people to a website.
However, ebooks aren’t just for the top of the funnel.
Nora Leary, Growth Director at Ironpaper suggestions about ebook:
“Ebooks serve distinct objectives at different points in the buyer’s journey,” says Nora Leary, Growth Director at Ironpaper, Inc.
“As prospects examine their needs more fully, ebooks may convert leads in the funnel by presenting them with relevant information,” Leary adds. Here’s where an ebook could come in handy.
“As prospects assess their needs more fully, ebooks can convert leads in the funnel by offering them useful materials,” Leary continues. This type of ebook might go deeper into a problem and potential solutions, as well as provide templates or calculators.
Finally, as you progress down the funnel, ebooks should become more personalized and include more sales content. At this point, comparison guidelines or a case study ebook will be beneficial to prospects.”
The next step in the inbound marketing strategy is ebooks: Visitors may seek additional information after reading a blog post like this one.
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3. Case Studies
A case study allows you to share a customer story while also establishing credibility.
A case study is one of the most adaptable types of content marketing because it may take many various forms, some of which are listed below. Case studies might be written as a blog post, an ebook, a podcast, or even an infographic.
The idea is to show how your product has helped real-world businesses prosper. You should decide which business sector you’re seeking to deliver value to before choosing a customer for a case study.
4. Pre-made templates
Templates are a great example of effective content marketing because they generate leads while also providing amazing value to your audience.
Your audience will be more inclined to engage with your content in the future if you provide them with template tools to help them save time and succeed.
5. Infographics
Data may be organized and visualized more compellingly with infographics than with words alone.
These are excellent content formats to employ if you need to convey a large amount of information clearly and understandably.
6. Videos
Videos are a popular form of material that can be shared across social media platforms and websites.
Videos need more time and money than written material, but because visual content continues to provide a high return on investment, it’s a medium worth investigating.
7. Podcasts
If your audience doesn’t have time or inclination to read material every day, start a podcast to assist them to discover your business.
The number of people who listen to podcasts is increasing: in 2021, the number of people who listen to podcasts in the United States increased by 10% year over year.
Consider podcasting as another content option to try if you have intriguing people to interview or conversations to host.
8. Social Media
Start thinking about a social media strategy to share your material on social media if you’ve been routinely generating content on your site for a while.
Bonus Read: Content Writing Tips For Social Media Marketing
You may repurpose your content into different formats and develop original content for each channel in addition to sharing it.
Social media posting is critical for expanding your brand’s reach and offering material to your customers where they spend their time. Some of the most prominent social media platforms are as follows:
- Snapchat
- YouTube
When creating a business account on any of the social media platforms listed above, be sure your material is appropriate for the platform.
Users on Instagram, for example, desire visually appealing images. You have a lot of options with feeds, IGTV, and Stories. TikTok, on the other hand, caters to a younger market that is interested in a short-form video that is current, entertaining, and creative.
Conduct market research to determine which platforms your buyers use, and tailor your content to meet their needs.
An effective content marketing plan takes time, organization, and creativity to develop. Setting up your content marketing strategy for the new year, from laying the groundwork to adding tools to better manage your material, won’t be a bother if you follow these steps.
Should You Hire a Content Marketing Agency?
Doesn’t this all sound like a lot of work? Wouldn’t it be easier to just outsource all of this to a content marketing agency?
Hiring an agency is a possibility, but you must exercise caution (and be realistic). Many content marketing firms overpromise and underdeliver.
We want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck with your content marketing budget, so here are a few things to check for before you sign any paperwork:
Business Knowledge:
Your content marketing agency should be well-versed in your industry. A firm that mostly works with retail marketing firms will struggle to sell your software as a service (SaaS) solution. They may try to persuade you that it’s simple for them to research and understand, but you should look for an agency that has firms that are similar (but not competitors) to yours.
Case Studies:
Inquire about samples of work they’ve done for other companies, as well as (more crucially) the outcomes they’ve achieved. Finally, you want more visitors, leads, sales, and money, not more content. Some businesses can create fantastic content but lack the marketing know-how to get it in front of the right people.
Healthy shot of Realism:
It’s fantastic for a content marketing agency to want to reach for the stars, but realistic expectations and goals are also necessary. Ascertain that they can put their money where their mouth is and achieve what they say they will. You want weekly or monthly reports to know where they’ve spent their time and what they’ve accomplished. You might find that after months and thousands of dollars, you’ve made little to no progress if you don’t have that responsibility.
That’s why we survive for a long in this digital marketing field. EchoVme is here to bring solutions to your problem, check out our Digital Marketing Agency to know more about the service we provide.
Things To Know When Developing a Content Strategy
Let’s dive into those, now.
1. Who is going to read your content?
Who is your content’s intended audience? How many diverse types of people do you target with your content?
Your content strategy, like your business, can appeal to a variety of users.
You can distribute material that is personalized to each persona by using several content types and channels.
2. For your audience(s), what problem will you be solving?
your product or service solves an issue that your target market is already aware of. Similarly, your content will guide and educate your audience as they begin to realize and face the problem.
People on both sides of your product benefit from a smart content strategy: those who are still figuring out what their main problems are and those who are already using your solution to solve them.
Your content helps you develop credibility with your target audience by highlighting the solution you’re offering.
3. What differentiates you from others?
Because your competitors’ products are almost certainly identical to yours, potential customers will want to know what sets yours apart.
The fact that your company has been around for a long time is perhaps your most important asset. Maybe you have a unique brand voice that distinguishes you from the competition.
You must demonstrate why you are worth buying from and listen to get others to buy from you. Once you’ve figured it out, incorporate it into your article.
4. On what types of content would you concentrate your efforts?
You must meet your audience where they are to determine which formats to focus on.
While you may be tempted to establish a podcast or a YouTube channel due to their current popularity, first determine where your target audience resides.
Otherwise, you can squander time generating content that doesn’t reach or engage your target audience.
Once you’ve determined the ideal formats, start planning a budget to see what resources you’ll need to put this approach into action.
5. How will you distribute your content?
You’ll be able to publish to a variety of channels, from your website to social media, just as you may develop content in a variety of formats.
This, too, will represent your target audience’s location. YouTube is an excellent place to start if your target audience appreciates long-form video material. If you have a younger audience who enjoys fast-paced material, TikTok and Instagram are wonderful possibilities.
In the step-by-step tutorial that follows this article, we’ll go over social media content strategy in further detail.
6. How will you handle content creation and delivery?
It can be difficult to figure out how you’ll develop and distribute all of your material.
It’s critical to establish the following before you begin:
- What is being created by whom?
- Where is it going to be published?
- it’s ready to go live or not!.
Conclusion
An effective content marketing plan takes time, organization, and creativity to develop. Setting up your content marketing strategy for the new year won’t be a bother if you follow the steps and explore the resources provided, from laying the groundwork for your approach to adding tools to better manage your material.
Bonus Read: Much more interested to learn digital marketing?
Check out the online digital marketing course from Digital Scholar to learn content marketing in-depth in live classes with certifications and paid internships.
