A content marketing strategy is a schedule and plan for your content.
Here’s the thing: content marketing isn’t all about the content itself.
Before you even get to the content creation stage, you have to consider all the behind-the-scenes aspects of production and distribution.
That means juggling a lot of ideas, concepts, tasks, and creative processes.
But it can be more manageable than you think.
There are many stages of customer engagement, forming a funnel, from the first interaction a person has with your brand, to purchase.
Different types of content target customers at different stages in the funnel.
For example, some content is designed to introduce customers to your brand. This might be discovered through your blog; you’ll therefore need to incorporate keywords and phrases to make sure that your blog appears on the first few pages of Google.
This sort of content targets the awareness stage of the funnel.
Secondly, you have content for those who know about your existence, but have not yet been persuaded to make a purchase. Content that might target those in the consideration stage would include posting social proof on social media or gamification elements to incite involvement and urgency.
Other content is used to retain customers who’ve already made purchases. You might send emails with rewards and incentives for them to stick around. Another option is to send out regular newsletters, keeping them up-to-date.
This supports those in the post-purchase stage of the funnel.
Because each format serves a slightly different purpose and spurs a slightly different reaction in your audience, your content plan should always contain variety.
This is the way to make sure that your content complements your other efforts, at once drawing people in, and helping to retain them, as well as encouraging purchases.
It is important to note that content strategy ≠ content marketing itself.
Your content marketing strategy is the overarching plan for all your content, based on a specific goal. It forms the foundation for the content you create.
Content marketing, more broadly, refers to the specific activities and actions you take to reach that goal.
A content marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan covering three things: the vision, the direction, and the goals of your content marketing.
It’s not just a content plan, timetable, or schedule. It doesn’t just detail when you’ll post certain things.
Your content marketing strategy is an overarching vision for what you want to achieve with the content you create, as well as how and why you’re going to do that.
A good content marketing strategy encompasses:
This is perhaps the most important part of a content marketing strategy.
Any content you create must serve a purpose. Be it conversions, sales, sign-ups, leads, or awareness, each piece of content you create will have a different effect.
It must be tailored for the best chance of producing the desired effect.
Start by thinking about what your business needs most right now. This will be the bedrock of your marketing strategy, informing what you create and when you create it.
It’ll also help you to understand whether the content has been successful in the long run.
Generating personalised content leads to a 20% increase in sales opportunities.
But, to make it personal, you’ve got to know your audience. Therefore, a content marketing strategy must begin with a big question: ‘who are these guys, anyway?’
That includes asking yourself things like:
To produce an optimal content marketing strategy, you’ve got to determine which moment in a customers’ journey triggers their engagement the most.
You can then create content that aligns with this and give yourself the best possible chance of a positive interaction.
Communication is a key part of marketing, right?
Sure, you can post a pretty picture, but it makes no difference to your business’ success if that picture doesn’t communicate something to your audience. Maybe it sparks a fun conversation or clarifies some questions. Maybe it introduces newbies to the wonderful world of your brand.
Content marketing is the process of finding different ways to broach a conversation.
The content you post should provide an inroad for your customers to chat with you and vice versa. Your content marketing strategy is an opportunity for you to think about how you can touch base with your customers. What will be most beneficial for them and what will help you, as a business?
For example, content creation is a way to address common pain points, host conversations, maintain interest, and drive conversions.
Everything you post or share makes a difference. That’s why being strategic with it is crucial.
Different types of content are accessed on different devices, with different intentions, for different purposes.
Readability and optimisation are crucial as part of your content marketing strategy. Think about the different reasons that people might search for or come across your content.
You should also bear in mind the way that people scroll.
Desktop users have different needs and intentions from mobile users. You need to optimise the content you create for the device on which it’s most likely to be viewed.
That depends on who your goal audience is and where they spend the most time.
Thinking about how you’ll optimise across a range of devices should therefore be part of your content marketing strategy.
When strategising, it’s also worth paying attention to your content’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) features. This will benefit customers who find you via Search Engines by typing in queries and ideas on Google, for example.
Keywords are at the heart of this. You can use tools such as SemRush to help with your research. Zap also does a good job with SEO, and we can help optimise your website to draw people in from Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Traditional search engines like Google are not the only ones in existence anymore, either. Research shows that Gen Z use social media platforms (such as TikTok) as search engines.
Your content needs to be able to adapt to the times. Planning and researching these trends helps massively.
The way you distribute your content is key to your success.
‘Content distribution’ refers to:
There’s no point in doing your research and segmentation if you don’t use this information to create the optimal schedule for your audience’s particular viewing habits.
Building distribution plans into your content marketing strategy is step number one in making sure you optimise your content for individual audiences.
Remember: personalisation is important. It drives sales.
A big part of your content marketing strategy relates to the types of content you put out. Common content types are:
You can pick and choose which of these work best for your business, but you should choose a variety of different ones.
Relying solely on social media posts—while they can make a difference—isn’t going to accelerate your business any time soon. Neither is solely emailing out your newsletter and calling it a day.
The different forms of content complement one another. One will introduce people to your work, the next will increase awareness, then generate leads and conversions, and so on.
The more you post, the more you’re able to support customers long-term. It keeps communication open.
These will all be placed in your content marketing strategy, aligned with your goals and ideas.
It’s also worth factoring trends into your content marketing strategy. For example, a few years ago, your video content might have been a bit less important. But, as 90% of marketers use video, a percentage that is only increasing, it might now take more of a priority over other content. (PSA: Zap has some wonderful videographers who can help you with this!)
Did you know that your content marketing strategy doesn’t stop when the content is published?
Part of the strategy is pencilling in time to reflect and make changes. That’s what makes it strategic. It uses statistics, numbers, and metrics you have gathered to build on your successes.
Success will be measured against your goals, KPIs, and results, which you laid out at the start of your strategy. See how it all comes together nicely?
You need a content marketing strategy for three different reasons.
A robust strategy informs your actions, and keeps you organised: rather than just diving in and posting left-right-and-centre, you’ll be able to think about the bigger picture. This will ensure that all of your content is aligned with your business’s goals, voice, and tone.
Setting measurable goals early on means that the content you post is better placed to be complementary. The content will work together, driving each other towards different audiences to build secure foundations for your business.
Being strategic ensures that your schedule is efficient; you won’t post content that will simply get overlooked at inopportune times of day. It’s a great form of ad-targeting, which is always important
Content should serve a purpose for your customers, too.
To be successful in achieving your goals, your content has to be relevant, and interesting to your audience as individuals, as well as en masse.
This can be tricky to achieve, since every audience hosts a multitude of different personalities and demographics.
That’s why you have to factor in time to get to know your audience, and to work out which content suits them.
Planning and researching are crucial stages in content creation. Completing these to a high standard means you’re more likely to answer an audience’s questions and build a sense of trust, which will keep people coming back for more.
But research doesn’t work if you don’t have an endpoint in sight when you start.
Blindly firing out questions means that you won’t be able to tailor answers and findings into your content easily. If you have a good strategy, you can ask relevant questions to create relevant content.
Finally, a sturdy strategy helps you to be consistent.
Consistency with your brand voice and appearance helps people to recognise you at a glance. Meanwhile, consistency with schedule keeps customers interested.
90% of customers prefer consistent interactions across different sites and touchpoints. Remember, some customers might follow you on multiple platforms; being consistent will greatly improve their customer experience.
Algorithms are the be-all and end-all these days.
Successful businesses know how to get spotted in the busy world of the internet. They have fool-proof SEO techniques, which drive traffic to their websites, and they post consistently across all their platforms, which helps the algorithms push their content to relevant feeds.
Algorithms love consistency.
But consistency is difficult when you don’t have an end goal. It’s also hard when you don’t know what your audience is looking for.
By creating a good content marketing strategy, you know what you’re aiming for, what you’re posting, and whether it’s working, all at the same time.
Content marketing strategies can focus on different things:
These can somewhat overlap, but the first thing you should always consider is your goal.
The goals of marketing strategies can be summed up in four types.
This content is highly informational. Infographics and blog posts about industry trends are good examples. You should align your
business with these, so that when people search relevant keywords, they are introduced to you!
Generally, you want to build authenticity and trust here to get you off on the right foot.
Awareness content is also where brand storytelling comes in. Tell
Everyone who you are. Get them thinking about you. Live rent-free in their memories!
It’s good to consider trends when raising awareness. 95% of marketers say video marketing has helped them increase brand awareness.
The hardest part of awareness marketing is getting heard. If you can utilise the platforms people love most, that’s half the battle.
Your marketing strategy can help you to understand these trends AND support you to make use of them consistently.
Appealing to strangers and intriguing them to learn more about your business drives clicks and lead generation.
Ultimately, it’s all about connection with wider audiences.
Content marketing for attraction involves things like infographics, carousels, and blog posts.
Engaging content strategies look to boost the number of ways in which people physically interact with your business.
This includes first-time sales and sign-ups, but also increased customer lifetime value (CLV), and comments and interactions on social media.
Engaging content includes gamification of social media, livestreams or Q&As.
Lots of content works just to get people looking at your website. It works off the assumption that click-throughs will ultimately turn into sales. But that isn’t always the case.
People might search the right keywords to find your brand, and they might
click and have a quick read. But a lot of these crowds are there out of curiosity, rather than any desire to purchase.
Creating content to convert is a slightly different process.
It encompasses your calls to action, blog posts that use high-conversion keywords rather than general interest keywords, product demos, and certain user-led content.
Think about what your business needs right now.
Are sales not doing as well as you’d like? Or are you struggling with retention?
This will inform the type of content strategy you need to put together and the type of research you do.
There are lots of ways to research your audience.
We have articles galore on the topic! Some are here, on our blog, such as ‘What is A/B Testing and Can it Help with your Email Marketing?’, and are on our Knowledge Base.
The long and short of it is that you should ask your existing audience what they like to see and keep a note of things like:
You can use the information above to help you.
Each platform and each type of content has a slightly different purpose, and can yield a slightly different effect on your audience.
This requires working with SEO tools and sites like Reddit, for example. It helps you to see the different things people want to see, the questions they are asking, and how you could answer them.
Prioritise those topics with high engagement potential.
This will include headings such as:
Content marketing doesn’t stop when you press ‘post’ or ‘send’. You have to think about how you’re going to compound your efforts and have your voice heard. Retaining customers also comes into it.
Are you going to run complementary posts about your content on social media? Mention it in your newsletter?
Finally, build a stage of your strategy for using analytics tools. You’ll need
to think about what’s gone well and what you need to improve on.
If you do this, you can only get stronger!
If you’re confused by any stage of this blog post, that’s totally fine. Building a content marketing strategy which works for you is always a process.
It is, however, a process which the folk over at Zap have a lot of experience with.
Need content inspiration and ideas? Got questions that require a touch more TLC? Get in touch today.
We’d be zappy to help!
