Marketing plans are a loaded question. In my career I’ve seen the most robust and well thought out marketing plans fail and seen some of the simple, most grass roots marketing strategies pay off huge and push a brand forward. The truth is that while it seems random, it’s not.
We’re going to get into everything and help you engineer your business to new heights with a content marketing plan that makes sense.
What is content marketing?
In a word: everything. Content marketing is any information, story or other media you share with your audience. SEO blog post? That’s content marketing. Social media post? That’s content marketing. Podcast about the industry your business is a part of? That’s content marketing. The truth is any time you communicate with your ideal audience that’s content marketing.
So the first step here is to get out of this mindset that many have. It’s not just written. It’s not just SEO. It spans the spectrum of channels for your audience.
Why is content marketing important?
How you choose to communicate with your audience/customer is the most important thing. Every interaction you have, every opportunity you get to share information with them is a building block in that relationship. Say something offensive and you destroy those blocks you were building. Say something that resonates with them (even the trivial like pricing) and you’re adding another block back.
Maybe it’s an e-guide to help them do something better? Maybe it’s a social media post celebrating a win in the company? Maybe it’s an SEO blog that answers a common question they have. Maybe it’s a podcast that discusses the founders journey. All of these things are possible and how you do them is important. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
What are the elements of a great content marketing plan?
I’ll break them down for you here so pay attention:
- Know your audience. Not just where they are online but who they are. What do they care about and what motivates them? Selling a $10 pair of socks and a $5 million dollar house may have very different customers. They may value different things and my expect different from your business.
- Know the channels that can convey your message to your audience. Is your product visual? If so them maybe you want to focus on IG and TikTok because they allow you to show things more easily than a blog or email. Do you sell a service because maybe an email or LinkedIn post provides more value.
- Know your customer through each phase of the journey. What is the persona and mindset of a person who is ready to buy your product or service? What about the person a little bit further away from that step? What about the person who doesn’t even know they want your product or service yet.
Think about a car dealer. The conversation they have with someone who is in need of a car this week is different than someone who is just mulling the idea of buying something in the next month. How you talk to different people at different stages matters.
How to create a content marketing strategy
So this is important and useful:
- Outline the funnel. Where are your people at Stage 1(furthest away) Stage 2(closer) and Stage 3(closest). Who are they at each stage?
- Where are they likely to find you at each stage? If they don’t know you exist then where are they hanging out? If they are Stage 3 it’s likely they have been to your website or are on the email list. Those people can be treated differently and targeted with ads or personalized emails, for instance.
If you can figure out these things it’s going to help you immensely. I recommend spending 70% of your time on Stage 3 and 20% on Stage 2 and the last 10% on Stage 1.
How to develop content topics
This is pretty easy. If you know your customer and where they are at each stage you just need to sit down and map out all the questions and the research they are doing. Again, if your product is pretty simple like socks then maybe you don’t need to think as deeply but the more complicated or confusing your service is the more you should think about this.
I had a client once that offered mental health services. At Stage 3 we knew that most of the content they would want to consume was answering questions about therapy. How long does it last? Do you have to do therapy forever? What do you do after therapy?
We also knew that someone at Stage 2 was probably just coming to grips with the challenges they were having so they had a lot of questions about the diagnosis/disorder in general.
The point is once we knew that we could easily start moving through topics and developing ideas.
How to measure success
You have to know your platform and your intent. If you’re looking to get clicks from instagram it’s probably the wrong metric. You should be looking at impressions and comments and overall engagement. Search, on the other hand, you should be able to see more traffic, leads, sales, etc. If you seeing the traffic but not the leads or sales then there may be a problem with the content or with the conversion tools you are using.
The important thing here is that you want to be patient and know exactly what you are looking for. Also, keep your wins realistic. It would be nice if the next social post you put out went viral and everyone was taking about it with great enthusiasm. The truth is that’s very unlikely. So know what your baseline is for engagement on a social post and aim to see engagement above that.
We overcomplicate things when it comes to marketing. If you don’t know who your customer is then that should be your marketing plan: find out who they are. If you know then you just need to draw off that. Because speaking to them in the place they are with the mindset they have is so important. That impact goes a long way.
If you think we can help you with your marketing needs, give us a shout.
No Comments.