What Is Content Marketing Strategy & How To Create One

Looking for a super content marketing strategy?

Certainly, content marketing is proliferating and the formula for content marketing strategy success in my view is not complex.

The essence of developing content is to provide people with the information they need.

To be successful at content marketing, businesses must learn how to develop objectives, develop highly relevant content, I have listed some content marketing strategies that you need to achieve overall success.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and sharing valuable, important, and consistent content to attract and retain a distinctly defined audience — and, most importantly, to drive profitable customer action.

To be successful at content marketing, businesses must learn how to develop objectives, develop highly relevant content.

Content marketing examples you can create include:

• Blog Posts: Write informative articles that address your audience’s pain points or interests, helping to establish your brand as an authority in your niche.
• Social Media Campaigns: You can use platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook to share engaging content that resonates with your audience, such as challenges, polls, or behind-the-scenes looks at your brand.
• Podcasts: Launch a podcast series discussing relevant topics within your industry, featuring expert interviews or customer stories to build community and engagement.
• Videos: Create educational or entertaining videos for platforms like YouTube or TikTok that showcase your products, provide tutorials, or share testimonials from satisfied customers.
• E-books and Guides: Develop comprehensive resources that offer in-depth knowledge on specific subjects related to your business, which can be used to capture leads through email sign-ups.

These examples illustrate the diverse ways you can implement content marketing strategies to connect with your audience and drive engagement.

Why Have a Content Marketing Strategy?

Marketers need a content marketing strategy to connect with their audience by providing valuable information, building trust, and standing out in a crowded digital landscape. It helps improve search engine visibility, drive conversions, and establish credibility as an industry expert. A well-planned strategy ensures consistent, high-quality content that resonates with customers, ultimately leading to increased brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Elements of a Content Strategy Plan

A well-crafted content strategy plan serves as a roadmap for creating, managing, and distributing content effectively. Below are some of the key elements you should consider when developing your content strategy:

Goals and Objectives

Define what you want to achieve with your content. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or improving customer engagement, clear goals will guide your content strategy plan.

Audience Research

Before you can create your content plan, you need to understand your target audience. Start by creating detailed buyer personas of who you want to target, and know their interests, pain points, and preferences, this will help you tailor your content to meet their needs.

Content Audit

A content audit is a comprehensive review and analysis of existing content to assess its quality, relevance, and performance. This analysis helps uncover gaps and opportunities for new content.

Content Creation Process

In your content marketing strategy, you need to outline the steps involved in producing content, from idea generation to publication. Make sure you assign each role and responsibilities to the people in charge to ensure a smooth workflow.

Editorial Calendar

Create a content calendar to schedule and organize your posts effectively. This tool promotes consistency in your content strategy and ensures that your publications are timely, helping you stay on track with your marketing goals.

Distribution Channels

When you create your content, you need to identify the platforms where your content will be shared, such as social media, email newsletters, or your website. Each approach should be based on where your audience spends their time.

Analytics and Evaluation

This is the final part of your strategy, you need to set metrics you want to use to measure the performance of your content against your goals. This data will help you to refine and improve your strategy over time

When you incorporate these elements into your content strategy plan, you can create a structured approach that drives engagement and achieves your business objectives.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy (7-step Plan)

Step 1. Define objectives

Every marketing strategy must have a well-defined objective, and content marketing is not left out with any other marketing initiative, the first step to launching a successful content marketing program is to define your objectives.

You should endeavour to ask yourself some critical questions like;

• What is my business trying to achieve and how can my content marketing strategy help me achieve that?
• Am I trying to increase sales, engage new readers, and extend existing relationships or what?

These are some objectives which any content marketing strategy should have.

So you have to choose and define your objectives. Critically think about your objectives, define them and then work on them so you don’t get lost in the process.

Now that you have defined your objectives, you now have to move forward. This is the time to develop a clear strategy to achieve them.

READ: Effective Digital Marketing Approach | 5-Step Digital Marketing Strategy

Step 2. Identify your audience

Knowing your audience at the initial stage could be difficult.

But having an in-depth understanding of your audience will help you create engaging, relevant content that will turn your audience into loyal customers.

Knowing your audience requires you to know what they care about, and what their interests and motivations are amongst others.

It will be thrilling to know that most successful businesses understand their customers, while content marketers understand their audience.

READ: Reach your Target Audience: How do you identify your audience?

Step 3. Define your content type

There are specifically two phases of your content type. One is contents that generate timely perspectives on news, this type of content is mostly and immediately seen by search engines.

The second is contents that are always fresh and provide the information readers seek. This type of content takes longer to generate significant traffic but will continue to draw visitors over time.

READ: How to develop a super content marketing strategy for your business

Step 4. Define and own your keywords

Understanding the concept of keywords is very important.

It remains one of the critical elements used in defining search traffic to your website. Learning how your customers and prospects search on Google is relevant to your content marketing strategy.

Keyword research and discovery is a continual process. But if you don’t already have a web analytics package integrated into your website, look for standard solutions like Google Analytics.

Google Analytics provides you with a preponderance of information on your current audience’s search habits, which you can then leverage to inform your content strategy

(Click here to learn how to keyword research using Google Keyword Planner).

Step 5. Look for content writers

Writing or developing content requires special skill hence that’s why you need to employ skilled writers who will be able to develop content that will be compelling and good enough.

That is why determining who writes your content is an integral part of a successful content marketing strategy.

If you will be creating contents, it has to be good enough.

However, if you will be creating brand-aligned content or thought leadership pieces intended to engage consumers on your site or drive conversions.

READ: Convert your leads using step-by step content marketing tactics for your brand in Nigeria

Step 6. Prepare your website

Preparing your website is paramount. If you are developing a good content, it has to be published or posted on a website that is much optimised.

The next step to think about is when your content will be published on your site, the experience visitors will have with the content, and how well that location is optimized for search.

After publishing your content on your website, you should perform a content audit of your existing site.

You will want to capture the text that exists on the page, as well as the meta-data, keywords that a particular page ranks on, and any other information that is relevant to your content strategy.

If you are publishing your content on your website, you will want to make sure the site is properly optimized for SEO which helps you ensure that your site conforms to SEO best practices. It’s also important to create XML sitemaps for your website so that all of your content gets picked up by the search engines.

If you are creating news content, you will want to create a news-specific sitemap. Google’s Webmaster Tools is an immense resource for best practices on designing a search-friendly site.

You also need to consider how people are accessing their information when designing your content. Content is going mobile and mobile is getting smarter. Consumers are moving beyond check-ins on smartphones and tablets.

READ: 4 Basic SEO Tips For Beginners To Rank On Google (Video Tutorial)

Step 7. Promote your content

There are very many ways of promoting your content. You don’t have to develop content and keep it to yourself.

If you have begun to develop a content marketing strategy, you should know that simply creating content isn’t enough. As content marketer or developer you should be able to figure out how best to promote your content on various platforms.

However:

The fact remains that it doesn’t matter how good your content is if nobody can find it.

In addition to creating quality content, you must focus on getting the content to your audience when and where they want it.

Mind you all of your content marketing should work in line with all of your other digital marketing initiatives such as Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, and Email Marketing etc.

You can also leverage the powers of other influencers.

READ: Lead Generation | A Complete Beginner Guide To Generating Leads

Questions to Ask When Creating a Content Strategy

When creating a content strategy, it is crucial to ask the right questions to ensure that your content effectively supports your business goals and resonates with your target audience. Here are some key questions to consider:

• What are the company’s goals and objectives? Understand the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that will measure the success of your content strategy.
• Who is the target audience? Identify the demographics, psychographics, and pain points of your target audience to tailor your content effectively.
• What content is currently performing well? Analyze existing content to determine what types of content are most engaging and what can be improved.
• What are the internal stakeholders involved in the approval process? Determine who needs to be involved in the content strategy development and approval process to ensure everyone is aligned.
• How will success be measured? Establish clear metrics to track the success of your content strategy and make adjustments accordingly

Finally

Understanding the whys and hows is crucial to determining the direction of your content marketing plan. That’s why I can’t emphasise enough just how important it is to develop a unique strategy for your brand.

This will save you a lot of time and disappointment later on, and enable you to get visible results within a sensible period of time.

If you’re not sure how to progress, why not register for our digital marketing training to learn how to start a content marketing plan from scratch. It should point you in the right direction.

FAQs

What is a good content strategy?

A good content strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines the creation, distribution, and management of content to achieve specific business goals. It involves:

Understanding the target audience and their needs.

• Defining clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the content.
• Establishing a consistent brand voice and tone across all content.
• Determining the most effective content formats and channels to reach the audience.
• Developing a content calendar and editorial plan.
• Optimizing content for search engine visibility and user experience.
• Measuring and analyzing content performance to continuously improve the strategy.

What is the difference between content strategy and content marketing?

The key differences between content strategy and content marketing are:

Content strategy focuses on the planning, development, and management of content, while content marketing focuses on the creation and promotion of content to attract and engage the target audience.

Content strategy ensures the right content is created for the right audience at the right time, aligning with the overall business goals while Content marketing aims to drive profitable customer action through the creation and distribution of valuable content.

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