Content marketing is an invaluable tool for your business. With high-quality and target-group-specific content, you can position your brand right in the centre of your target group. This not only increases your visibility on social media platforms but also improves your SEO ranking on search engines such as Google or Bing.
In this article, we will show you which steps you should pay attention to in order to create an effective content marketing strategy. With our help, you can make the most of your marketing contribution to take your business to the next level.
Contents
- The comprehensive and coherent content marketing strategy
- The starting point for the content marketing strategy
- Definition of the content marketing strategy
- Tip 1: Always set a goal.
- Tip 2: Better understand your target audience.
- Tip 3: Audit your own content.
- Tip 4: Always be on the lookout.
- Tip 5: formats, formats, formats
- Tip 6: Stay up-to-date
- Tip 7: Content Marketing Plan
- SEO and content marketing: Keys to digital success for B2B companies
- Conclusion on the content marketing strategy of your company
The comprehensive and coherent content marketing strategy
In the Web 4.0 era, content marketing strategies should be an integral part of your overall marketing plan. Here, you have to identify the assets that you can use as part of your content marketing strategy. Content creation isn’t just about the actual content; it’s also about the format of that content.
The ability to use synergies is a big plus in the content marketing strategy. You can not only use the created content on your own website but also distribute it on secondary media, such as social media channels or other owned media channels. Your goal should be to maximise the resources you invest in content creation through content recycling.
The starting point for the content marketing strategy
Before you start creating content, you should first identify the challenges your content marketing strategy faces. In particular, the following questions should be answered:
- For whom should content be created? And which medium should we use for this?
- What problems or challenges does our target group have?
- How can we differentiate our content from that of our competitors?
- Which media formats should we use to make our content marketing more effective?
- Through which channels should the distribution of the content take place?
- What processes do we need to create new content efficiently and effectively?
By answering these questions, you will get an important first impression of the possible direction of your content marketing and, above all, of the objective and target group of your content marketing. The goals in content marketing define the strategy and the operative steps to achieve the goal.
Definition of the content marketing strategy
In order to run a successful and targeted content marketing strategy for your company, it is important to recognise the unused potential and to run your own content marketing professionally. Here are some tips on how to define your content marketing strategy:
Tip 1: Always set a goal.
What do you want to achieve with your content marketing? You don’t do content marketing for marketing’s sake. What goals do you want to achieve with your company? Would you like to reach more users on your site or go into lead acquisition? The tactical measures in content marketing and the integration into the online marketing mix follow the objective.
Possible goals could be (according to the SMART method: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and time-limited):
- Double all traffic via content marketing within a year.
- Increase the conversion rate by 20% within a quarter.
Tip 2: Better understand your target audience.
In online marketing, our users are often just numbers, and it is difficult for marketers to empathise with the target group. So-called buyer personas can help here. They help you divide your heterogeneous target group into up to six homogeneous subgroups.
Your goal should be to create better ads and better content through higher audience relevance. As part of the buyer personas, you should think about the fears and problems of the respective personas, which you can then specifically address in your content.
Tip 3: Audit your own content.
It may be that there is content lying dormant in your content inventory that can be reactivated with a little “love”. It often makes sense to recycle content and create an eBook from existing blog posts, for example. We are big fans of giving existing content a new look and thus achieving a significantly better result with little effort.
Tip 4: Always be on the lookout.
Good content marketers are restless; they are constantly looking for new content that has the potential to be relevant to the target audience. The following approaches can help fill the existing editorial plan with additional helpful content:
- Competitive Analysis: Sometimes it’s worth looking left and right; many competitors also do good content marketing. With professional online marketing tools like XOVI, competitive values can be read out and content identified that is frequently shared on social media and is easy to find in search engines.
- Keyword research: Another way to identify content that is of great interest to your target audience is with classic SEO keyword research. In this way, you can quickly identify trends and topics on which it makes sense to create your own content.
Tip 5: formats, formats, formats
In what form do you want to communicate with your customers? Which formats achieve the necessary reach? You should address these questions early on, because nothing is more annoying than relying on the wrong format. You can use the following formats as part of your content marketing strategy:
- blog posts, advice texts,
- e-books, white papers,
- Templates (to download),
- infographics,
- webinars,
- video,
- podcast,
- instructions,
- case studies,
- slide shares,
- FAQs
- and much more.
Different formats make the content livelier and provide more “excitement” when consuming it. Consciously use different formats and benefit from the variety in the form of higher media consumption.
Tip 6: Stay up-to-date
Distinguish between “evergreen” content, i.e., content that is highly relevant over a long period of time and always remains up-to-date, and event-based content, which has a significantly shorter half-life. The mix of both leads to success. With up-to-date content, you can create relevance in the short term and benefit from a lot of attention.
At the same time, you should know that interest will gradually wane. Another variant is evergreen content, i.e., content that is always popular. To be competitive here, you should put a lot of effort into creating the content that will be found in the search engines.
Tip 7: Content Marketing Plan
The content marketing plan specifies your content marketing strategy. It defines which content can be published when and at what intervals. It is the central document for targeted content marketing since the seeding of the respective content is also regulated via the platform.
SEO and content marketing: Keys to digital success for B2B companies
SEO and content marketing are two crucial factors in strengthening the brand presence of a B2B company. By using appropriate tools, such as keyword research programmes and social media analytics, companies can optimise their online campaigns and achieve greater brand awareness.
Let’s take a fictitious B2B company as an example: “Tech Solutions GmbH.” This company wants to strengthen its brand presence in the digital space. The first steps in this direction could be:
- creating quality content focused on their area of expertise, and
- the implementation of targeted SEO measures
This is where SEO tools come into play, allowing Tech Solutions to identify relevant keywords and integrate them into their online content.
In addition, Tech Solutions could run strategic campaigns on social media to encourage dialogue with potential customers and raise awareness of their brand. By combining all these measures, “Tech Solutions” can build a sustainable online presence that is geared towards long-term success. Remember that SEO and content marketing are not one-time endeavours and should be continually tweaked and updated to keep up with ever-changing market conditions and consumer trends.
Conclusion on the content marketing strategy of your company
As so often, the challenge in content marketing is getting started. Get started and gain firsthand experience in the field of content distribution. Benefit from incoming customer inquiries and competitive advantages that nobody will easily duplicate.
We are happy to support you as an online marketing agency in creating your content marketing strategy and showing you the possibilities for optimising your existing content. Simply contact our content marketing experts. You can reach us by phone at 02208-9323998-42 or by email. We look forward to seeing you!
