“Content is the king”, and every start-up is busy in creating a content marketing strategy that works for them.
Its been long that marketers have started using the phrase like “Content Marketing” to make an impact in the meetings with their prospects and to make it furthermore attractive they have added the word strategy to it and now they say “Content Marketing Strategy”.
“Content Marketing Strategy”
This is a keyword has a total monthly search count 1300 in India only.
Let’s keep a rough estimate of 12000 annual searches for the exact keyword “content marketing strategy”.
With these many search count, I need to say that “Content Is the king”.
Now, what would be the reason that these many people are searching for this keyword?
What are they looking for?
Not only on search engines,
Most of the time when we go and meet a prospect, they also use this keyword a lot.
They say,
That’s all ok, first of all, you tell me,
“Have you ever worked on content marketing?”
Or,
“Where is the content marketing strategy part of your plan?”
Or,
“What will be your content marketing strategy?”.
or,
“Have you prepared any content marketing strategy for my business?”
And we smile and say, anything that you do on the internet on the name of marketing is a part of content marketing only.
What are the forms of content?
Content is being created in the form of;
- A text.
- A blog.
- An Image.
- A micro-video.
- A vlog.
- A podcast.
- An Infographics.
- E-book.
Start-ups, right now are going crazy, and are spending a lot of money on forming and executing a content marketing strategy that works for their business.
We as a content marketing agency understands the pain that the majority of the start-ups go through to attract the web browsers and convert them into web traffic that helps them achieve their goals.
This blog on “Content Marketing” is going to help start-ups, digital marketer, content marketing professionals, and business houses to create a content marketing strategy that helps them achieve their business goals.
When it comes to content marketing, we focus on;
Goal that we need to achieve through marketing.
Every marketer/start-up owner should be clear about it.
Your content marketing efforts work only and only when it aligns with the end goal that your business wants to achieve out of it.
So, before you start creating content, focus on creating a goal.
As a start-up,
What is your business goal?
What is that you want to achieve?
What are these most important milestones?
Is it anyone of them?
Is it?
Most of the time start-up owners talk about;
- Reach: Start-ups want to increase their reach in the market and want to acquire more space in the mind of their target market.
- Engage: Start-ups want to create a content that keeps their target market engaged with them, this engagement can come in the form of viewership, likes, subscribe, readership, share, Upvote, and others.
- Convert: This is when they want a browser to convert into traffic, traffic into a subscriber, a subscriber into a sales, and a sales into a positive reviewer and a than a free marketing channel.
- Retain: This is when a start-up is finding it difficult to retain an old customer, and they want to market some offer/ some promotional activity which will help them create a connection between the old customers and the product.
So,
What to do now?
If you are a marketing professional, sit with your business owner and get clarity on the short term and long term goals of the business.
There is no point in reading this blog if you are not clear about your marketing goals.
So go and work on that first, and come back to the blog once you have your goal set.
.
.
.
Are you back?
Good.
Let’s go ahead and see what you can do to achieve these marketing goals.
Here are some content marketing strategy tips that you can execute;
Tip No 1. Create a clear cut marketing communication story:
I hope you have a clear cut goal to achieve, it can be;
- Create awareness about the upcoming product launch.
- To educate people about the new product packaging.
- To increase your subscriber list of email marketing campaigns.
- To increase sales.
- To tell your customer about the referral program that your company has introduced.
- To help your sales team retain existing customers.
- To get back the lost customer by giving him/her something exciting.
Or any other.
So, now when your marketing goal is clearly set a communication story for it.
Gone are those days when purchasing cycle used to simple, these days your prospect/customer is being pampered by the loud noise of content marketing in the form of;
- Animated video ads.
- Micro – video marketing ads.
- Search ads on the internet.
- Podcasts.
- Youtube videos.
- Blogs.
- Infographics.
- Articles.
- Images.
Now, you just cannot keep on creating content and post it on different platforms.
Every single word that you write or say or record should connect, every single image or infographics that you create should help your prospect/customers take a buying decision.
How you do it?
You do it by weaving a marketing communication story and using it on different marketing channels.
Your viewers/listeners/readers should feel empowered with the story of your product.
To create a series of content and connect them like an event in a story.
Tip No 2. Know where your customers are:
Once you have set your marketing communication story, you got to know where your prospect/customer is spending his/her time.
He or she can be;
- Reading a blog that some influencer has written.
- Listening to some podcast.
- Watching some youtube videos.
- Spending time on social media platforms.
- Watching micro-videos.
Find them, and how you do it.
On the digital platform, you doing using.
- Keyword analysis.
- Competitive analysis.
Do it properly and find them.
Tip No 3: Know what they are engaging the most with:
Now, when you know where they are spending their time. Focus on the content that they are interacting more and more with.
You do it by;
See the competitors content, look at the engagement that they are getting.
Find the list of the content type that your prospect/customer is engaging the most with.
See what you can pick from there;
- Maybe the copy.
- Maybe the colour combination.
- Maybe the image design.
- Maybe the video editing.
Learn from these things, because these things are already working for someone.
Now, one more thing.
Try and read as many comments and reviews you can read.
They help you in understanding;
- A good review will help you understand what’s working for your competitors.
- A bad review can help you understand what’s not working and how you can not repeat these mistakes.
- It can help you make a significant change in your entire product marketing strategy.
So, do follow your target market on your competitors content.
Tip No 4. Use the marketing communication channel that works for your customers:
I have always been a fan of creating the right mix of traditional and digital content marketing strategy.
If used in a good way, traditional marketing initiatives can help you increase traffic for digital marketing efforts and it can be a great boost for your marketing goal.
So, do not narrow your vision with one marketing communication channel, work on both.
- Traditional
- Digital
They are there for a reason, it’s just that you need to find what works well for you.
Tip No 5. Create | Distribute | Analyse | Tweak | Re-distribute
Just create content and distribute them.
Things may work may not work, analyse them.
Do not overspend on advertisement budget, start with less and than increase the budget.
Increase the budget for the content that is working for you.
And see the report and find out what’s not working, things that are not working is also fine.
Try and find the reason for it.
Make the changes you feel might help in increasing the return.
Re-distribute the tweaked content.
Keep analysing your content report.