Andriana BoyrikovaYou share a substantial amount of content, aiming to generate new leads and, eventually, make more sales. Yet, you don’t notice any significant increase in website traffic, social media interactions, or inquiries from potential customers interested in trying out your product or service. So, you are wasting resources and getting a disappointing return on investment. Has it crossed your mind that you might have put the cart before the horse?
To survive in today’s content deluge, you need a strategic edge to stand out from your competitors and provide real value to your prospects and customers. If you don’t have a content strategy in place, you waste your money—and your team’s time—creating and promoting disjointed pieces of content that don’t align with your business goals. I need hardly say that fragmented content confuses and alienates your ideal customers, and this harms your reputation in the long term.
Maximizing returns: the benefits of a content strategy
A content strategy increases sales and decreases the overall workload and money you spend because your content is aligned with your business goals. Moreover, you can respond to changes in the market and adjust your tactics without dismissing your stated goals.
Without a content strategy, you let things happen to your content creation instead of being in control.
It is painfully ineffective to create random pieces of content. For example, when your major competitor publishes a white paper highlighting current trends in your industry, you leave all your content projects halfway through and get into crisis mode: “We need a similar white paper, as soon as possible.”
If you have a content strategy in place, you would start by ensuring you get the feedback and approval of all stakeholders who will weigh in on the white paper. That way, you would prevent changing content in midstream or later—also known as chaos —which costs a lot of money. Then, you would:
- identify the goal of the white paper—whether it is to educate, showcase expertise, generate leads, or address a specific industry issue;
- research the pain points, interests, and knowledge gaps of the target audience;
- plan the distribution of the white paper, including tactics such as email marketing, social media, and industry publications;
- engage with the audience—strategize how you will respond to queries and analyze feedback to improve the white paper or create new content.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is your map that prevents you from posting disjointed or useless content. It defines why you publish content, who you speak to, how you create, manage, archive, and update all the content, what tools and techniques you use to evaluate and analyze it, and how you distribute and promote it. Many companies jump right into dishing out content, which is one of the main reasons why only 30% of brands say their content marketing efforts are effective.
For your content to work, it needs to be based on something real: on a real audience who needs solutions to real problems and looks for answers to real questions. So, the content strategy begins with the people you want to attract to your business. Then, you tie every piece of content you are planning to post—a white paper, a blog post, a video, a LinkedIn social media post—to an overreaching goal.
- If your goal is to get on the radar of your target audience who has never heard of your product, your specific content strategy might aim to increase your LinkedIn followers by 30% within a year. You will achieve it by researching the topics they are talking about and looking at the accounts they follow and, on the basis of your research, you will post relevant biweekly posts.
- If your content goal is to market and promote your SaaS business through webinars, your specific content strategy might involve hosting a monthly webinar about diverse topics like Product Demos for Beginners and Advanced Features and Best Practices. These webinars will aim to increase registrations by 20% within the first three months, leading to a 15% increase in trial sign-ups and a 10% rise in conversions over the next six months.
Think of a content strategy as a recipe: it contains all the decisions you make before you start cooking. What will you cook? What ingredients will you use? Where will you buy them? Where will you cook it? How will you serve it?
How can you set up a SMART content strategy?
Specific
Who is your target audience? How will they find your content? What kind of actions and reactions do you want to achieve? Who will create and promote the content? Are you going to work long nights to write content yourself, will you hire freelancers or build an in-house team?
Measurable
What do you want to accomplish: become a thought leader, educate your audience on a broader subject than just your business, or drive traffic to your website? How will you track the progress and measure the outcome? How will you know you have accomplished your specific goal?
Attainable
What human, financial, and technological resources for content creation and distribution do you have on your hands? Are your goals realistic: what growth metrics (for example, website traffic and engagement rates) are feasible to achieve within a specific timeframe based on current performance?
Relevant
What are the primary pain points, interests, and preferences of your target audience? How can content creation align with your broader business goals? What type of content is performing well for your competitors, and how can you differentiate yourself while staying relevant to your audience?
Time-bound
What is your desired timeframe for reaching a specific content goal? What are the short-term and long-term milestones that you aim to achieve? How often will you review and adjust the strategy based on performance metrics to ensure you meet the set goals?
What is content marketing and do you need it?
While your content strategy is the why, who, how, when, and where, content marketing is the what. Content marketing is a set of tactics and activities you use to enact your content strategy. It prioritizes sharing relevant, valuable content over bombarding your target audience with sales and promotional messages. Research shows that B2B customers make purchase decisions based on digital content and online conversations.
Freek Kuper, senior marketer, explains:
“People spend their free time online—watching videos, browsing LinkedIn, and reading the news. Chances are that a significant portion of your target audience does, too. To reach them, you need to create engaging content.
A content strategy guides your content marketing efforts. If your audience is on LinkedIn and likes to read in-depth articles, it does not make sense to post short funny videos.
Your content strategy also helps you reduce costs on content marketing. You have a plan and you can measure the effectiveness of your actions. So, you learn what resonates—and doesn’t resonate—with your target audience. You spend less time thinking about what content to post because your strategy guides you through the process.
What’s more, outsourcing content creation to a third party becomes less expensive as your content strategy defines the scope. You have a pre-established briefing.”
Your company builds trust by publishing relevant, valuable content that answers questions your prospects have. They connect with your brand, ultimately becoming your customers.
Benefits of content marketing
According to this year’s study by the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing helps B2B companies create brand awareness (83%), build credibility and trust (77%), and educate their target audiences (72%). If the content you share answers your audience’s questions, solves their problems, or tugs at their heartstrings, they will naturally grow fond of and want to continue connecting with your company.
Moreover, people want to do research before parting with their hard-earned money. Consequently, businesses with blogs get 67% more leads than those without. When you drive people to your website and other digital platforms, you are more likely to convert them into leads and, eventually, into customers.
Besides, what better way for your prospects to explore your product or service than through insightful content? Content marketing helps you educate them about what you offer. Piquing their curiosity, the content can persuade them to start a free trial, contact sales, or subscribe to your newsletter.
The content you publish doesn’t even have much to do with what you sell. Studies1 show that customers actively seek out a brand because it provides them with relevant, engaging content that educates or entertains them.
Conclusion
A content strategy lays the groundwork—defining the purpose, audience, and direction—while content marketing breathes life into it, turning the plan and goals into engaging, actionable stories. If you want to create content that resonates with your target audience, builds trust, and creates meaningful connections, you need to take a holistic approach. Otherwise, you risk shooting in the dark, which is a pure waste of money, time, and effort.
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I hope you have found my tips helpful. What is your biggest challenge in developing a content strategy and aligning it with your marketing objectives? Let me know in the comments.
Featured image: Shutterstock
Are you ready to hire a content writer? Email me and I would love to help you.
References
- Holliman, G. and Rowley, J. (2014), “B2B digital content marketing: marketer’s perceptions of best practices,” Journal of Research in Interactive, Vol. 8, pp. 269-293.
