One of the most important reasons any brand creates great content is to become visible. As Tony Robbins says, setting goals is the best way to make that happen. You know you need a content marketing strategy, but do you know why? What are your content strategy goals? Do you know what outcomes you want to get from creating content for your brand? How will your content marketing objective help you reach a potential customer?
Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible to the visible.
--Tony Robbins
By setting content marketing goals, you can tailor your content strategy to meet your business objective. By strategically setting your content marketing goal, you can focus on the type of content that will achieve these goals. This is far better than blindly creating content and hoping it gets read. No experienced content strategist takes this approach to digital marketing.
Whether you're a small business startup or have been pounding the content production pavement for years, brand awareness is where your content marketing efforts all begin. It should represent the foundation for your content strategy framework and be the content goal that fuels your blog posts, social media, and other marketing efforts.
You won't make any sales if potential customers don't know who you are. Not only do you want them to know you, but you want them to think of your brand when they think of your industry or main product line. When you sneeze, do you reach for a tissue or a Kleenex? While your brand may never realize Kleenex-level recognition, setting brand awareness as one of your primary content marketing goals is crucial during your initial content strategy process.
Conversely, if you are a well-recognized brand, brand awareness will not be your primary business goal. However, it could still remain at the forefront of any content piece you create.
Creating brand awareness can be done through concerted efforts of outreach, which means focusing on good content, be it a blog post or social media content that can go viral and get you recognized, as well as build your presence and get you connected with your target audience.
Because more than 91% of retail brands use two or more social channels, you don't want to be part of that 9% who aren't participating in making a name for yourself. One of the best parts of social media marketing for new brands who undoubtedly have low marketing budgets? It is absolutely free, and the return on investment can be astronomical when executed strategically as part of your content marketing plan.
Another great content outlet that helps you gain brand awareness is guest posting. Guest posting is the new "word-of-mouth," one of the most helpful content ideas, and this effective content strategy can pay off big time.
Up to 85% of small businesses get most of their business by word-of-mouth, so it is an avenue any brand trying to create awareness needs to go down. By getting your brand talked about in relevant publications, your target audience will take notice. Your digital PR should focus on creating a problem, solving the problem, and selling your brand as the best solution.
At this stage, it is all about building trust with your audience, and your content should be tailored accordingly.
Running a successful company is normally the primary goal of any business, but more important than that is being a leader in the industry.
Thought leadership shows your audience that you don't just sell your products, you live them. This is important because it builds trust in your brand and creates value for your customers, ensuring long-term customer relationships.
In setting your content goals, if being a thought leader is important to your brand, you'll need to address this in your strategy, and you can do that by putting out more long-form content. You can achieve this by creating guides, e-books, and blog posts that are 2,000+ words.
It's not only about length, but your content should also be super valuable and give your readers actionable advice that they can't get from anywhere else. Long-form content can also ranks higher in search engines. It gets more shares and views, making it a worthwhile endeavor on all fronts.
Quality content begets content in the case of driving traffic.
You want your customers and leads to reading the content you've skillfully created and curated on your website, but how do you get them there? With more content, of course!
If your primary content strategy goal is to drive traffic to your website, you'll need to focus on your outreach and your social media channels, as well as your SEO strategies. You can have a regularly-updated blog, with targeted keywords and value-driven content that you can link back to while doing guest posts and social posts.
To drive traffic to your website, your content strategy plan should be comprehensive and incorporate all aspects of content creation. This includes blogging, newsletters, social media, and guest posting. All of your content channels are important when you are trying to drive traffic.
Traffic is great (unless you are stuck in it), but it is nothing if you aren't gaining valuable leads from the people who visit your site or your target audience isn't reading your content.
This is where your website, especially your landing page, comes in. Your content strategy should always incorporate your website, especially if you have valuable content and good traffic...but few leads.
Before you begin to create content, start by figuring out the purpose of your website and the primary goal of your homepage. Your content should reflect this and give your readers a great user experience for your targeted audience. Your home page should be quick, colorful, and appealing to those who you've already defined as qualified leads.
Take a good look at your current website and its existing content. Conduct a content audit. Look for content gaps that surface in your Google Analytics reporting. Optimize what you do have for search engine optimization (SEO). Ensure your content format suits your brand and gives that amazing user experience your customers are looking for. Provide a full report of your findings to your content team.
After all this has been done, you're ready to build an effective content calendar. In addition to clear deadlines, every item should identify content type. It should name the marketer on your team who is primarily responsible for completion. Who will be writing your blog posts? Which content marketer gives the go-ahead for your email campaigns?
Email marketing is another avenue that is important for lead generation. In fact, email can be more important than social media marketing in terms of customer retention. It's a part of any good content strategy. A full 80% of retailers say that email marketing is their most important customer retention channel. Another 59% of marketers say email is the most effective marketing channel and an especially powerful tool in the B2B marketing space.
You may have a fairly large audience already but aren't getting the sales you want to see.
If your goal is to convert more leads and get more upsells, you'll want to tailor your content marketing strategy to hook your existing leads and customer base. Your focus should be on your emails and newsletters and your social media. This is where your customers have already opted in. They are most primed to see your content.
It's important to keep them hearing your name by sending out regular emails and social media updates. The information should be pertinent and valuable to your audience so that you can pull them back to your brand with everything they read or see. Specialized offers that are tailored to them as loyal customers will do the trick and turn your leads converted into long-term and dependable customers. (Make sure you take down or revise limited timeframe offers as part of your regular content audit!)
A recent study found that brands that post on social media regularly have more loyal customers. By keeping your social media presence up, performing your content audit regularly, and giving your current audience value, they'll go from lead to customer easily.
By focusing your content strategy on one or two specific goals, you better position your brand to realize those goals. You will see a better ROI from the content you take the time to produce.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, there are four goals that ought to remain front and center whether you are engaged in B2C or B2B content marketing. However, your goals may change over time. Consequently, it is always important to reassess what you've done and how it has worked.
If you are interested in a call to help with your content marketing strategy, please schedule a call with a Relevance strategist.
