How do you write a Content Marketing Strategy

What!! writing a content marketing strategy!!! That’s so tedious & painstaking.

It sure is. There are so many factors that are set in motion to actually have a concise content marketing strategy on paper or Google Docs whichever you prefer.

Content Marketing is a terminology that you will often come around as you begin working in the Digital Marketing Industry.

Create Content in the World of Bots

Content Marketing occupies a central position. Bill Gates wasn’t bonkers when he coined the term ‘Content is King‘

Why is it that Content Marketing occupies a central position in Digital Marketing?

Let’s see..

There are essentially 4 major aspects in Digital Marketing.

1. Social Media Marketing
2. Search Engine Optimization/Website Optimization
3. Email Marketing
4. PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaigns

“Every step of the way, there needs to be content. Content is a medium through which you deliver the message to the market.”

In Social Media Marketing, obviously you will need to distribute social media graphics. In other words, visual content.

Search Engine Optimization requires a lot of SEO Copywriting, SEO Content Writing to do on-page SEO & off-page SEO.

Email Marketing makes use of stunning copywriting skills that influences higher opening rate & click-through rates which is nothing short of content.

Coming to PPC Campaigns, you are required to exhibit exemplary copywriting skills that would urge users to take the desired action that your campaign objective requires them to take. PPC Campaigns are further bifurcated into Social Media PPC & Search Engine PPC. Both the platforms require Visual + Text based content to strike the balance.

How the heck do you write the content marketing strategy?

You are required to write the content marketing strategy as soon as you acquire a potential client who requires digital marketing solution from your agency.

Your content marketing strategy is segregated into the funnels. The ideal marketing funnel comprises of 3 levels.

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision

The Content Marketing Strategy which you write should define content that will be distributed to each of the levels in the funnel visualization.

The content marketing strategy should be tied with social media marketing strategy, it will work in direct conjunction with social media marketing strategy.

Any deviation in social media marketing strategy will have direct impact on the content marketing strategy which means that you content marketing strategy shouldn’t be rigid, it should be flexible & adaptable and always be prepared with plan B, C & D.

Recommended: What is Organic Marketing

The Step-by-Step Process to writing Content Marketing Strategy

1. Identify the need of the client: In first step you have to identify the business needs of the client. Identify the goals you client aspires to achieve through your Digital Marketing Agency. This is the foundational piece, you better not screw this up. The 1st piece of puzzle sets the foundation. If your client’s need is more and more sales, then you will need to build a responsive funnel that quickly pulls people down the funnel & drives enormous sales.
2. Analyze the Market: This will help you gain insight on potential competition you already face. Try to answer questions like, what are the industry challenges? What are your USP’s? Go through Industry Reports, Market Statistics to be thorough.
3. Analyze the consumer behavior for the Industry: Turn on the Insights from client’s Social Media, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Facebook Analytics & Audience Insights to gain preliminary insights on existing customers. To dig deeper go to Amazon & review sites to scrape customer testimonials on client’s Industry product.
4. Visualize the Marketing Funnel & Sales Funnel: The Marketing Funnel will define how you will enter the market, how you will generate brand awareness & how will establish relations with prospects. The Sales Funnel will define how you are going to lure the potential customers down the funnel so that eventually you end up making a sale out of them with next step making repeat purchases out of them. The finished Marketing & Sales Funnel Visualization will help you identify the kind of content & amount of content you will need to produce, in order to bring the Funnel to life.
5. Identify the Content Distribution Channels: There is an immense amount of content that you will armed with throughout your Digital Marketing journey. In this step you will need to finalize the content distribution channels. The content should be optimized for the platform. Instagram is a visual storytelling platform, the communication approach should be different than that of Facebook. In this phase you will need to identify channels & mold content to go with different channels so as to gain maximum reach.

The next step, the most important step is to create a content calendar

Use Google Spreadsheet to create a content calendar that defines

1. Date
2. Topic of the content
3. Content
4. Copy of the content
5. Platforms to which you are going to distribute

Share this spreadsheet with all those responsible of curating content & with social media marketing team who are responsible to distributing the content.

Create a seperate sheet that has content, date & copy for content which will be used for PPC Campaigns.

It is much preferable that you connect your content marketing efforts with a social media scheduling tools like Buffer. This will allow you to schedule your social media content in advance to avoid chaos on time.