The goal of this blog post is to emphasize the importance of having a content marketing strategy for any company that sells products or services and to explain how a content marketing strategy can help a company tell its story, attract and retain customers, and become an essential component of the company's overall marketing plan. This post provides a comprehensive overview of the key elements of a content marketing strategy, including the importance of a collaborative team, a publishing calendar, and a consistent message across different mediums. It also provides an example of how a content marketing strategy can be executed across different buying cycle stages. Ultimately, the post aims to educate readers that content marketing is essential to any successful marketing plan and that they should consider implementing a content marketing strategy for their company. “Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience–with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” —Content Marketing Institute Developing a Collaborative Team for Content Marketing
A content marketing strategy contains all the parts of your company’s story, how to execute, when to publish, and who will tell your story. Your story needs to be on point, from site content to downloadable fact sheets to video messages and infographics. You need a collaborative team to make sure all the moving parts are in synch, and that the message doesn’t stray from one department to another, and you’ll need an evangelical whose voice is heard across the entire company. If your company comes complete with many departments—marketing, sales, business development, engineering, and customer service—chances are you will need a content marketing strategist who can coordinate the strategy, production, publication, and execution of your campaign. Executing Your Content Marketing Strategy: Fine-Tuning to the Buying Cycle Content marketing strategies are executed across several mediums continuously and are fine-tuned to the buying cycle. This is where a publishing calendar comes in extremely handy. Your calendar will show which part of the story you are currently telling, when you are telling it, and where you are telling it. In this manner, you can use your calendar to put your video producers and writers on the same page with customer service, sales, and engineers. Types of Content for Your Content Marketing Strategy By telling the same story through different mediums, and then altering it to fit the different phases of the buying cycle, you will create a positive customer experience. An example of a content marketing strategy might go like this:
Conclusion To develop a consistent message, it’s important to tell a story, a story rich in themes. Each theme should tell a different part of the story—the product’s features, the integrity of the company, the customer’s pain points, and so on. Your message should be told in text, video, animations, and webinars and spread across several mediums so that your customers are continuously exposed to a consistent message that informs them about you and why they want to buy your products or services. That's just the beginning of content marketing! Please get in touch if you think this plan will work for you. Introducing a new product or service to the market can be exciting and daunting. As a business, it's crucial to have a well-thought-out strategy that guides potential customers through the buying cycle. The buying cycle consists of four phases: Discovery, Consideration, Conversion, and Retention. Each stage has its own challenges and opportunities for businesses to create compelling content that resonates with their target audience. In this blog post, I'll dive into each phase of the buying cycle and explore the best type of content to create for each stage. Let's get started! Phase 1—Discovery The beginning of the story starts with potential customers finding you. At this stage, your potential customers need to become aware of your company’s products and why they should choose your products or services. A successful beginning starts with introducing the company to the potential customer. The goal is to show the customer that your company is aware of their needs and can fulfill them. You will have reached your Phase 1—Discovery goal when the customer becomes aware of your brand. The best content at this beginning stage should be educational. Viral content is also important in helping spread awareness. Types of content that work well during the discovery phase include:
Phase 2—Consideration After the customer becomes aware of your company, you will want to start the education process on how your company’s products will help the customer succeed, describe how your company excels where the competitors might fail, and answer all of the customer’s questions so that they can make an educated decision on choosing your company’s product. The goal at this point is to get the customer to consider a purchase. The best content at the consideration stage of the buying cycle is to supply potential customers with content that helps them evaluate you and your products, such as:
Phase 3—Conversion The story’s climax is when the potential customer becomes a paying customer. For this to happen, the customer’s pain points must be resolved, any lingering doubts about the competition must be removed, and the customer must feel confident they made the right decision. All of this is accomplished through a consistent message, adhering to set themes that address the customer’s concerns, and relaying confidence that the company’s product is the best product or service on the market. The best type of content for converting the customer includes:
This content will be the heart of your direct sales materials and should showcase all your best features — this is the point of the story where you want to drive home the message that your products or services are the best available. The story won’t end there of course; there should always be an epilogue. The theme of the epilogue is to keep the paying customer happy so they remain a paying customer, and would recommend your products and services. That’s where Phase 4—Retention, comes into play. Phase 4—Retention At this point in the story, you have a paying customer, and you’d like to keep them around in the hopes they might refer you, offer a great review, provide a testimonial, or, best of all, remain a paying customer. The best type of content to retain a customer is:
Now that you know what type of content you want to develop and where it fits in the buying cycle, you should create a calendar so the team knows what they need to do and when they need to do it. Do you need help keeping your content marketing efforts on track? Do you find yourself publishing content haphazardly without a clear plan or strategy? If so, it's time to consider creating a publishing calendar. But what exactly is a publishing calendar, and why do you need one? In this blog post, I'll explore the answers to these questions and provide tips on creating a successful publishing calendar that will help you achieve your content marketing objectives. What is a publishing calendar? A publishing calendar is a schedule that outlines when you plan to publish content, what type of content you plan to publish, and where you plan to publish it. It's a roadmap for your content marketing efforts. Your calendar should include goals so the team understands objectives clearly — this is essential to ensure your content is relevant, valuable, and aligned with your business strategy. Why do you need a publishing calendar? There are several reasons why a publishing calendar is essential for effective content marketing. First, it ensures that you have a steady stream of content going out on a regular basis. This helps build your brand's visibility and credibility in the eyes of your target audience. Additionally, a publishing calendar makes it easier to coordinate your efforts across multiple channels and team members, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. When working with a team, it is important to have some flexibility in your content calendar to allow for last-minute changes, updates, or additions. Leave some room in your schedule to accommodate any unexpected events. When should you create a publishing calendar? The best time to create a publishing calendar is at the beginning of an overall marketing campaign. Let’s say your company wants to develop leads for a specific product, territory, or audience type. To generate those leads, you’ll need several types of content, all working in harmony, to create a branded, coherent, consistent message that educates the audience on why they want to choose your company. Different types of content take different lengths of time to generate — while a blog post might take a day or two, planning a webinar or shooting a video could take a month or longer. The calendar will keep you on track so that all the different content pieces can be produced, published, tracked, and analyzed in sync. Doing so will help you create a comprehensive content campaign that generates new business. Content types to include in your publishing calendar Now that you understand the importance of a publishing calendar, let's take a look at some of the content types you can include in your calendar: Blog posts Blog posts are one of the most popular types of content for a reason. They're easy to create, they're shareable, and they're great for driving traffic to your site. Use blog posts to highlight thought- leadership, recap recent webinars, or write an employee spotlight post to support recruitment efforts. Your calendar should include time to interview an SME, draft, review, edit, and publish. And don’t forget to include the Graphic Designer so they have time to create a header image, that will also match the image used in the social media post. Social media posts - paid and organic Social media is a great way to connect with your target audience and build brand awareness. Include a mix of curated content and original content to keep your followers engaged. Always promote your blog posts on social media — this will help drive top-of-funnel traffic — so you don’t have to rely on SEO alone. If your company attends industry events, post which events you’re attending and encourage people to schedule a time to meet with you. And don’t forget to use hashtags and tag people to help drive awareness. Webinars and videos Video content continues to be increasingly popular, and for good reason. It's engaging, shareable, and great for building brand awareness. Always allow for more time to create a video than, say, a blog post due to the additional steps involved. While a blog might consist of an interview, draft, review, edit, and publish process, creating a video includes all that and writing the script, planning the shoot, filming the video, editing the video, and adding music and special effects. All of this takes time and should be planned at least a couple of months in advance of the blog and social posts. For webinars, don’t forget about adding an email campaign. eBooks and whitepapers eBooks and whitepapers are great for lead generation. They provide in-depth information on a specific topic and are perfect for attracting prospects who are interested in what you have to offer. They follow the same basic process as a blog in terms of interviews, drafts, and revisions, but for an eBook you’ll want multiple SMEs and will need additional time for review. Email is another integral part of any content campaign and should definitely be included in the calendar to coincide with social media posts — the idea being, they see the email in their Inbox and then they see a similar post on LinkedIn — this builds brand awareness through repetition. For webinars, you’ll want to send out at least 3 invitation emails, each with new information, that start a month before the event. And always send a follow up email after the event. For emails, you’ll want a simple banner image with your logo, and it’s always a good idea to A/B test Subject lines, email body, and even landing pages. Landing pages To generate leads, you’ll need forms for prospects to fill out. That’s where a well-designed landing page comes into play. To drive visitors to your landing page, you need to include links from your email, blogs, social media, and even pop-ups on your website — so people are funneled into your lead generation platform, like Hubspot. In conclusion, a publishing calendar is an essential tool for effective content marketing. By planning and organizing your content strategy, you'll be able to build your brand's visibility and credibility, while also improving your overall results. For more examples, contact Michael Rohde today and kick-start your publishing calendar today. |
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