In this article, you will learn the three Ps of content marketing strategy how to generate more revenue, increase brand awareness and conversion rate.
Meaning of content marketing
Content marketing deals with the publication of graphics or written materials to generate leads, sell a product, or increase brand awareness.
Examples of contents
- Videos
- E-book
- Magazines
- Fliers
- Paid Ads
- Social Media
- Podcasts
- Blogs etc.
The Three Ps of Content Marketing Strategy
To be successful in marketing, one has to consider the following content marketing strategies:
- Planning
- Production
- Promotion
Stage 1: Planning
- Audience– Make sure you understand the key facts about your desired audience. Consider their geo-location (country vs regional) their age (or stage of life) their preferred communication channels, if known, otherwise, the most likely areas of the web you will find them and others like them.
- Objectives/key Measures of Success– What is the point? Here is where you set out your objectives for success. Ideally, some SMART objectives, but this is vital for helping you track progress and show success back to the business.
- Audit– Content creation is not cheap, so make sure you audit what you already have. Then map each piece to the audience and key stages of the sales funnel/waterfall.
- Formats– This becomes easy with the sales funnel mapping – bite-sized, light pieces are key for initial engagement (who has time to read pages and pages from a business they have never heard of?) Focus on depth/length of content. Formats should be steered by your audience work – what are they most likely to consume and relate to?
Stage 2: Production
The stage we rush to and often spend too little time thinking about what we want to produce and why. Once the planning is done this should be a quicker and more cost-effective process, especially if due consideration is given to the equally vital final stage, of Promotion.
- Skills– Do you have writers? Should you outsource or in-house? Also, consider tapping into your subject-matter experts for their knowledge (and you do the write-up for them) as a source of lots of unrefined content ideas.
- Recycle and Reuse what you have– It is too easy to forget what you have which is why the audit process above is key. Think about how you can edit/rewrite or update existing content – breaking big reports or presentations into bite-sized chunks.
- Resources– As well as the copywriter, you will need a good creative resource at your disposal – to bring to life the words in varying formats such as infographics and video or animation. We always advocate that you become the editor-in-chief for content and run the program as if producing a newspaper or magazine – build schedules and deadlines and people will understand and respond on time.
- Timing– No doubt, your key messages and areas of focus will be determined by the wider business imperatives, in terms of key products, markets, etc., but be nimble enough to react to current affairs. Adopt a news-jacking approach for some of your content, so you can stay current and be the first to respond.
- Tone– Do you have a tone of voice document? If not, you must. The temptation is often to be too technical or speak in jargon but plain language always wins out. Work hard to make your content inclusive.
Stage 3: Promotion
Arguably content marketing owes its roots to the publishing industry and today’s publishers know that promotion is as key as production – consider publishers such as BuzzFeed who neatly balance the two (and are reaping the benefits).
- The 50/50 Rule– Do not spend all the time and budget on creating the content, get it out there too. What is the use of a great house party if you do not invite any guests?
- Channels– Social is the default for many, for good reason, but do not neglect the wide array of outlets you have – traditional print may be right for some content for example. This should map back to your audience’s work in the Planning stage.
- Timing– Is everything. Again based on the audience work you should understand not just the days of the week but also the hours of the day for content promotion – if you are a UK business but have a large USA audience then think about their day not yours.
- Reporting/Analysis– We spent time setting the objectives in the planning stage, this is where we measure progress. Split this into two – metrics and KPIs. The former helps you tweak ongoing elements at a tactical level, and the latter (which will be a much smaller subset) is for your boss and stakeholders – concise regular reporting.
- Tracking Actual vs. Targets– If all the analysis and reporting are set up, the targets should be set around clear business gains and easily reported. Follows, reads and shares are all great, but what about leads, sales, and inbound inquiries? Most decent email and marketing automation systems allow you to track from individual posts/share right through to sales outcome so work hard to show the ROI – with clear evidence of success, you have the greatest chance of increasing and growing what you are doing.
- Influencers vs. Direct– one of the most often neglected ready-made sets of influencers are your co-workers. Employees must be involved to help you get groundswell and buy-in. Arm them with a simple policy on what they can/can’t say, and you have them ready to work for you.
Conclusion
I have tried to carefully put together my Content Marketing Strategy in this article for you to imbibe or add into into your routine if you already have one. If resources are tight and it all seems daunting, set some basic measures of success and also ensure you have given as much time to promotion as you do production – sweat the assets you already have to help build the case to do more.
