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What Is A Content Marketing Strategy? 

A content marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business or organisation will create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. 

Ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

The goal of a content marketing strategy is to provide valuable information and resources that help potential customers solve problems or meet their needs. 

Establishing the brand as a trusted authority in its industry or niche.

Why Use A Content Marketing Strategy?

Creating a content marketing strategy allows a business and client to outline their goals and objectives by deciding on the best and most effective way to reach potential customers, whether they are purchasing a product or service. 

There are several reasons why a business would look to develop a content marketing strategy:

  1. Build brand awareness
  2. Generate leads
  3. Establish thought leadership
  4. Drive conversions and sales

A content marketing strategy helps to create a detailed thorough plan that contains, time scales, content outlines and allows simple communication when helping all the necessary people to simply and efficiently understand the current whereabouts of a project. 

How to create a successful content marketing strategy

1. Outline Goals & Objectives

Define your objectives and goals.

By doing this everyone in the team knows how and why you are creating content and how you wish this to benefit your business. 

Ensuring the whole team is onboard and up to speed is essential. 

Goals and objectives will vary depending on the content types. 

 2. Decide On The Content-Type

Before creating any content it’s essential to decide on the content type and also back up it with a reason and desired outcome. 

What is the reason for this post? 

What do you intend to gain from the post? 

If you can answer these questions with confidence and understanding you are on the right track. 

Content can be different depending on the reason for posting but the first steps are the same. 

Types of Content You Could Post

  1. Social Media 
  2. Blog Posts
  3. Infographics 
  4. Case Studies 
  5. Video 
  6. Influencer Marketing 
  7. Reviews & Testimonial 

3.  Conduct Market & Content Research & Competitor Analysis

One of the most important steps to creating new and innovative content is to conduct market research this.

Allowing you to understand what content is already out there, what content works well and gains high engagement rates.

Engaging in research can stimulate creativity and enable a new view of content. 

Detailed and lengthy research needs to be documented, ensuring everything is documented allows it to be shared with all involved parties.

This keeps clear communication through all channels of the content marketing strategy. 

Market research also allows you to compete with other businesses within your industry and become a more well-rounded and successful business. 

Although you are likely to conduct competitor analysis through market research ensuring your research of competing businesses is key.

You want to ensure that your content doesn’t overlap or become too similar to other businesses, as this comes off badly with your audience and clients, keeping originality and unique content allows your business to stand out. 

What Eements Should You Include In Market Research?

  1. Demographic Description 
  2. Competitor Analysis 
  3. Market Segmentation 
  4. Consumer insights & requirements

4. Conduct A Content Audit 

Before any other steps can be taken to create the content it’s important to conduct a content audit, whether that be of your website’s blog or social media content. 

This helps to ensure that your content isn’t too similar or has been created before, this helps to avoid issues going forward, no time gets wasted and no resources were used when they could be beneficial elsewhere. 

Go through all existing content and make a list, ensure this is accessible to all employees working so the communication stays clear and precise all the way through creating the content marketing strategy.

It saves time, money and valuable resources. 

5. Create A Content Schedule

Now that the research has been conducted, it’s time to decide on the content. 

What is it that you are going to post? 

The simplest way to do this is to begin creating your content schedule, here at RedCore Digital we prefer to create our schedules on a monthly basis your business can choose the most effective way to do this but ensure the content schedule clearly shows the following. 

  1. The title or subject of the post 
  2. The date of posting 
  3. Where it will be posted (website, Instagram, LinkedIn) 
  4. The type of post (photo, text or carrousel)  
  5. Comment (detail for communication) 
  6. Caption 

Creating your content schedule in this way allows you to ensure all elements are covered before the post is created. 

Saving time and freeing up employee time to focus on other elements of the business. 

Creating a content marketing strategy in this way means no detail is left out, this shows your clients and potential clients that your business is well-organised. 

6. Begin Creating Content

Now that all the other steps have been completed you can begin creating your desired content. 

It’s important to ensure you’ve conducted all previous steps before diving into creating the content. 

Creating the content is the ultimate goal but ensuring preparation and clear communication helps the content marketing strategy run smoothly and create great content that benefits your business. 

Tools To Create Content?

  1. Canva 
  2. Adobe 
  3. Hubspot 
  4.  WordPress
  5. Grammarly 
  6. Chat GPT                                                                             

7. Begin Posting Content

Now the content is created and ready, it’s time to post, you’ve finally made it to the main goal. 

These steps can sometimes feel daunting and like there’s no end in sight but the preparation that’s taken place ultimately makes the process much faster and means you can reach your goals as a business. 

Posting the content and seeing the results will be rewarding for your business and employees, therefore keeping them motivated. 

It’s important to ensure that your content posting schedule is in accordance with your schedule. 

How can you post your content? 

  1. Schedule them via your content management system
  2. Post manually via the live & post buttons

8. Conduct Audience Engagement Analysis

As a business, it’s important to conduct research that shows results, you need to understand if the goals you set out at the beginning have been reached. 

Checking that the content will be beneficial to your business is important, using analytics to show evidence, especially to clients. 

If you feel as if the content hasn’t been as successful as you’d wished, it’s important to ensure the whole team is together to come up with a plan of action on how to improve for next time. 

How do you analyse your audience & monitor engagement? 

  1. Google Analytics 
  2. Instagram Insights 
  3. LinkedIn Insights 
  4. TikTok Insights

Summary 

Creating a successful content marketing strategy requires careful planning and execution, which is crucial because it sets the foundation for a successful business. 

Leading to a happy and successful client base. if you can create and execute a successful content marketing strategy for your own business it shows potential clients capability and understanding of how to engage an audience. 

If the aim isn’t to attract clients but sell a product a successful content marketing strategy is a way to bring potential clients to the site to learn about your business and possibly. 

By following the steps outlined in this blog you and your business can create a more successful business by finding new and improved ways to reach clients.

Beth Wright

Beth joined RedCore Digital in August 2022 as a content marketing executive. Beth works alongside our clients to design, develop & execute their content marketing strategies.