As we welcome in the second half of the year, we find ourselves paying a lot of attention to our content marketing goals and putting ourselves in the right position to achieve success this year. Which has us wondering—where are you on executing your content marketing strategy? Are you set to achieve your goals? Or, has the year been a whirlwind, keeping you from building any strategy at all?
Don’t fret! It’s not too late to build a foundation for your content marketing efforts. Here are three steps to creating a content marketing strategy that works… One that will ensure the second half of the year is your best yet.
1. Align With Your Purpose
It is important to understand the purpose of your content and how it relates to what you want to achieve. Without a clear purpose, you’ll struggle to reach your content marketing goals.
To drill down into a worthy purpose, think about where you struggle the most. What needs to change in your business’ marketing efforts to reach success this year? When you define what ails you the most, start outlining goals for your content that need to be achieved for success.
For example, do you need more leads, but have trouble finding them? You may benefit the most from a lead generation strategy. Are you finding that your audience is visiting your website only to bounce right back off? It may be time to focus on rewriting your website content.
Understanding your weaknesses will help you align with your content marketing strategy’s purpose and make each year’s goals hereafter simpler to define.
2. Get Acquainted With Your Target Audience
Having a defined purpose is just the beginning. Now you want to use that purpose to get acquainted with your target audience. If you struggle with identifying your ideal client—your target audience—work through the following questions and exercise.
What Type of Customer Can You Help the Most?
Start defining your ideal client by answering these questions:
- What questions can your services answer?
- What type of need can you fill?
- What do you offer that few or no other service providers can claim?
The customer that benefits the most from your service is the perfect target for your content. These are the ones that will experience the most fulfillment due to what you bring to the table.
Create a Persona
Now that you have a visual of who will benefit the most, create their persona. What do they look like? What are their demographics? What are their hobbies? What are the pain points they struggle with daily? Where do they spend their time online? Which blogs or news publishers do they follow?
Understanding your target persona will help you craft content in a way that is tailored to fit their needs. Give your persona a name, keep it close and reference it often. Each piece of content you create should be created with that persona in mind.
3. Revisit Your Web Content
If you have a website or blog for your business, it is time to address your content. Perform a full website content audit to ensure your content:
- Is targeting the right customer (which you identified by creating a person, outlined above)
- Conveys who you are and what you offer in a simple and effective way
- Inspires your audience to act while giving them clear direction on their next step
If your copy isn’t delivering on these three points, it isn’t effective. And it’s potentially causing you to lose loads of leads.
Content Elements to Review in an Audit
Which content elements should you analyze on your website?
- Page titles, menus and calls to action
- The readability including how easy your content is to read and word choices
- SEO elements such as internal linking, title tags and keyword usage
- Content consistency, such as tone and voice
There is so much more to your content than just typing something to fill a space. Each part of your website is prime real estate, where your audience will get to know you and build a relationship with your brand. With a clear content marketing strategy in place, you’ll be able to take that relationship to a new level.
Need Some Guided Help? Call Us
Creating a content marketing strategy can be tough. The good news is you don’t have to do it alone. The team here at Custom Content Solutions is here to help. Give us a quick call at 612-643-1824 or send us a message online.
