Regardless of where you are in your content marketing
travels, planning is crucial to success. Yet, before you can even begin
planning your content marketing strategy, it is vital to create a framework
that you can build a strategy around. This requires three important first
steps.
Step 1: Know Who Your
Client Is
Before you can successfully create a framework for your
content marketing, you need to know who your ideal customer is – but also who
you would like your ideal customer to be. Sit down for a few minutes and list
out qualities of your perfect customer. What is their income? What is their family
demographic? Where do they live? Do they own a home or do they rent? What is
their credit score? What kind of car do they drive? What do they do for a
living?
Asking yourself these questions ahead of time will help you
draw out a customer that is a great fit for your business; a customer who you
can create a content marketing plan around, because you are writing just to
them.
What makes this even better is that when you gear your
content marketing to your niche, you find them, and they serve up more folks
just like them. Even in an age where social media has taken up most of the sound
bites and airwaves, word of mouth is still relevant. Like-minded people
associate with other like-minded people. Once you have landed a few perfect
customers they will, in turn, put you in front of other perfect customers just
like them.
Step 2: Understand
Your Purpose
What is your content marketing goal? If it’s to sell
something, stop right there; that is not what content marketing is about. The
goal of content marketing is to convey information, to educate the customer and
to gently steer them to making a buying decision with your company, versus the
one down the street. Take a moment to think about what your purpose is, what
questions you are most often asked and the most common obstacles you face in
your business. Create content addressing that.
Once this opens up dialogue with your customer base, you can
expand on it, and repeat this strategy with supreme success.
Step 3: Look to
Industry Leaders and To Your Competition
Whenever you are modeling a framework or strategy for
content, it’s important to follow the leaders and tweak from there. Study how
other people in your industry (and in related industries) are handling their
content marketing and social media presence. Evaluate your competition. How
many comments do they receive per post? Are they engaging with their customers
when complaints arise, or are they hiding? What sort of content do they post?
How often do they post content? This knowledge will help you create a framework
and plan to help you climb to the top rung of the ladder as you up your content
marketing game.
Above all, remember that content marketing is an art, not a
science. What worked five years ago is not as relevant today as it once was. As
you are creating a framework and strategy to push your content into a digital
realm, recognize that you might have to adapt your strategy as time progresses.
All the same, if you take consistent action, measure results regularly and
adjust as necessary, content marketing will boost your business.
0 comments :
Post a Comment