4 Simple Steps to Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

If you do content marketing, I’d be willing to bet you don’t have a documented content marketing strategy. The bad part is, your lack of a strategy is probably hurting your content marketing more than you know.

One report found that 61 percent of successful content marketers had a documented strategy, while only 13 percent of unsuccessful marketers had one. On top of that, 72 percent of successful content marketers attribute their success to their content marketing strategy. Translation: It’s time to create a documented content marketing strategy.

The good news is, creating a content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be long, drawn-out or complicated. Here’s a quick exercise you can go through to create a simple content marketing strategy. Write down the following questions and answers, then build upon this basic strategy as time goes on.

1. Who is your audience?
Get really specific. This is probably the toughest part, but it’s the centerpiece to the entire strategy. The quickest way to do this is to go off what you know about your existing customers. However, if you don’t have existing customers or if you don’t have buyer personas for your current customers, you’ll need to do a little digging.

Developing marketing personas can get in-depth, but there are a few quick ways to start researching your target audience. Study competitor case studies, read industry analyst reports, go to forums and professional online networks, use Facebook Audience Insights, conduct surveys and interviews, and do cold outreach via email and social media.

A few things you’ll want to know are:

• What causes them to purchase products or services like yours?

• What results do they expect to achieve from products or services like yours?

• What impacts your buyers as they evaluate options?

• Which aspects of competing products or services do they perceive as most critical, and what do your buyers expect for each?

• What causes others to not purchase products or services like yours?

• What concerns cause others to believe that your product or service is not their best option?

Whatever you do, don’t get overwhelmed. Start small and talk to a handful of people first, then build your persona from there. Remember, something is better than nothing.

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