The content arena is not just for the big and branded anymore. Everyone’s learning and starting to think like publishers. Even small and medium businesses nowadays are getting their share of the limelight using content marketing. The result is proliferation of content across all forms of channels – social media, blogs, and all kinds of websites. That is why content creation is becoming more and more of a monumental challenge.
Despite the overwhelming challenges and growing difficulty of managing content creation, there are still ways to make the process simple and easy especially for those businesses that are new to content marketing. One way is by using a content marketing strategy template. Why do we need a content marketing template? Aside from simplifying the content creation process, having a template also helps focus your content. You can customise the content to your business’ particular needs. Undoubtedly, focused quality content can gain more traction and can give better direction to where you want your business to go. Furthermore, having a content marketing template can get the most out of your marketing investments. For businesses who are into content marketing, it is time to face the challenge and focus on things that matter. So here’s a quick and simple b2b content marketing strategy guide that will jumpstart your content strategic planning.
Profile and Segment Your Customers
Even before you start your business, you must have researched your customer profile and buyer persona. This is important to do before you get into content marketing. Being able to identify the right audience will benefit your business immensely because this will serve as your anchor in creating your content. Moreover, identifying the proper buyer persona and segmenting customer profile will also help you unlock other means of reaching that customer base that you want to target. How do you profile and segment customers? The easiest way to do this is to identify pain points. Be the customer and put yourself in your customer’s place. Then ask yourself the following:
- What is my need?
- What kind of content do I want to consume?
- What will I get out of consuming this content?
- Does this content cover all or almost all of my pain points?
- Does this content offer other viable options not found in others that can solve my problem?
These questions will align your content to what your customers are looking for. Your content becomes more effective and impactful as you understand the pain points of your audience.
Identify the Purpose of Your Content
You have to be clear in identifying the direction you want your business to take. This will make it easy for you to craft content with message and tone according to your purpose. Be guided by asking the following questions:
- Why are you creating content? What is it for?
- Is it for branding?
- Is it for gaining more leads?
- Is it for converting visitors?
- Is it for customer retention?
Furthermore, you have to be clear on these matters because the process and activities of marketing will depend on the purpose of your content.
Provide Activities and Processes of Reaching Your Content Marketing Objectives
Another aspect that will make your plan more effective is by stating the activities that will lead you to achieve your objectives. You have to be very specific as this will help you identify later what strategies work best and what strategies do not.
Put your objective side by side with the activities, and identify the step by step process on how you plan to achieve them. That way, you can be guided accordingly as the process becomes more complex.
Measure Your Results
Metrics are important because they tell you how your content is doing. If your strategies work, well and good it will be worth continuing as long as they work. If they do not, it is best to take a second look, evaluate what has gone wrong or identify gaps in the process and improve the strategy or totally drop it from your list. You can find both strengths and weaknesses with proper content measurement tools like analytics. If you are looking for templates that will help you with content management and creation, Michelle Linn of CMI, has created these lists of content marketing templates that will help you simplify your content management process.
We love to know how you make your process of content creation and management easy and attainable. Please follow us also on Twitter and connect with us on Linkedin.