When trying to put in place a content strategy, even if you have a pretty good idea of what you need to do, an already completed content strategy example would be very helpful.
To give you a hand, I have created such an example using my simplified content strategy template.
By the end of this article, you will be able to create the content strategy for your business with little or no help.
The foundation for the content strategy exemplified will be my content strategy framework which includes all the details for a results-driven strategy.
Click here to download the strategy template or complete the form below.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
Now that you already have the skeleton – the strategy template, let’s put some “clothes” on.
The content strategy is practically a framework that comprises processes, topics, and standards to support your business in planning, executing, and publishing your content.
It’s a blueprint that organizes and manages the teams involved in content marketing activities: content managers, SEO specialists, writers, designers, editors, video producers, analysts, project managers, etc.
Content strategy’s main purpose is to have all the stakeholders on the same page and working toward the same goal.
Your strategy has to be adaptable and your team flexible and agile. In our laser speed era, changes appear in a cascade and it happens often that the situation foretold this month will have very little connection with reality within a couple of months.
No need to reinstate why you need a strategy content. It’s vital if you want to reach your goals in an efficient manner.
When looking to arrive from place A to place B, you use a GPS app. The same situation applies to your business. To reach your goals a clear path is needed, and that’s the strategy.
If still in doubt, check on statistics, organized marketers have higher chances to reach success – by far – like 674% more chances.
Let’s build an example of content strategy for the following business – you are a content marketing agency and you want to create a content strategy for your business. You provide your clients with content strategy services, SEO services, and social media services.
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Content Strategy Example: Create Your Mission Statement
The template starts with the basics: the mission of your company, tailored for the content needs.
The mission is the engagement your company assumes in front of its audience and clients.
From this statement, you can establish the starting point of your content strategy.
The statement might look like this:
[Company] has the principal mission to deliver for our clients [service/product 1] and [service/product 2] via [task one] and [task two].
Example:
Caribbean Experiences exists to provide its customers, passionate travelers, with stellar accommodations and Caribbean-flavored experiences through a network of great beach properties and organized tours.
Define the Components of Your Content Marketing Team and the Associated Tasks
The starting point in the content strategy process is to create a team that will work to define, implement and accomplish it. Who will work and what exactly will execute?
In general, each team accomplishes more or less similar roles, and these are:
Content Manager/Strategist: brainstorms, plans, and decides the content to be created.
Writers: using their writing abilities they create the content.
Proofreaders/Editors: verify and copyedit content to ensure accuracy.
Designers: design visuals (photos, graphics, infographics) according to standards required by the brand.
Distribution Manager: promotes content on established channels.
SEO Specialists: optimize content to rank higher in SERPs and attract more readers and leads.
Content Analysts: analyze content performance and identify which content brings expected results and which does not.
Take into consideration that a person may have multiple roles, or a team member may perform tasks that do not match exactly with their title.
I don’t want to see you running quicker than Usain Bolt from this task, so see below the task completed.
Social media is a significant part of any marketing strategy and, as such, of a content strategy. And is also a very time-consuming activity, that’s why using tools that help you automate part of the process is very convenient.
There are many options for social media schedulers, so you have to choose one that best suits your needs. Prominent solutions are:
SproutSocial
Hootsuite
Buffer
Tailwind
SEO Apps
To help your content rank in search engines and be found, you also need some SEO tools to identify the most reliable keywords, audit your site, measure performance, research competition, etc.
Some of the best tools for SEO today are:
Ahrefs
Semrush
Moz
Marketing Project Management Tools
Managing a content marketing team can be an overwhelming task. And project management tools help to put the order in “chaos”.
Relevant options are:
• Asana • Trello • Wrike • Slack
Content Strategy Example: Content Audit
If your business is not new and has some content marketing activities done, before creating a content strategy for the following period, a content audit is needed.
• Make an inventory of the existing content. What content is already published, where, and what is its format? Create a list with data like the permalink of the article, author, date of publication, number of words, last update, main keyword, page, views, impressions, authority, place in SERPs, etc.
• Audit your content from a qualitative point of view. Answer questions like What articles are the most performant as traffic generators? What is their bounce rate? How about dwell time? Is the published content converting as per the established targets? Investigate and find the answers to such questions.
• Identify content gaps and topics not yet covered.
• Competitors analysis. Check on what content marketing activities develops your competition and what results it gets.
Content Marketing Goals
The guiding line of your content strategy is the goals that your business needs to achieve via its marketing activities. Such business goals are established by the business owners, shareholders, or top management of the organization.
Examples of such goals are:
• Create/increase brand awareness.
• Raise the traffic of your website by x%. Either via SEO – organic traffic and results will take a bit longer to appear. Or via ads – paid traffic, results appear quicker but need a higher budget.
• Boost conversions by x% for your offers.
• Establish your business as a leader/expert in your niche.
Based on these general business goals, the goals for content marketing will be established.
Be aware to define S.M.A.R.T. goals:
Specific: Indicate exactly and clearly what you need to accomplish.
Measurable: an exact level, number, or milestone to define them
Attainable: realistic and approachable
Relevant: goals to be meaningful for your business
Timely: exact deadline in time
Example of SMART goals:
The [company]’s team responsible for X activity will attain [metric] by [interval].
Eagle Advertising’s team responsible for content marketing will attain 6.000 monthly visitors to our website by April 30, 2023
Audience Research and Buyer Persona Creation
Who do you want to reach? Who’s your ideal customer?
Your content marketing efficiency is expressed by the audience, leads, and sales it attracts. If your content generates thousands of views, but only a very small fraction are potential leads who buy your product/services, your content’s efficiency needs heavy improvements.
Identifying your target audience will enable your content strategists to nail what topics, subtopics, and keywords should be covered by your strategy. What your audience wants to know and what are her challenges/problems?
Correctly identify the characteristics of your target audience:
Demographics: gender, age, income, job title, geolocation, etc.
Psychographics: interests, hobbies, beliefs, habits, etc.
Problems: What is the issue that would determine them to look for a product/service like yours?
Pain points: What issues are resolved by your product/services? What is the cause of your audience’s problems?
Where are they scouring for data and information?
What’s their favorite type of content?
In what ways can your content be beneficial to them?
You might have multiple buyer persona profiles, therefore, modify the template as per your needs.
To obtain these details regarding your buyer persona, you can:
• Refer to your Audience section in Google Analytics if you have an existing audience.
• Conduct a survey using tools such as Survey Monkey or Google Forms to gather relevant data.
Content Strategy Example: Identify the Content Pillars and the Associated Topics
This is the foundation of your content creation efforts. The content that you produce must pertain to the products or services you offer and address the inquiries, requirements, challenges, and difficulties of your audience in relation to them.
For our content marketing agency example, for its SEO services, the content pillars may be:
– SEO audit
– Off-Page SEO
– On-Page SEO
– Increasing traffic
– Technical audit
– Ranking Algorithms
Each pillar will have topics and types of content assigned.
For example, a pillar called “Off-Page SEO” may include topics like:
– Outreach strategies to get backlinks
– How to guest post with maximum success
– Skyscraper strategy
– How to create infographics
What Type of Content to Create?
There are numerous forms of content that you can utilize to captivate your audience.
Content marketing is a vast field that extends beyond conventional blog posts, despite being its cornerstone.
What are the most common types of content?
Articles/Blog Posts
Case Studies
Videos
Infographics
eBooks
Reports
Webinars
Guides
Social Media Content
White Papers
Newsletters
Identify your audience’s preferences and choose the right types of content to create accordingly.
Choose Which Will Be the Voice and Tone of Your Brand
Defining the voice and tone that will be used throughout all your content marketing is important for consistency and coherence.
The voice of your brand is an expression of the personality outlined by your brand. Your brand’s tone represents the manner that you use to express things, to speak.
To profile your voice, choose a couple of adjectives to outline your brand personality.
You could choose: humorous, laid back, original or intelligent, influential, respectable. It’s up to you to decide according to your preferences and purposes.
Also, include writing guidelines. Your online content should be formatted for readability, skimmable, with short paragraphs, headings, bullet points, and visuals.
Create Design Standards
It is essential to establish design principles and standards to provide guidance to your designers when developing visual content for your brand.
Listed below are the fundamental visual design elements that the marketing team should take note of:
Choice of typography
Brand color palette
Logo specifications
Image styles and guidelines
Layout and composition rules
Iconography and graphics standards
Key Pillars of Content
The pillars of content indicated above are to be organized and scheduled based on the corresponding campaigns that are scheduled for that period.
Content creation flow example
Generally, the content creation process encompasses all stages until the content is handed over to editors and designers.
The content execution process involves the creation and editorial processes, with a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities, order of tasks, and deadlines. The people involved in this phase may include content managers, writers, editors, designers, and SEO specialists.
Example of content creation flow:
Topic brainstorming – 2-3 days
Setting the publication date and populating the publishing calendar – 1 day
Researching resources on the topic – 1 day
Conducting interviews or gathering data – 3-7 days
Researching and determining the Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords to be used for the topic – 1 day
Creating the content structure – outline – 2 days
Reviewing and approving the outline – 1 day
Producing the initial draft of the content – 2-3 days, depending on the length
Revising, editing, and proofreading the draft – 1-4 days, depending on the type of content
Consider the duration of this process when setting the start date for writing each piece of content based on the publication date.
After the content is created, it proceeds through the editorial process.
The editorial process involves organizing the steps involved in preparing the content for publication, the publishing itself, and analyzing the results.
Editorial process flow example
Content editing: 1-4 days
Requesting revisions from writers (if necessary): 1-2 days
Content design and graphics: 1-5 days
Approving the design: 1 day
SEO optimizing the content: 2-4 days
Publishing the content: 1 day
Setting up the promotion campaign: 2-4 days
Approving and executing the promotion campaign according to the strategy
Analyzing the post-publication results.
Make sure to factor in the length of this process when scheduling the writing process for each piece of content based on the publication date.
Publishing Cadence
Now that you have the content execution process established, the next obvious step is to organize the publishing cadence and schedule. Meaning what type of content gets published, when, and how often.
The publishing cadence might be something like this:
1 article/blog post a week – 2000 words +
a case study monthly
1 infographic monthly
an ebook each 4 months
one lead magnet each quarter
Editorial Calendar
Once your content is published, the content execution process is complete. Content calendars are crucial for organizing tasks efficiently among team members.
Your content calendar should include the following details for each content type you plan to create:
Title of the piece of content/article
Scheduled publication date
Content pillar it belongs to
Stage of the buyer journey
Content format
Distribution channels – where the content will be promoted.
Determining the appropriate channels to promote your content is a crucial task. It is essential to consider being present on the same social platforms as your target audience.
Your primary channel should be your website, which serves as your primary platform and asset.
The second important channel is your email list. It is often emphasized that the email list is the most valuable asset of a business in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape.
Social media is a collection of platforms where you should have a presence and promote your content. Select and concentrate only on social media networks where your ideal customer is active.
Choose wisely, based on analytics. I recommend focusing on no more than 2-3 channels to maintain a strong presence.
Identify additional channels to bolster your outreach strategy, such as guest posting. Develop a roster of influencers in your industry or related industries to approach about guest posting on their websites.
Once the social media channels are decided, the following step is to create a plan and schedule to promote your content.
Each piece of content will religiously respect this schedule.
Free Distribution Plan
For the free distribution of your content, you need to complete:
the promotional channels where your content will be published, aka Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc
frequency of publishing
the objective of the page, where appropriate
who is the targeted buyer persona
what do you want your reader to do – for instance, subscribe to a webinar, download a freebie, etc
select the performance indicators that will indicate your results.
A promotion schedule on social media channels might look like this:
Day of publishing:
One Pin on Pinterest
One Facebook post
1 Instagram post
Three Twitter posts
One week after publishing:
1 LinkedIn repost
Two Twits three days a week
One Medium repost
One Pin daily on group boards
Following weeks till one month after publishing:
One LinkedIn repost after one month of publishing
Two Tweets three days of a week, four weeks after publishing
1 repost weekly on Facebook
One Pin daily for one month in group boards and own relevant boards
Paid Distribution Plan
Similar to your free distribution plan you should have a paid distribution plan.
For your paid distribution you might take into consideration:
Native advertising
Influencer marketing
Paid social media promotion
Measure KPIs and Results
Measuring the success and effectiveness of marketing content is a significant challenge for marketers.
It is important to not only identify the appropriate metrics but also interpret them correctly. For instance, the impact of the bounce rate on the success of your content and whether page views are a significant indicator of success are subject to debate.
Below are some metrics that marketers should consider when measuring the success of their content:
Pageviews: A high number of page views suggests that the right audience has been attracted to the content and products.
Time on page: The longer a visitor spends on a page, the more useful they found the content.
Social shares: The more a piece of content is shared on social media, the more successful it is perceived to be.
Bounce rate: A low bounce rate indicates that the audience is interested in the content, whereas a high bounce rate suggests that the audience was not engaged.
Once the appropriate metrics have been selected, marketers need to determine how frequently they will generate reports and create templates for these reports.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
To measure your progress and success you need to establish some indicators to guide you on whether you are on the right path or not. These are specific metrics relevant to your goals.
KPIs are different for each business, depending on the services or products they provide and on their targeted goals.
The most common KPIs are:
Number of new customers or users for the planned period
Total revenue
Unique or total views/impressions
Number of subscribers to the newsletter
Number of content shares
Remember your KPIs should match your goals.
Metrics and Content Analytics
After deciding on KPIs, it’s time to establish the metrics that are relevant for you and that you need to constantly review. To avoid any confusion, keep in mind that all KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are considered KPIs. Meaning a metric that is considered KPI for one business for one might be irrelevant.
At this point, you should simply translate the goals you set, into measurable metrics related to your KPIs:
Reach X views per month on the blog.
Generate $X in revenue.
Gain X new followers on X social media channels.
Add X new subscribers to the email list each month.
Reach X number of shares per post per month.
Always keep an eye on the performance of your content.
Check regularly Google Analytics or Analytics sections of social media channels to observe the evolution of your content results. Optimize and adjust accordingly.
You are just about to complete your content marketing strategy. The final step is the budget!
To correctly forecast the costs of producing and distributing your content (except the tools that you pay monthly or yearly) check the offers you have from the contractors you work with or the hourly rate for your in-house employees.
For content writing, take the editorial calendar and see how many words you need to create monthly, and then multiply the result by the cost per word.
Let’s say you need the first month of 12,500 words written for all the content types, you have an average cost of $0.3 per word, which would be $3,750 total cost with content writing for the respective month. Add the cost for each month and you obtain the total cost for the year.
Finally, after following the content strategy example you have your content strategy created and documented. If you feel you still need help with your content strategy framework, consider hiring an expert.
FAQs
How do you document a content strategy?
To document a content strategy you have to write down and follow all the following steps of a content strategy: * Define your mission, * Establish your team, * Decide your marketing toolbox, * Audit your content, * Set your content marketing goals, * Define your buyer persona * Determine your pillars of content and topics * Create an editorial calendar and flow * Decide on content distribution channels and craft a distribution plan * Establish KPIs and measure the results * Set a content strategy budget
What is the content strategy process?
The content strategy process is the concert activity of documenting a content strategy with all its components: strategy goals, content audit, buyer personas, pillars of content, editorial calendar and flow, content distribution plan, KPIs and results measurement, budget, content marketing team, and toolbox.
What is a website content strategy?
A website content strategy is the part of the content strategy that refers strictly to the website of a company. Taking into consideration that all the content created via a strategy will be first published on the website, this is its core part. It refers in principal to the pillars of content and topics published. And may include blogs, articles, how-tos, infographics, case studies, videos, and white papers, among others.
Producing engaging, valuable, qualitative, and diverse content for your online business is an ever-challenging task. However, it is not enough if you aim to produce buzz among online users around the world. You must have in-depth knowledge of what engages your audience the most and what drives it away, which are the key performance areas of marketing activities in general and content strategy in particular. In other words, the relevant marketing and content strategy KPIs.
The key performance indicators will show you if your posts, articles, or videos are effective for your content marketing goals.
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Any marketing book that respects itself reveals that companies follow metrics to make sure their business goals are reached and to track their progress. They adjust their marketing activity according to the data registered over a month, a quarter, or a year.
Experts and specialists put metrics in categories such as:
According to the partition based on the sales funnel, there are:
· Top of the funnel (TOFU)
· Middle of the funnel (MOFU)
· Bottom of the funnel indicators (BOFU)
It is of utmost importance to take into consideration the signals conveyed by the metrics.
Why Is It So Important to Focus on Content Strategy KPIs?
It is a no-brainer mistake not to measure your efforts. You will end up investing money in a piece of information that your customers and readers are not interested in.
At first, it may seem difficult to quantify the impact of words and images. But, as you gain experience, you will find this analysis less daunting.
What Can You Include on Your Marketing and Content Strategy KPIs List? What Are the KPIs for Content Strategy?
There are many methods to establish the success of your online marketing strategy. Some of them are widely used while others are applied only by connoisseurs.
The metrics out there give you a picture of the number of people who consume and share your work. You also have the possibility to find out how it influences your sales and business. Even the team’s effectiveness is easy to assess.
To perform a correct analysis, establish what you want to track and then find your suitable key performance indicators for content management.
Most Useful Metrics for Measuring Content Marketing Performance. Source: Feldmancreative
Here are examples of the most used marketing metrics worth considering:
1. Content Strategy KPI: Unique Visitors to Your Website
This indicator provides information on how many users have accessed your site within a certain time frame. Most marketers go for the thirty-day window. It does not mean you must do the same.
You can check the daily or weekly visits. What matters is to identify the elements which have driven these individuals to your page.
2. Content Strategy KPI: Bounce Rates and Time Spent on the Website
It is one thing to generate traffic and another issue to retain your viewers’ attention. A high bounce rate indicates that you failed to fulfill the visitors’ expectations. It means that the clicking promise is not correlated with the texts and the images.
When people spend only a few seconds studying your work, it is an obvious sign you need to improve the approach.
Hundreds of visitors per day mean nothing unless they take a look at your offer or skim through your five thousand-word articles.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
3. Content Strategy KPIs: Exit Pages
These are the ones that visitors explore before dropping off from a website. Digital marketing beginners tend to confuse this metric with the bounce rate.
Its values are more important for online shops as customers have to navigate through several pages before making the final acquisition.
A significant exit rate on a page that was not designed for this purpose denotes problems such as:
· too much data presented in an impersonal voice
· jumbled information
· no call to action
Google Analytics provides you a useful insight into your top exit pages.
4. Content Strategy KPIs: Page Views
Website owners are so focused on getting new visitors that they forget about page views. A high value of these indicators shows useful and meaningful content and a valid content creation process.
Users like it so much that they even return to the website to re-read the information or to check up on the updates, these are returning visitors. The percentage of those who come back to your site represents the return rate.
You need to consider it to understand your target audience’s needs and desires.
5. Scroll Depth
With its help, you detect the exact point on the page where the audience drops off. Quick abandonment signals difficult-to-read or uninteresting texts.
Specialists measure this performance indicator with a plugin named Scroll Depth Google Analytics. You must install it because it is not an Analytics built-in feature.
6. Content Marketing KPIs: The Number of Downloads
When people make an additional effort to get your content, it means you have stirred their interest.
Modern individuals are always in a hurry. Plus, they have countless opportunities to choose from. Determining them to fill out a form or answer additional questions is proof of your marketing skills.
7. Visitors’ Location
It is helpful for your budget to identify the regions where your creations are most popular.
Let’s imagine your target audience comprises women who live in the USA. However, Google Analytics shows you that women in Western Europe engage more often with your business. You have two alternatives:
· tailor your content to suit the US readers
or
· concentrate a part of your efforts on the Europe-based visitors
Every aspect matters if you want to thrive in the nowadays competitive environment.
8. Devices Used by the Audience
Statistics point out that more and more individuals are using mobile gadgets to access the internet. Therefore, all your content has to run smoothly on all.
Users abandon websites when they encounter navigation problems. Plus, nobody likes struggling with tiny pictures while trying to buy something online.
9. Marketing KPIs: The Website’s Traffic Sources
The traffic you get may come from:
· organic search
· paid search
· direct traffic – people use the name of your website to reach it
· social media platforms
· referrals – links on other websites
· email marketing activities
· others
If you analyze them, you will understand which are the most and the least performing sources for you. You may opt for improving your search engine optimization strategy or starting a new ads campaign.
Do not forget that Google Analytics allows you to set up traffic codes. They are helpful to quantify the traffic that arrives from different channels.
Always check the number of links that lead to your website. Most individuals will refer to your site when they consider you an authority in the niche or industry.
This will bring you search engine optimization benefits. Plus, you will gain additional visibility.
10. Marketing KPIs: Shares on Social Media Platforms
Social Media Platforms have proved how powerful they are when it comes to getting a reaction from their users. Thus, it is not advisable to ignore the type of content people enjoy sharing with others.
Keep in mind that each platform has its own characteristics. Thus, long texts might not be effective on one designed for visuals and vice versa.
There is a huge variety of tools you can employ to assess your social media posts impact. Lots of them are free and intuitive. Marketers appreciate:
· Hootsuite, which comes in handy when you own accounts on different platforms.
· Buzzsumo, perfect for keeping an eye on your Facebook pages.
· Twazzup in case you are a beginner and want to monitor your Twitter activity.
· HowSociable which allows you to quantify your competitors’ visibility.
Despite the numerous tools, you cannot identify the exact number of users who saw your posts. Unfortunately, lots of them are not observed by account holders.
To get a clearer picture, include links in posts. The total sum of clicks may serve as an indicator of your social media consumption.
11. Appreciations from the Social Media Environment
Although likes are less influential than shares, they possess a certain amount of power. Appreciations boost organic increase and show that your texts, pictures, and videos are captivating and original.
12. Visitors’ Comments
This is one of the most significant marketing KPIs for 2018. People who write in the comments section are engaged. Your content has triggered a reaction, a desire to take part in a conversation, or to ask more questions.
Of course, not everybody will leave positive feedback. The negative ones are constructive because they enable you to adjust errors and design a better promotion plan.
Do not ignore, delete or hide opinions that are different from yours. Be professional and find a diplomatic answer. Acknowledge mistakes and do your best to fix them.
You should not underestimate their convincing power. Studies revealed that 50+ positive opinions per product can increase the conversion rate by almost 5%.
The most effective tools to track reviews include TrustPilot and BirdEye.
14. The Number of Followers
You will know that you have valuable content when individuals start following your activity on a regular basis.
15. Email Metrics
Email marketing is not obsolete as many are tempted to consider it. In fact, it establishes a more personal relationship with your customers or readers. Not to mention that “the money is on the list”. People registered on your mailing list have the highest chance to become your customers.
In addition, you send your offer to targeted persons who agreed to receive more data about your business.
Setting up and launching a campaign is not enough. To scale its success, you should follow metrics like:
· the opening ratio – it reveals the attractiveness of the email subject
· click-through rate values – it shows how many individuals browsed the email and considered it pertinent to their needs
· the number of forwarding actions – people distribute captivating content which resonates with their interests
No matter how small or large your company is, you ought to be alert about media mentions. Praise may bring new business opportunities while negative feedback helps you correct strategy slips.
Brand awareness is paramount for brands and individuals alike. Gaining the customers’ trust is a tough process. On the other hand, a minor inadvertence may shatter your credibility.
17. Heat Maps to Depict Users’ Preferences
Their function is to indicate the areas of a page that are the most attractive for the viewers. This is very useful when you decide to change the aspect of your website or online shop.
18. Click Patterns
They show you what is relevant to your target audience. Thus, you can adjust your work based on these content marketing data points.
Google Analytics offers you the necessary tools to perform this research.
19. Marketing KPIs: Conversion Rate
This performance indicator sums up the number of visitors who have taken and finished an action on your website.
It is not complicated to calculate it. You need the following easy-to-apply formula.
CV = (conversions/total website visitors) * 100%
Example:
Rebecca sells her handmade bags via an online shop. Let us assume that it was reached by 2000 visitors last month. Out of these, 100 purchased one of her products. Thus, her conversion rate is equal to 5%.
When the conversation rate is low, you’d better start to enhance it.
Social platforms have their own tools which you can use to monitor conversions. Google Analytics delivers data for websites.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
20. Soft Conversions
These occur when people give you their contact details but do not purchase your products. They may turn them from potential to real customers as long as your content is enticing.
21. Marketing KPIs: The Number of Leads, CPL, and ACV
One of your marketing goals might be to attract more leads. In this case, you ought to know how many potential customers value your activity.
It is not rocket science to measure the number of leads. A count of the individuals who offered their contact details in exchange for an eBook is enough.
To make sure you invest your resources wisely, use your marketing KPI dashboard to establish the correlation between your cost per lead and return on investment.
Another element that reveals the success of your online content marketing campaign is the ACV or the annual contract value. It points out the number of finished actions because of your crafted content.
22. ROI and ROAS
Return on Investment is useful to identify the key performance areas of marketing. Thus, you get a better understanding of where to place your money.
ROAS is the abbreviation for Return on Ad Spend. It gives you a hint of how much you must spend on advertising to get a profit.
23. CPC or Cost per Click
This indicator enters the scene when you spread the word about your offer through online paid advertising. Careful monitoring is necessary to detect the ads which generate the highest ROI and to continuously improve the output of your ads campaigns.
Google Adwords Average Cost per Click per Industry. Source: WordStream
24. CPA or Cost per Acquisition
Bringing in new customers requires additional funds. These are mirrored by CPA. Lots of businesses use this KPI to establish the plan for their advertising campaigns.
To calculate it, you must divide the total marketing costs by the total number of acquired customers.
25. The Average Order Value
You cannot determine people to buy from you unless you are ready to flow in some cash.
AOV shows you the funds you consume whenever a person purchases something from you.
Businesses prefer to boost the average order value rather than the conversion rate. They adopt this approach because drawing in other clients is quite a laborious task. On the other hand, convincing loyal customers to buy is less difficult.
26. Lifetime Value
According to the marketing dictionary, lifetime value represents the profit you get from one customer.
Companies use it to forecast their future revenue. It is helpful to estimate how much profit you need to make to cover the advertising costs.
27. Customer Retention
It reflects a company’s ability to hold its profitable clients for months or years. Loyal buyers are more likely to accept new services or a range of goods. Consequently, you should dedicate some of your efforts to tailoring loyalty programs.
The churn rate indicates how satisfied customers are. In this case, a high value hints at troubles.
Check here some tips from a renowned expert in customer retention:
28. Search Engines Ranking
Several years ago, everybody was going through lots of pain to get a top-ranking position. Nowadays, marketers focus less on this aim. There are other aspects to consider such as ad space or personalized search.
29. Organic Website Traffic
This is one of the key content marketing metrics for any online business. Organic traffic is earned not paid for and therefore is more precious. Pages, which attract users naturally, are a real asset to your business.
You may always rely on Google Analytics to do the tracking job well.
30. Organic Click Through Rate
CTR points out the frequency with which people who see your content click on it. It has low values when there are lots of impressions but only a few clicks. A high CTR correlated with poor impressions alerts you that it is about time to get involved in optimization activities.
Once you understand the visitors’ behavior on your website and what attracts them to it, you are ready to build up a precise content marketing strategy. Armed with a marketing KPIs list you will know where to focus your efforts to get maximum exposure and increase conversions.
The digital content marketing strategy is essentially a blueprint that includes processes, standards, and topics to help you plan, create and publish your content.
The content marketing strategy is the foundation of reaching your business
. It is a sort of magnetic compass that you have to craft on your own measure to show you the way to your objectives. And of course, we are all striving to find the best content strategy that works for our business.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter
It’s a guiding line that organizes the marketing teams involved in producing content: writers, editors, SEO specialists, designers, producers, project managers, analysts, etc., identifies the needed tools and channels and provides procedures and workflows. And aligns all the stakeholders involved toward the same goal.
Remember your digital content marketing strategy line needs to be flexible and your team agile. In our ever-changing world, it happens quite often that the situation forecast in January has nothing to do with the reality of May.
Useless to reinforce why you need a content marketing strategy, it’s vital to have a path that leads you toward your goals.
When you need to arrive from point A to point B, you establish in advance a route. This is similar to your business, to achieve the goals you need a route, and that’s the strategy.
A simplified content strategy template that will definitely help you in your endeavors of creating your strategy is to be found if you click the aforementioned link.
A successful content marketing strategy is the ultimate game-changer for your business. Because it’s one of the key things that will give you an edge over your competitors. Investing in it is therefore well worth all the effort.
Audiences have become smarter and more discerning today than ever, they’re looking for value and relevance. Most of them, as time goes by, are becoming media-savvy and can now tell the difference between the noise in traditional advertising and real content that serves their needs. And this is where content marketing is king, it’s what will help you create and deliver the information your audience needs.
What Do You Hope to Gain from Solid Content Marketing Strategy?
a. It’ll Help Establish Trust with Your Audience
People tend to lean towards something that offers them relevance and value. This forms a good basis for trust. By connecting with your customers and giving the answers to their questions through the content you deliver them, you will be building a solid relationship that they can always come back to.
Consistently offer quality content to your audience and find yourself building a good reputation for your brand, which will consequentially attract the trust and loyalty that you need.
b. It’ll Bring Them Back for More
When you offer your audience just the right content, they will get a positive experience. Whenever they visit your site or social pages they will get solutions and this will keep them coming back for more. The positive experience reinforces how they see and feel about your brand.
c. You Gain Authority
Churning out great quality content is your business’s way of flexing your muscles and proving your expertise in your field. When you publish content that solves your audience’s specific issues, your audience will look at you as an expert worth her attention. This will boost your authority and rank your content higher.
d. It Generates Leads
Generating leads is one of the key goals of any marketing campaign and quality content is at its heart. The calls to action become very instrumental in generating leads to your landing page.
e. Boosts Conversion
For most businesses, this is the ultimate goal. And this will be easier if you provide your audience with useful information that they can eventually trust over time. With trust established, and with the right calls to action, the purchasing decision will be in your favor.
Thus, this is a strong relationship between quality, relevance, and offering solutions.
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
What is a content marketing strategy without the key elements? These are the building block of effective content marketing efforts.
a. Positioning
This can be considered as the manner in which you get your brand out of obscurity by creating awareness about all the solutions you offer to your audience through the aptest platforms thereby amplifying your expertise to a higher position of great reputation.
When you set yourself as an expert in your niche, you’ll have the leeway to set higher rates for yourself and set yourself up for greater opportunities. This means being in each place where your audience looks for solutions to their problems. When you position yourself on multiple platforms sharing your expertise, you’ll build higher confidence with your audience.
b. Value Proposition
When your audience’s needs meet your solutions in perfect positioning, magic happens. However, achieving this requires navigating through clear communication, true perception, and delivering on your brand promise.
And this is where a good value proposition comes to play. It’s the baseline promise to your audience. A clear expression of what they stand to gain by purchasing your product or service. It’s about the thing that makes you unique and makes you stand out from your competitors to the advantage of your customers. Identify it and offer it.
c. Business Case
The next important element in online content marketing strategy is about driving your brand forward. This will require clearly defining your goals (read below) in order to see how creating an inbound content marketing strategy will get you closer to them.
Knowing your goals will lead you to pick the resources to invest in in order to achieve your desired results. It will also help you have a clearer picture of the costs, benefits as well as risks of implementing your content marketing efforts.
d. Your Strategic Plan
This final element is meant to help plan every step that will support you in reaching your overall goals and how you’re going to measure them. You have to insert in a strategy the platforms you want to use and also the methods you will use to promote the content.
It’s a top priority to also consider the most appealing content type for your target audience. Often times a mixture of videos, blog posts or infographics would be a great approach.
To facilitate your task check the digital content marketing strategy template below, which I created especially to help businesses streamline their strategy creation efforts.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
Now, let’s start and identify the core pillars that are sustaining your website content strategy:
Effectively How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy? A Content Strategy Outline
Pillar 1: Results of Content Audit
If you are not starting from scratch, before committing to the creation of your digital content strategy for the next year, an audit and revision of the content you produced last year are compulsory.
· Inventorize your content. First, you need a quantitative evaluation of the content you already have. Where is it published? How many pieces are published? In which format? Which of them show up on the first page of search engines? Collect in an inventory list with data like link, author, publishing date, last update, keywords, etc.
· Content audit. This is a qualitative evaluation of the content you listed in the content inventory list. Which is the quality level of this content? Does it meet your actual quality standards? Is it in line with your brand? Does it answer properly to your audience’s pain points? Which pieces of content generated the most traffic and why? Which is the bounce rate? But the dwelling time? How are the social shares? Is the actual content converting according to targets? Search for explanations and answers to these questions.
· Competitor analysis. By examining competitors’ well-performing pages, you can understand which valuable pieces may be missing on your website. Use the SE Ranking SEO competition tool to investigate your rivals’ organic performance, find out which keywords work best for product or landing pages, and which are perfect for audience educational purposes. Also, make sure to check if there are any SERP features for queries you are going to target (like the “people also ask” section, featured snippets, or site links) and optimize your content for them as well.
· Identify the content gap. Search for topics that are not covered by your content and they should be.
Pillar 2: Establish Your Core Content Marketing Goals
The fundament of your own content marketing strategy is the goals that you want to achieve through your marketing efforts. These business goals are general high-level statements that your marketing efforts will focus on and are established by the top management for the whole organization. Such goals could be:
* Create brand awareness. If your company/business is new, your primary goal will be to create brand awareness, to reach as much as possible of your target audience
* Boost traffic for your site by x%. This could be accomplished through search engine optimization, via organic traffic, but it will take time to rank and till the results will be visible in search engines. Or via paid traffic, which will bring results quicker but will require a higher budget.
* Increase conversions for your products or services by x%. You need to influence and convince a larger number of visitors to your site to become customers and buy your products/services.
* Build a reputation as an influencer/leader for your company. Your brand is much more than the effective products/services you sell. If you create high-quality content, and deliver great products/services that help your audience and exceed her expectations, in time you could build a solid reputation and confirm the status of a leader/influencer in your industry.
From these overarching goals, the content marketing goals will be derived.
Business goals in general, content marketing goals included, need to have the following S.M.A.R.T. characteristics:
* Specific: Provide exact details of what you need to achieve.
* Measurable: Try to define a number or level that defines exactly your goal.
* Attainable: Your goal should be feasible and realistic
* Relevant: Choose a goal that is significant for your activity
* Timely: Always define a deadline for your goal
Source: House of Hunt
SMART goals, could look like this:
Till [Date] the [company]’s team in charge of content marketing will achieve [number]/ [metric] [interval].
Till March 30, 2022, Eagle Advertising’s team in charge of content marketing will reach 10.000 monthly new visitors for our blog.
The best approach on how to create a content marketing strategy that works is by using the right KPIs and contextualizing them with your brand. They must be aligned with your business goals, your strengths as a brand, and the life stage of your business.
They must also be tied to your company size because different businesses require different needs to meet the needs of a certain stage. For instance, if your business is fairly new, your content will be on creating awareness, so you should use KPIs that address this aspect and so on.
KPIs are important metrics that help you reveal the strong or weak points of your content marketing efforts (use a professionally executed content strategy template) that you should address in order to achieve your overall goals.
Such metrics show actionable insights such as:
Sales impact – B2B content marketing strategies zero down to which is the impact the content has on revenues. For this reason, you should develop effective systems for measuring sales impact across all your platforms.
Return on Ad Cost – Instead of doing a general calculation of revenue of the whole campaign over the ad spend, it’s best to take into consideration all the detailed cost factors e.g. the value of leads generated. Return on ad cost (ROAC) is the metric between return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS). The above-mentioned indicator offers you more insights into the effectiveness of the greater marketing budget and you will plan based on clear information and data.
Rate of voice in the market – how well do you connect with your audience? Do they consider you a voice that represents their views? This may be a difficult KPI to measure, but it can be pointed out in happy customers or audiences. Plus, if you have happy employees, then you’re winning at this.
Social impact – this is one of the content marketing strategy metrics that will contribute to your brand’s sustainable growth. This is because today people are all about better health and a better world. And what better way than meaningful content that adds so much value to social wellness? When your content adds to a positive social impact, then you’re on the right track.
Assess Current Position
The audit carried out should also show you your current market position. This is meant to answer the question of whether you’re achieving the goals you set for your brand. Some of the indicators of your market position include considering your content’s shelf life.
Is your content evergreen or has it been overtaken by time? It would be a good acid test for your efforts. You can also consider looking at cross-channel measurements. This means looking beyond impressions, organic traffic, or bounce rates. It means looking at whether your content feeds social platforms or whether it serves satisfactory customer service and so on. Does it offer more?
All these details will help you know your current state and where you need to tweak to get improved results.
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Pillar 3: Audience Research and Persona Development
Who are you trying to reach?
Your content is only as good as the leads and audience it attracts. You can draw thousands of views, but if only five of them are the right people who would use your product or services, it’s a waste of your team’s time.
Identifying who your content should be targeting will help your strategists to determine what types of topics, ideas, and keywords you should cover. What are the pain points of your audience and what is she interested in reading?
What characteristics should you identify about your audience?
Demographics: Age, gender, ethnicity, income, location, job title, etc.
Psychographics: Hobbies, interests, beliefs, habits, and more.
Challenges they face: What are they dealing with that would cause them to begin to search for your product or service?
Pain points: What in their life is causing a disruption or what problem does your product solve?
Where are they getting their information: If your audience is searching for a solution to their problems where are they turning to search for information?
What type of content do they prefer: What content format does your audience prefer to get the information they are looking for from?
How can we help: How can the content you create help, give your target audience the information they need?
You may have several buyer personas profiles, so adjust the template accordingly.
Your ideal – primary buyer persona/primary audience – the persons you should focus on foremost because they have the highest probability to buy your products or services. The content you create should be targeted mainly at the primary buyer persona.
Your secondary buyer personas. These are people that accomplish most of the characteristics of the ideal audience but are not quite ready to buy. You need to convince them, attract them to a sales funnel and convert them into customers. For these secondary buyer personas, your content should be more strategic.
To find out this information about your buyer persona you may:
· Check your Google Analytics in the Audience section if you already have an established audience.
· Make a survey to find out. Tools like Survey Monkey or Google Forms can help you in your efforts.
Map the Customer Journey
Identifying your buyer persona is only the first step. The next critical step is mapping your customer journey. Your customer or audience journey map is just the chance for your business to stand out through the creation of the right content that responds to them in a way that they really need. The thing that most content marketing strategy templates miss by a huge distance is that your customers are at different stages of buying your products or services.
Customers don’t just zoom in from discovering to buying. They move from awareness to consideration, to the new customer stage (acquisition), and possibly all the way to the loyal customer stage. And all these stages require different content for your content marketing efforts to be effective. Feel free to check my marketing content strategy template to organize your content creation efforts around the buyer’s journey stages.
How can you achieve this? Here are a few key factors to consider:
i. Your Content Needs to Be Customer-Centric
Your content marketing strategies should be about offering your audience a great experience. And any improvement you create must be geared towards enhancing this experience.
This means you do not start designing your ideas about the product, but rather around what your customers need and how you can meet their needs. It’s about looking at your business from the customer’s lens. Don’t assume what they need. Find out while understanding their personas.
ii. Your Content Will Require Data
Mapping your customer journey will require data such as geographic locations, user downloads, or even cancellations. This will not only show you the customer stage, but it will also show you the products or content that is doing well and the ones that need improvement. It’s this data that you will use to create personalized content that helps your customers go the whole 9 yards of purchasing your products or services.
The 3 Main Stages of the Customer Journey
a. Awareness Stage
A potential buyer would gain from accessing content that would offer them solutions to issues they’ve been grappling with. They may not be ready to purchase yet, but your well-crafted quality relevant content is what will build awareness and guide them to the next stage.
The content for this stage should be about making their lives easier. Focus on topics that offer them the change they didn’t even know would be possible.
b. Consideration Stage
This content answers the question “why now”. It’s about retaining your customers’ interest in your products or services. To achieve this, your content must be able to win their trust and confidence. They must see that you get them. So, this means even the tone of your content must be reassuring for them to deeply consider what you’re offering and move on to the next stage.
c. Purchase Stage
This final stage is about creating content that removes all doubt about you. It answers the question “why you”. Why is your offer the best for this buyer? Create content that shines, and shows your uniqueness. Are you eco-friendly? Are you pro-health? What makes you superior? Create content that perfectly balances their very specific problems with your very specific solutions, and you will win hands down.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
Pillar 4: Define the Content Pillars and the Subsequent Topics. Create the Content Calendar
The pillars of content or clusters of content are the skeleton of your content generation. The content pillars you create have to be related to the products and services you sell and respond to the questions, needs, pain points, and struggles of your audience related to them. Usually, by pillars of content, we understand the main topics or cornerstone topics that relate to your business. And they include a collection of subtopics that compose the pillar.
Let’s assume you have an SEO agency that provides SEO services for small and medium enterprises. Your main services are SEO-optimized content development, Link building, Local SEO, and Technical SEO.
Your content pillars might include:
– On-Page SEO
– Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
– Increasing traffic from organic sources
– Ranking Algorithms for major search engines
Each content pillar will have topics and types of content assigned.
Here is a content pillar example. A pillar of content like “Off-Page SEO” might include subtopics like:
– Top backlinking strategies
– How to successfully guest post
– Best practices to create an infographic
– Everything you need to know about Skyscraper strategy
Collaborate with your team to discover which of your client’s questions need to be answered. Speak directly with your clients, survey them or visit forums and questions and answers sites to find out.
My content marketing strategy template listed above includes a content pillar template to help you organize the topics in content clusters.
Identify the type of content you will produce
Nowadays, you can choose from a variety of types of content to attract your audience.
The content marketing world is a vast industry and goes far beyond the classical blog post, even if it is its foundation.
Among the types of content available you can pick:
* Articles and Blog Posts
* Videos
* Webinars
* eBooks
* Social Media Content
* Guides
* Reports
* White Papers
* Infographics
* Newsletters
* Case Studies
Pay attention to your audience preferences and align the types of content you produce with their interests and needs. If your audience is teenagers between 15 and 21, you should choose the video, if you target business professionals who prefer reading, ebooks might be the best choice for case studies.
Pillar 5: Create Design and Visual Content Standards
You need to create some design principles and standards to guide your designers while creating visuals for your brand. And your digital content marketing strategy is the place where you define it. Check the content strategy template to see. They are needed to grasp the message of your brand and translate it into coherent visuals and imagery.
Include the basic design elements like:
* Selection of fonts to use.
* Brand color combination.
* Logo-related requirements.
List here all the elements related to visual content that the marketing team should be aware of. Like dimensions of headings, quality of images to use, dimensions, and type of videos. Compulsory elements that should be present on each page, elements to totally exclude.
Consider using custom photos instead of stock to define your style. It will take effort and time, but in the end, it will be worth it.
Pillar 6: Identify the Channels to Promote Your Content
Deciding which channels you are going to use to promote your content is a task of major importance and you need to include them in your content calendar.
Always take into consideration being present when and where your audience hangs out.
The number one channel to consider is of course your own site, this is your main vehicle and one of the few that you own.
The second one is your mailing list. It’s overly stated that the mailing list is the most valuable asset of a business in our ever-changing digital era. You own your mailing list and on it, you have the most engaged persons with your business. If you decide to use your mailing list to promote your newly published content decide how many emails you are going to send and when.
Social Media is a sum of channels where you have to be present and promote your content. Choose and focus only on those social media platforms where your ideal client is present. You will not be able to present on all social networks, or you can but that will require huge efforts and resources are almost never enough. You have to pick among Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, Medium, Snapchat, and more. So, pick wisely and based on analytics. I would suggest focusing on 2-3 maximum channels and on those to have a bold presence.
For instance, if you target B2B established professionals, LinkedIn is the best option, if your buyer persona is young people under 30, Snapchat or Instagram are better options to consider. Consider using analytics for each social media network to find the insights that you need. Test each potential platform to see which brings in the best results. Most probably you will face a trial and error process till you find the right channels for your business.
Once the social media channels are decided, the following step is to create a schedule to promote your content.
Each piece of content will religiously respect this schedule.
A promotion schedule on social media channels might look like this.
Two Tweets three times a week, four weeks after publishing
One repost weekly on Facebook
One Pin daily for one month in group boards and own relevant boards
Another option for your social media promotion is to use paid advertising. These ads help ensure your content gets seen and setting them up is incredibly easy.
Other channels where you want to guest post. Create a list of influencers in your niche or complementary niches that are to be contacted in order to guest post on their sites.
If you want to be featured in major publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Business Insider, or Entrepreneur include that here. Your best bet for contacting these influencers is with a personalized cold email.
To organize yourself better look for a content calendar template that can guide you with promotion channel selection.
After deciding what type of content you need to create, long form, short form, the next phase is the execution phase, literally creating that content. The preparatory element of creating content is designing the process of content creation: the steps that are to be covered, their order, and their length of time.
The content production process comprises all the phases till the piece of content passes to editors and designers.
The content generation process includes the creation and the editorial processes and explicitly indicates who does what, in which order, and when. The persons included in this activity are the content manager, the writers, the editors, the designers, and the SEO specialists.
The flow of the execution process includes all the tasks in chronological order.
In general, the content creation process includes:
· Brainstorming the topic for blog posts – 2-3 days, eventually establish a meeting with the team at the beginning of each trimester and decide on the topics for the period
· Assigning the publishing date and filling the publishing calendar – 1 day
· Researching other resources on the topic – 1 day
· Organizing interviews (if the case) or gathering data – 3-7 days depending on the type of piece of content
· Researching and establishing the keywords to be used for this topic – 1 day
· Creating the structure of the piece of content – outline – 2 days
· Revising and approving the outline – 1 day
· Crafting the first draft of the piece of content – 2-3 days depending on the length, for 1000 words article 1-2 days, for 20000-word ebooks 3-4 weeks
· Revising the draft – 1-4 days depending on the type of piece
· Sending to the editor – 1 day
Take into consideration the length of this process when deciding the date to start the writing process for each piece of content, in the function of the publishing date.
After the content is created it passes through the editorial process. The editorial process organizes the steps of preparing your content for publishing, the publishing itself, and the analysis of the result.
Here is an editorial process flow example:
Editing content – 1 – 4 days
Requesting revisions to be done by writers if the case – 1 – 2 days
Creating the design for the piece of content – 1 – 5 days
Approving the design – 1 day
Send the piece of content to the SEO specialist – in 2 – 4 days
Publishing content – 1 day
Set promotion campaign – 2 – 4 days
Approve and execute the promotion campaign – according to the calendar and promotion strategy
Post-publication analysis of results
Pick a Content Management System
An excellent content marketing strategy example must have a content management system because content marketing is most effective when the process can be repeated, optimized, and tracked. A CMS acts as a repository where your content lives, thereby helping you streamline and manage all your campaigns in one place. It also enables you to update your content across multiple channels, lets you repurpose the best content and so much more to facilitate your content production process.
Resource Allocation
What is a content marketing strategy without sufficient resource allocation? Having established a content calendar that includes important factors such as content type, platform to use, and the right audience, the next important thing is ensuring you have the necessary resources to help you deliver on your goals. This involves identifying the digital tools that you will need to produce your content, knowing who will be in charge of creating content items, and so on.
Depending on the size of the team you’re working with, you can identify the individual that will be in charge overall. If you outsource these services, then you will have to factor in these costs as well. You may for instance outsource a video specialist, freelancer, or graphic designer if you don’t have them in-house or if you are a start-up that doesn’t have a team yet.
Pillar 8: Editorial Calendar
Your content production process ends with the publication of the content your team created. These calendars are valuable tools as they allow your team to organize their tasks accordingly.
Calendars should include all the content types you plan to create and the following details:
· title of the article
· scheduled date of publication
· content pillar it belongs to
· funnel stage of the buyer journey – awareness stage or decision stage
· format of the piece of content – blog, infographic, ebook, long-form content, short-form, etc.
· channels of distribution – where the piece of content will be promoted – social media channels, other sites, etc
Having a defined editorial calendar, you’ll always have ideas of content ready to be created and in progress. The editorial calendar is one of the major parts of your website content marketing strategy. And will be of major help to be consistent with your publishing schedule and respect it. Publishing content consistently and regularly helps you gain authority and return visitors to your site.
Pillar 9: Measuring Results of Your Content Strategy
One of the major challenges of content marketers is to measure the success and results of the content created. Of course, lately, the situation has improved dramatically, we have now analytics, but has bounce rate an impact on your content’s success, are page views a huge indicator of success? Well, arguably.
Here are some metrics that you want to consider:
· pageviews. Many page views translate that you managed to attract the right audience interested in your content and products or that visitors were searching for more information on a certain subject
· time-on-page. The longer the better. High dwelling time means the content was considered useful by the readers if it was long enough, for a short text might mean that it is difficult to consume, and readers spend much time depicting it.
· social shares. The more the better, as usual. Even if that will not necessarily translate into more business for you, it is certainly an indicator of success.
· bounce rate. A small bounce rate, well that’s another discussion: what do we consider a “small bounce rate”, means that the audience is interested in your content. And reverse a high bounce rate, which means that the audience was not interested. Though, it is not necessarily an indicator of the quality of your content. If your content ended up in front of the wrong audience, that’s just to be expected. If I end up on a blog about food for cats and I am not a cat lover, my visit will be a bounce rate.
KPIs to measure content marketing strategy results. Source: SmartInsights
Experience with your own content will learn you and your team how to identify problems and how to solve them.
After deciding what your measurement process will look like and which indicators will be used, you should also decide how often you will create the reports and establish some templates for these reports. It will be easier to conclude if you use a uniform template for the reports that will ease the comparison of metrics.
Pillar 10: Define Your Content Strategy Budget
All marketing activities involve a budget. When creating your content strategy, you need to have at least an approximate idea of how much it will cost to implement it. If you have the internal resources to execute it, or you need to hire help in-house or external consultant experts.
Determine how much it will cost to produce the content that you established in the strategy, how much it will cost to promote it, and if you are going to use paid channels how much budget you want to spend for this purpose.
There you have it, the 10 major pillars that sustain a successful content marketing strategy able to support your future growth and expansion.
How to create a content marketing strategy?
Do a content audit.
Inventorize your existing content, do an audit for all your articles, a competitor analysis, and identify the content gap for your semantic keywords.
Define your content goals.
Pay attention to setting some S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) goals. Assess the current situation and establish KPIs.
Audience research, persona development, and buyer journey definition.
Define your buyer persona (ideal customer) and her characteristics. Identify which are the steps that a potential client takes to become a customer.
Define the Content Pillars and the Subsequent Topics. Create the Content Calendar.
Identify the main content clusters and information that your client needs to solve his problems with your products/services. Or what subject to write about to attract your audience.
Create Design and Visual Content Standards.
Establish what principles and conditions are to be accomplished to create a cohesive brand.
Identify the Channels to Promote Your Content.
Where will you publish your content on your own site, on your social media channels, on tier channels, etc?
Content Production Flow.
Put in place a procedure to be followed when creating content.
Editorial Calendar.
Organize the identified topics in an editorial calendar with all the details, date of publication, format, stage of the journey, content pillar, and distribution channels.
Measure the results of your content strategy
Measure the established KPIs and see which are the results obtained and what is needed to improve them.
Determine your content strategy budget
Estimate a price for each activity included in the strategy and determine the budget needed to implement your strategy.
Content marketing funnel! Voila, some other fancy name, and apparently a Gordian knot that you need to solve. But wait, that doesn’t need to be overwhelming, if you approach the notion step by step, you will see it is achievable. Content marketing funnel explained for complete beginners.
What Is a Content Marketing Funnel and Why Do You Need It?
A content marketing funnel is a way of creating your content based on the phases of the buyer journey. Meaning following the steps that a prospect/visitor is following through the content of your site to purchase a good or service. In essence, users arrive on a landing page – from ads, emails, or organic search, and all the additional pages they are visiting until they buy is a content marketing funnel.
Along this path, a large part of the traffic that arrives on your site will drop off at different points, and in the final stage – the purchase stage – will arrive just a small part. This explains the form of the funnel, with a larger top and a smaller bottom.
Why does this happen?
There are a plethora of reasons – a bunch of them on your side like technical dysfunctions, incoherence between your ads and your landing pages, or reasons related to the customer. These could be: the visitor is just looking for information, he is not looking to buy; the visitor is not aware he has a problem that your product/service could solve.
That just means the visitor is not ready to buy yet. So, pushing him in a funnel to buy right away is simply not appropriate and will not bring the results you want.
The content marketing funnels should be constructed as client centric.
Their mission is to align customers’ needs with your business needs, in a win-win manner. You need to polish continuously your lead generation funnels, to identify where the “breaches” are in these paths. To fix them and anticipate the questions of a potential client and answer them even before he asks.
From your business point of view, the main purpose of a content marketing funnel is to translate as many as possible visitors into paying customers.
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
The number one question is how you attract a larger part of these visitors to become customers.
Through lead nurturing. Meaning answering all the questions, doubts, and concerns a potential client might have.
Why do nurturing leads count?
Research by Marketo confirms that 96% of visitors arriving on your site are not prepared to buy at that moment.
That’s more than huge, it’s enormous!
The reality is that leads that don’t convert at all are a burden on your marketing expenses, a fact that propels leading nurturing among the top priorities of any business.
48% of businesses confirm that a great part of their leads is involved in “long cycle” nurturing.
Businesses that best employ lead nurturing observe a 50% increase in sales and a reduction of 33% in costs.
Based on these numbers, the conclusion is obvious: users will trust and buy from you, only after you prove you pay great attention to and anticipate their needs.
Content Marketing Funnel Explained: How to Build an Effective Content Funnel?
In order to simplify the process of creating your content marketing funnel you need to clearly establish some details like what you want to sell through the funnel. How do you want to sell the product? Where do you find the qualified traffic?
What product will your funnel sell?
If you have just one product/service, the answer is obvious.
If you have more, you should make a decision. Aim to build a funnel for a specific service/product, not a general one. For instance, a writer should not consider building a funnel for “writing services”, but for “content marketing writing services for the real estate industry”.
Being specific will facilitate your efforts in defining the stages of the funnel.
Take into consideration several criteria:
· Popularity of a product/service
· Potential of that product/service to drive sales (a product that can lead to selling other products, or services that involve more work)
· Ease to sell
As a general rule, a sales funnel should sell one product/service.
How do you sell the product/service? From where?
Depending on the specificity of your business the place where you place your pitch is different:
· Long-form sales pages – for courses, conferences
· Pricing pages – for books, software applications, consulting services
· Product pages – for online stores
Where do you find the qualified traffic?
Firstly, you can count on the traffic you have on your site or your email list (if you have one). Your existing visitors already know about you and are already positioned somewhere inside the stages of the funnel.
· Partnerships with influencers and other specialists in your industry
Now that you have clarified the funnel basics, start with defining the content marketing stages:
The genuine art of converting means a flow and a funnel that doesn’t simply end with a sale. It’s a perpetual mission of reaching, keeping, and increasing your buyer persona base, using technology, content marketing, social media, email automation, etc. to satisfy better their needs.
It’s part of a broader marketing strategy that mixes lead nurturing, targets behavior uses retention tactics, and in the end, obtains referrals.
If you do research, you will obtain various good-looking versions like these:
Source: Google
The content marketing funnel has a logical flow — it starts with generating awareness for your brand and problems it solves. Then Captures the interest of those users searching for a solution to such a problem. Attentively guides the flow to a purchasing decision. And arrives in the final stage of taking action and buying.
To each of these stages of the marketing funnel, you have to assign corresponding messages, that are buyer centric:
Content Marketing Funnel Stage 1: TOFU
The question is: which is the awareness level of my prospect?
This stage is the first contact point, you have to present your business, your mission, and your offer. You need to inform the users that you exist.
Most often this happens when:
* Traffic is redirected to your site from an advertising campaign
* Backlinks link to your site
* Your business is mentioned in a video, webinar, or podcast
* Word of mouth is spreading – happy clients make advocacy for your business
* Search engines pop your business within organic search
The essential is that awareness emerges when your activity appears in front of potential leads in places where they spend time.
On his side the customer may find himself in the so-called various stages of awareness, depending on the acknowledgment he has of his problem, existing solutions, and the role of your brand.
The famous copywriter Eugene Schwartz pinpointed several stages of awareness:
Not aware: the user doesn’t consider he has a problem, nor is looking for a solution, and knows nothing about your brand
Problem aware: the user suspects he has an issue, but no clue about a possible solution
Solution aware: the user knows his purpose but does not know your brand can be a solution.
Product aware: the user is familiar with your business and brand, and knows that you can offer a solution, but hasn’t decided that your product is his best option. The user is considering various options.
Most aware: the user had decided in favor of your product and just needs to take action and buy.
How long is the funnel and how much you have to work to convince the potential client, depends highly on which level of the above spectrum he is. This refers to individual parts of the buyers’ journey and also to the whole funnel.
If the client is in the “totally unaware” position of course the funnel will be longer and more convincing elements will be needed. The best case, from the sales point of view, is the most aware position when the prospect is prepared to become paying client.
Depicting where the potential client is on his journey, will help you identify elements that the client responds favorably to and moves him a step further in the funnel.
From the very beginning is vital to know exactly (research is important) which are the pain points and desires of your audience.
At this point, you have to indicate how your solution is a benefit for clients from various perspectives. Potential customers are in different stages of the content marketing funnel and a multi-direction approach can help generate more qualified leads.
Top of the funnel content: – land on the funnel from a Facebook ad:
Source: Facebook
Or from an affiliate email:
You have to show a potential client which is the value you deliver and how are you going to do it. You need to put in front something that clients value, not what you consider they judge as valuable.
Content Marketing Funnel Stage 2: MOFU
The question is: which problem fixes my product?
As a general idea, what you sell is not the product/service itself, but its benefits, and the improvements that it can bring into your client’s life.
Thus, it is compulsory to clearly depict the problems and issues that your product solves for your client and how it will impact his life after such problems are eliminated. And create the corresponding content to provide answers.
Consequently, you have to do your homework and search in detail which are the pain points, desires, and needs of your prospects, how they see your product, which issues appear while using it, which are their exact requirements, which are the messages that resonate better with your target audience.
Ask your clients, listen to them, and also check on forums or question-and-answer sites like Quora to get some answers. A keen understanding of your prospects’ needs and behavioral targeting will support you in your endeavors.
Remember: you encourage action to help your prospects solve their problems and in exchange, you endorse your brand awareness.
Using the exact words that clients use to describe their situation proved to be the most reliable option, as it helps improve conversions.
Speak to your audience in their language with their own words about your offer, why is it valuable, how is it different from your competition, and why is it a better alternative. Identify and answer all objections and fears your buyer persona might have even before their questions pop up.
To generate a high-converting funnel, you need to educate your audience concerning the benefits of your offer.
Craft informative articles on your blog, and make video demonstrations, tutorials, or testimonials to emphasize the value you offer. Open up the conversation, show your potential clients you are always open to discussing and listening to their problems and that you are easy to reach, that you actually care. Ask for feedback. Gain their trust.
Most often a clear sign of interest is subscribing to your email list. If a visitor of your site gives you his email, in exchange for a freebie, for example, this is clear proof of interest.
Sparkling interest is crucial for migration to the next level of the conversion funnel.
The question is: What’s the leading need/desire that will make my prospect decide?
This stage relates to presenting prospects with your offer in a persuasive manner to make them decide if they buy or not.
The decision process is a function of your prospects’ purposes and desires. Even if their problems and struggles are the ones that are requiring a solution, their emotional needs are the real trigger of the decision.
Your message, to be effective should appeal to these deep emotional needs, the benefits of your offer should deliver at this level. Something like “we are the best in the world” or “we save you money” is not relevant enough.
You have to dig deeper to find meaningful answers. A way to discover this is to ask why until there are no questions left.
Practically this is a sales process. There are infinite options to arrive at this stage. Some ways are:
* Registering for a webinar
* A long-form sales page displaying the benefits of your offer, touching emotional needs, showing social trust, and testimonials
* Scheduling a free consultation where you speak about your offer
* An email series to warm the lead-up for the sale
Your Prospects Need to Take Action
Question is: why is my prospect still hesitating? Are there still unsolved concerns?
This is the purchasing stage. Prospects arriving at this stage will split into two categories:
· Those that are ready to buy, act and become customers
· Those that are not ready to buy, and you need to nurture them further
Not all prospects who arrived at this stage will buy, most of them will not, and that’s the reality. They will still have hesitations, for various reasons ranging from not trusting you to not being really convinced they need your product. Whether you like it or not, your visitors will have hesitations about buying from you.
It will be your task to minimize these hesitations by displaying the expected information in the right phase of the funnel. And how do you find that? What to say in which stage? Well, customer research is here to help you discover what to say, when, and also what makes your visitors stop and not act.
After passing through the above-mentioned sales funnel stages, from informing clients about your business, to rising their interest to having them engage in some form with your brand, it’s the moment to ask for the sale.
Now, your prospects should be prepared to trust you and your business. Use powerful attention-grabbing calls to action in emails, ads, and sales pages. Offer incentives to urge the need of buying, like limited discounts (20% discount if your buy in the next 15 minutes) or free bonuses.
The client bought it, end of story! Right?!
Wrong!! You should continue to engage your clients and transform them into evangelists of your offer.
And for those that finally didn’t buy, you have to continue your efforts by putting in place a marketing sequence. Send them a series of emails offering valuable information and propose another item from your sales funnels. Don’t waste such an opportunity!
The sales conversion funnels are in a continuous modifying cycle as clients modify their expectations and you should adapt your funnel to the new changing conditions. Improving user experience should be a top priority for you.
What will make your copy more compelling?
· Avoid ambiguity be clear and concise, people react better when they face known and calculated risks.
· Clear and common language is better than complex, people trust what they can understand quickly.
· Short and sweet, stay focused on the object.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
Further Explanation for Your Content Marketing Funnel: Test It
After putting in place a coherent content funnel strategy, creating and settling in your funnel, you should always be looking for ways to improve it. And testing is the best method to do that. Be aware that you should focus on each stage of the sales funnel, not just on the awareness one. The final buying stage is more than important also.
Since you may have multiple pages that need testing, you need to filter and prioritize them. Start with the best performing and improve them if possible. Take a look at the implementation necessities: Are they easy to do or challenging from a technical point of view and require lots of time? Which is the conversion value brought by these modifications? How likely is it to have more prospects that convert?
Provided that you choose which pages are to be tested, they should go live and the results to be tracked.
Firstly, you have to set some realistic conversion goals and pick a tracking system, like Google Analytics. Analytics tracks the users on your site and provides a series of information like sources of visitors, how long they spend on your site, which country are they from, and which device and browser they use to connect.
Tools like Google Analytics support you in testing, refining, and optimizing your funnel.
Here you have it – a detailed content marketing funnel explanation and a game plan to convert your next funnel into a journey that inspires your customers and multiplies your sales.
Frequent Asked Questions
What is full-funnel content strategy?
A full-funnel content strategy is a strategy that takes into consideration also the stages of the buyer journey and plans adequate content for each step of the content funnel (top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel).
What are the four stages of marketing funnel?
The four stages of the marketing funnel are awareness, interest, decision, and action.
What is an example of a marketing funnel?
An example of a marketing funnel could be the series of steps that a potential client takes when he finds out about a brand via organic search, goes to the brand’s website, reads some articles and case studies, subscribes to the newsletter, and after a while buys the products/services that the brand provides.
Ranking the highest possible in search engine results is a fierce battle. An interminable ever-changing list of on-page SEO steps and off-page SEO factors impact these results.
The main purpose of on-page SEO techniques is to naturally optimize a piece of content for search engines, in such a manner that it is easily found and listed in front of targeted visitors.
Here is a list of on-page SEO techniques that everyone should use to boost rankings:
Invest In Your Business
Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Most experts consider that the title of the post is the most important on-page SEO factor. Their argument is that if the title is not attractive and engaging enough to click through, or not optimized, the content will never appear in front of the user.
Others, like MOZ, consider the title tag as the second most important on-page SEO factor after content.
For best performances, your titles should follow the subsequent rules:
– Optimal length under 60 characters for proper display on the search results
– Use your keyword in the title once, out of the question to stuff a title just with keywords
– Keyword should be among the first words of the title, the first if possible.
Whenever possible include modifiers in the title. Words such as 2023, “guide”, “best” help improve rankings for long tail keywords.
In my view, the title of your post is paramount in the hierarchy of on-page SEO steps. The headline will make or break the success of your post.
2. On page SEO Step 2: Assign H1 Tag to the Title of the Article
The H1 tag is very important for SEO, so verify if your CMS properly added it to your title.
H1 tag should be used only once on a page and include the target keyword.
3. High Quality 1000+ Words Content
There is a huge debate about what that high-quality content means. As a consequence there is a myriad of indirect methods that in a certain way can measure the quality of the content: the number of visitors, repeat visitors, time on site, shares, comments, etc.
Useless to say that unique content is the norm. Avoid publishing duplicate content, for example for a guest post, because you have real chances of getting penalized by search engines.
High-quality content is easy to digest and attractive as designed. Organize the content in short paragraphs, emphasize keywords with a bold format, and use bullets to break blocks of text.
Nowadays the trend is to write long-form content as it was established that it ranks higher and is perceived as providing more value. Writing 2000+ words or even 3000+ words posts becomes the standard.
4. On-Page SEO Step 4: Enrich your content with visuals
Besides high-quality content, formatting that content is of out-most importance. Insert charts, videos, and entertaining images to retain attention, increase time spent on that piece of content and shrink the bounce rate.
Visuals improve the quality of content, making it more informative and attractive, thus boosting user interaction. Search engines highly appreciate that.
5. On-Page SEO Steps: Absolutely Include Images Optimization
Image name and image Alt Text should include target keywords. At least one of the images should include the keyword you run for. Again, this is a detail that helps search engines determine the subject of your post and it’s an on-page SEO technique that you should not ignore.
6. Insert Target Keyword within the First 100 Words
The first 100 words of your article should include the target keyword to help search engines identify the subject of your content.
Most probably this comes naturally, but just in case don’t skip it.
Concerning the keyword density in your post, there is no magic formula, but don’t overuse them, it’s subject to downgrading in search results. Use one keyword in the beginning and within the post where it makes sense, including semantic variations.
Here is what Matt Cutts from Google says relative to keywords density:
7. On-Page SEO Steps: Exploit the Power of Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords are related words or synonyms used by search engines to score the relevance of a page. Use a couple of them within your post.
8. Assign H2 Tags to Subheadings
Subheadings should also have tags, H2, H3, H4. The target keyword is to be inserted in at least one subheading.
Like in the example below:
9. Updated Content
Search engines are more interested in fresh content. As such updating content, especially for time-sensitive content is decisive.
Google, for example, displays the date of the last update.
The dimensions of the modifications made to a certain post are important too, removing irrelevant parts, and adding more content surpass just changing a few words. Update your post frequently and boost your rankings.
10. Insert External Links in Your Content
This seems to be a common mistake in not using outbound links. But it is a simple, easy SEO strategy to increase traffic. Its major advantage is that improves the quality of your content and helps search engines establish the topic of the respective page. External Links do not miss any on-page SEO checklist 2023.
It’s important to pay attention to the sites you link to and aim for those with high authority. Renowned sites like Forbes.com or Entrepreneur.com, or major actors in your niche, like HubSpot.com for Inbound Marketing, are more than reliable and trustful, as they provide quality content that your readers will highly appreciate.
And even more, your site will gain credibility.
11. Insert Internal Links in Your Content
If external links are very important, inbound links are also important. Interlinking is a strategy to keep the reader more time on your site while passing from one page to another. Inbound links prove that you are also offering supplementary information besides your page content.
Drop 2-4 links among your posts. And use as anchor text the corresponding keywords. Place them just since and when they are necessary and pertinent.
12. Insert Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing is not actually a ranking factor but has an indirect role. Social media buttons help expand the audience that arrives on your site.
13. On-Page SEO steps: URLs Should Be SEO Friendly
It is well known that the first 3-5 words that appear in a URL bear higher importance.
Consequently, the permalinks should be short, relevant, and include the target keyword.
Loading speed is an SEO ranking factor and a compulsory on-page SEO technique. User experience is highly impacted by the site’s loading speed. Statistics say that users would not come back to a site that loads in more than 4 seconds.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
