Implementing a content strategy has a lot of options to choose from: the CMS, the social platforms, the blogging sites, among others. However, it doesn’t matter which you choose if you don’t have a plan to succeed. Inability to build your approach carefully and to understand your market will likely result in failure. In short, if you don’t have these four tips down, your efforts to dominate with content will likely fail.
Understand Your Intent
It’s important to understand exactly what you hope to achieve with your content. -And, once you know that, it’s important to alter your approach to match. If you lack clear intent, your market is unlikely to respond to you in a positive way. Remember, customers buy products and services from people they know, like and trust.
Thus, an effective content strategy must focus on building relationships with your potential customers. You can reach that goal by making yourself approachable and relatable. This mean each article, blog post or video you create must be relevant to your audience and their needs.
Understand Your Audience
The next step you must take involves understanding your audience. You need to know them better than they know themselves. You also must be able to describe their problem in a way that makes them feel as though you know exactly what they’re experiencing. Connect with them on social media platforms and ask about the problems they need help with. If possible, encourage them to take part in surveys. Invite them to post any questions that they might have.
Through this process, you will gain invaluable marketing data that will allow your business to prosper. Create a list of questions your audience has asked. Add any problems or concerns they’ve expressed. Then, you can then base your content on those topics.
Create Your Content Strategy
Now that you have your data, it’s time to start putting everything together. It’s time to take control of your marketing message.
People will rarely buy from you the first time they visit your website. Failing to understand this fact will destroy your profitability. So, you need to start building an email list.
To do that, pick the most pressing questions your customers have. Create a report that provides relevant solutions. Next, offer it to those who are interested in exchange for their email address. Don’t ask for their contact information yet. This is a delicate process; don’t rush it.
Break each tip you have into its own topic and start creating your content. Each article or blog post should be between 500 and 1000 words in length. Divide each article into paragraphs with subheadings for easy reading. The article should offer just enough information to make them want to learn more. So, give them the opportunity to do just that: when they join your list for your free report.
Create Your System
If you want your lead generation campaign to be as effective as possible, create a system and watch it. You need to track and test every detail of your content strategy.
Although some aspects of your business can be automated, others take manual actions. For example, you can use conversion tracking pixels to track your opt-in rate. -But, you have to change your headlines yourself to determine which ones give you the best results. No program is going to do that for you. -Or at least not well.
If you’re working with a team, each person must have a defined role to ensure that no steps get missed along the way. Only change one small detail of your system at a time and always track the results.
Conclusion
Putting in the effort to set a goal, research the market and put a content strategy in place will help you in two ways. One, it will help you improve your productivity. Two, it will optimize your profitability.
Although many strategies are important to your success, always keep the golden rule of marketing at the front of your mind: Never ask for anything without first offering value in return.
In time, you’ll find the winning formula that will enable you to dominate with your content strategy.
