Some marketing professionals have lost focus on the value of creating dynamic marketing content to attract the best visitors to their business. They couldn’t be more wrong in the opportunities that are available by using a simple system for creating a Killer content strategy proposal. Today, we will walk you through that process.
In this easy to understand tutorial, you will be instructed on the best practices on creating unique marketing strategies, which best fit your needs. Those steps include:
- Identify Your Overall Goals
- Set Your (KPIs) or Key Performance Indicators
- Establish the Perfect Buyer Personas
- Audit Your Existing Copy
- Find the Most Efficient Content Channels
- Select the Types of Content
- Create a Schedule to Produce Your Message
- Identify a Process for Publishing, Promoting and Measuring Your Performance
Identify Your Content Goals
The first step in creating killer content is to define what your marketing objectives are.
It’s critical to define and assign what your marketing goals as the first step in your strategy. Strategies that try to be “all things to all people” most likely fail.
Is your goal to?
- Increase Website Traffic?
- Improve Your Brand Awareness?
- Generate More Raw Leads?
- Convert a Better Percentage of Law Leads to Qualified Paying Customers?
- Nurture Existing Customer for More Sales?
Questions like these involve your entire company strategy, not just your marketing efforts. It’s important to take a wide view of what you want to achieve and focus your efforts accordingly.
Establish Your Key Performance Indicators
Now that you have established your goals, it’s time to set a bar for your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPI’s are the measuring tools used to decide if your marketing campaign is a success. While fine tuning your goals is ideal, there is no limit on the amount of KPI’s you can measure to ensure your strategy is working.
There are a wide variety of real time tools like Google Analytics to measure your KPIs. Some examples of KPIs include, but not are not limited to:
- Unique Visitors to Your Website
- Cost Per Click
- Cost Per Lead
- Time Spent on Your Website
- Number of Inbound Links to Your Website
- Bounce Rate of Visitors on Your Website
- Location of Traffic that Visits Your Website
- Keyword Rankings
There are an unlimited KPIs that can be analyzed to give you a full view of how you are performing. This is not to overwhelm your marketing team as certain KPIs are more important than others. While you should track everything you can with KPIs, there are a select few that should be constantly monitored on a daily basis.
Say for example you are conducting a marketing strategy in New York for a local pizza chain. Some of the most important KPIs would be: location of traffic relative to New York, keyword rankings for phrases like “pizza New York”, cost per click, and then ultimately the cost per lead/order. These KPIs will provide an estimate on how well you campaign is performing and will help build a base from there.
Establish the Perfect Buyer Personas
When creating a buyer persona, you need to look at your online content the exact same way the perfect possible customer will see it. Put yourself in their shoes. There are basic demographic considerations like gender, age, race, income and location. Paint a picture of who is the most likely to purchase your products or services.
By customizing your copy to the most likely visitor to purchase, your content shows that you understand and empathize with that target base. Depending on what you optimize your marketing plan for, by understating who you are looking for, will only increase your Return on Investment.
Audit Your Existing Content
Since you already have existing material, which you worked so hard to create, it’s now important to review that content to make sure there is consistency with any new content you are generating. Every few months it’s a valuable experience to evaluate old text in order to provide a consistent and unified message on who your company is and what value your firm offers.
While all information is great to have, if the content is disjointed it can do you a disservice in the end.
Don’t be afraid to delete or archive old content that doesn’t match your current strategy. Who is the person responsible for creating the original website content, should also understand the content of the past. By being flexible with content creation it will increase the odds of your success.
Finding the Most Efficient Content Channels
Finding the best and most efficient channels of delivery is one of the most difficult steps of the marketing strategy. In 2021, there are an unlimited number of outlets (both free and paid) to distribute your content.
There are social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TickTock, Twitter, Instagram, etc, etc. After finding your ideal perfect buyer personas, the channels you select should reflect this gained data. For example, Facebook has tended to lean to an older demographic while Twitter/Instagram leans towards a younger demographic.
By understanding your audience, it will help guide you towards the best channels to promote your company and brand.
Selecting the Best Types of Content
There are many methods to deliver your marketing message with current technologies. In addition to your traditional text, which lives on your website, you have the ability to optimize via other methods.
Creating a blog gives your website properties a fresh look, which attracts visitors when updated on a regular basis. If you have the capabilities, using videos, webinars or podcasts are all methods to provide quality for your audience. Using video and podcasts are also valuable in finding alternate positives for creating revenue generating marketing channels.
Email marketing is another strong tool for visitors who have either signed up for your “Newsletters” or for communicating with existing customers regarding new sales opportunities. Using Email Marketing is a very efficient way to connect with new/existing prospects to drive revenue.
Create a Schedule to Produce Your Content
When creating your marketing plan it is always important to pace yourself. There is no reason to use all of your resources at once as the frequency of posted information will help both in attracting visitors as well as alerting the search engines you are active. A rule of thumb, new content is always better.
If possible, map out a plan of what content you wish to publish in the next 6 to 12 months and decide how you wish to spread that information out. Based on your industry, some of this planning can be seasonally based to provide a custom message.
By following a precise calendar plan, it will reduce the time and money you invest in creation while maintaining optimal results.
Identify a Process for Publishing, Promoting and Measuring Your Content
Now that you have all your marketing plans together and your target audience identified, it’s time to decide how you publish and promote your message.
From a garage band to a symphony orchestra, even if the musicians are amazing, not having everything in concert and in sync can make you fail.
It’s imperative when publishing new information you also utilize all your tools to help promote it. This can go from posting your social media accounts to sending out press releases should your content warrant it. Timing is everything when promoting your products and/or services. By connecting your publishing to promotions, it makes your content look relevant and fresh.
And of course everything should be tracked. By reviewing your data on a constant basis you will find timing trends to increase the quality of your results.
Killer Content Overview
By following these simply professional marketing steps you will find success in your content strategy proposal. If you have limited marketing resources there are a number of content marketing resources to assist you in your journey.