Devel­op­ing a strong con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy takes a bit of clever think­ing and tap­ping into your con­sumers’ deep­est wish­es and dai­ly habits. Think of it like craft­ing your most delec­table (and want-to-repeat-able) recipe, then kick­ing into gear and cre­at­ing it to share with the peo­ple you love the most. Or, in the case of busi­ness, with con­sumers you’ve come to appre­ci­ate their loy­al­ty to your brand through­out the years.

A few tips, reminders and basic guide­lines can help frame your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy so that if ever you feel you’ve gone awry or you fear you might lose con­sumer inter­est, you can get back on track and exe­cute to perfection. 

Let’s take a look at the 4  Content Marketing Tips:

Understand the Sales Funnel

Assum­ing you are famil­iar with the con­sumer pur­chas­ing fun­nel that begins with brand aware­ness and ends with brand advo­ca­cy, con­tent mar­ket­ing has a sales fun­nel to match. 

Along the pur­chase fun­nel, con­sumers are coaxed through the ini­tial stages of get­ting to know a brand, under­stand­ing its prod­ucts or ser­vices, pur­chas­ing said prod­ucts or ser­vices and becom­ing impressed by the brand’s per­son­al­i­ty and deliv­ery that the rela­tion­ship does not end at trans­ac­tion; the con­sumers extends invest­ment beyond pur­chase and goes on to cham­pi­on for your busi­ness to friends, fam­i­ly, peers and col­leagues. If you’re lucky, they might have a plat­form of hun­dreds of thou­sands of social media fol­low­ers with which to share their rave reviews about your brand. 

Con­tent mar­ket­ing focus­es on con­sumer out­reach, cus­tomer con­ver­sion (where are you con­vert­ing blog posts into CTAs?), mak­ing sales and retain­ing cus­tomers. It is impor­tant to align the sales fun­nel of con­tent mar­ket­ing and sales to get the most cross-over and con­ver­sion possible. 

Let analytics guide your strategy

You are a cre­ative genius, no doubt. But busi­ness is busi­ness, and so you must be will­ing to set your artis­tic ego aside in favor of num­bers. Look at the data month­ly, quar­ter­ly or on a cam­paign-basis to under­stand exact­ly to which types of media con­sumers respond. 

Where you find laps­es in pro­jec­tions and results, refine your strat­e­gy. Rethink the con­tent you shared. Dig deep­er into con­sumers insights, behav­ior and habits to get the round­est under­stand­ing of what it is your con­sumers are look­ing for. If tri­al and error isn’t work­ing, ask your con­sumers what they want to see more of, and adjust accordingly.

Let analytics guide your strategy

Stick to your plan until it’s time to refine your plan

When you set the course for your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, you might see engage­ment peak right away, or num­bers might not jump at all. Stick with it. Fol­low your cal­en­dar for post­ings, events and sub­jects and remain con­sis­tent in your efforts until the data clear­ly shows you’ve gone strate­gi­cal­ly awry. If this hap­pens, no big­gie. Get your team back togeth­er, re-eval­u­ate the data and adjust your ini­tial plan. 

Repurpose old content 

Feel like you are run­ning out of things to say or share? Try shar­ing things you’ve already said in anoth­er way. Did you write a long-form post about stay­ing healthy? Great, now make it into an info­graph­ic assign­ing brief, short-form con­tent blurbs to pho­tos of sup­ple­ments, food groups or what­ev­er you fea­tured in the orig­i­nal piece. Either you reit­er­ate the mes­sage to exist­ing read­ers or you reach oth­er con­sumers in your audi­ence who can­not be both­ered to read long content. 

Con­tent mar­ket­ing is fun! If you start to over­think it, pause. Remind your­self to think about the data deeply, then to be light, airy, and per­fect­ly cheer­ful in your plan exe­cu­tion so that you can com­mu­ni­cate the best parts of your per­son­al­i­ty to read­ers and viewers. 

Reach out to Rosy Strate­gies to learn more about the best of con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies and get start­ed on refin­ing yours, today.