5 Things To Consider In Your Content Marketing Plan.

Content Marketing has been on the rise.

91% of marketers indicate that they utilize content marketing in one way or the other for business growth. 

And the results?

Content Marketing produces 3x more leads than other channels. It’s no wonder that more and more businesses are incorporating a content marketing strategy.

But, simply “creating content” without a  plan is a lot like going to an unfamiliar location without a map. 

A well-crafted and documented content plan will help you know exactly what to do and when and help you hit your goals faster.

Know this: Creating content that delivers traffic, leads and customers is not as hard as you may think, but there are a few things that need to be put into consideration if you want to create content that achieves results

5 Things To Consider when crafting your Content Marketing Plan.  

To craft a successful content marketing plan, these are important building blocks to consider:

1. Your Target Market

Every marketing strategy or plan must have a target market that you want to reach. If you are not exactly sure about this, start from your current customers. Who are they typically?

You want to look for similarities like:

• Age
• Location
• Occupation/Business Type
• Income level 
• Educational level 

Once you know the demographics, you’ll want to go deeper.

You’ll need to get clear on the following:

• Consumer needs
• Cultural influences
• Media preferences
• Fears
• Key purchase drivers

Most importantly, work to uncover unique insights about your target customer that the rest of the industry overlook or under-appreciate. 

Often, it will serve as a competitive advantage for a successful content plan or campaign direction, as your customer will be able to relate to your content because you truly understand every detail about them.

2. Customer journey map

Once you know who your Target audience is, you need to map out a customer journey. 

Your customer journey is the process a customer goes through with your business or brand company to achieve a goal

A customer journey map is a well-detailed diagram that clearly shows each stage customers go through when interacting with your business, from first becoming aware of your business to recommending your business to others.

You must understand all the touch points of your customers as it relates to your business.

This will help you come up with relevant content at each touchpoint to make it easier for them to achieve their goals with your product/service.

3. Quality

“Quality content” is so much more than a catchy buzzword in content marketing. The quality of your content is one of the factors that search engines such as Google use to determine your rankings.

So what is considered quality content? As we’ve already highlighted, this is precisely what Google wants to provide users with, but it can be tricky to determine what that is.

The easiest way to ensure your content is deemed worthy by Google is to ensure it’s relevant and effectively answers a user search query. 

Sites with irrelevant, low-quality content will suffer the consequences and will be demoted in the rankings, I’m sure you don’t want that for your business.

4. Marketing objectives

Depending on your business needs, you’ll have different key performance indicators (KPIs) for your content marketing as it aligns with your overall marketing goals.  

In all likelihood, you should take a further step to define relevant metrics for different types of content. These could fall into categories like:

• Performance marketing content (direct response ads, demand generation, and other promotional content that correlates with sales)
• Brand awareness, consideration, and/or consumer perception content
• Local market communication and support content (such as assets sharing with your distributors, retail partners, or local teams)

or any other business objective related to the product, promotion, placement, and pricing. 

Determine which of these goals are core to your content’s success in the short- and long-term, so you can consistently measure how well you are doing achieving those goals.

5. Relevant Keywords

Last but not the list, you’ll want to take note of what keywords you want to rank for with each piece of content.

How do you do that?

Take into consideration what your audience is searching for and what questions they have.

Then, do some keyword research using a free tool like Google Keyword Planner to determine what keywords to optimize in your content.

Also, use tools like Yoast SEO on your website to make sure that each piece of content is optimized as much as possible for those keywords.

That’s it.

Understanding and  factoring all the above points and more into your content marketing plan and content, in general, will help you to constantly generate free, targeted traffic consistently.

Getting Started

How do you build a “content machine” that turns content into free, targeted traffic?

You can learn that by taking the content mastery course. 

The 5 video modules course breaks down the essential skills needed to build a content marketing strategy that builds brand awareness, attracts leads, and converts your audience into loyal, repeat customers. 

On successful completion of the course, you will become a Certified Content Marketing Master, meaning you will not only be able to determine what type of content to publish but when to publish to generate the best possible engagement.

Want to get started in your content marketing journey? Click here