It far exceeded my expectations and more than doubled the number of leads and sales I got from my content marketing activities when I eventually developed and executed a content strategy in my own company.
You’ve undoubtedly heard the term “content strategy,” but what is it? So, how can it help you save time and effort?
The strategy you create for what type of material you’ll produce, how you’ll distribute it, and how you’ll manage it over time is referred to as your content strategy.
To put it another way, it’s a method for ensuring that your material is tailored for success.
It may save you months of effort and time when you invest the time to build a content strategy. Focusing your efforts on producing material that is consistent with your company objectives and audience demands will benefit from a well-planned content strategy.
A successful content strategy can increase your audience by up to twice, as well as your sales. The process is as follows:
1. You’ll save time by having a content strategy.
You’re wasting time if you’re constantly producing fresh material haphazardly. What type of content to create, when to create it, and where to distribute it will all be influenced by a content strategy. In the long term, this is a time saver.
2. More leads can be generated with a well-planned content strategy.
Getting your stuff in front of the right people is what lead generation is all about. You can use a content strategy to find your ideal audience and produce material that resonates with them. This will help you generate and convert more prospects into customers by generating more leads.
3. You can boost your sales by using a content strategy.
You can monitor the performance of your material and alter your strategy as you develop a strategy for it. This will help you increase your sales by increasing your conversion rates.
4. A content strategy will help you scale your business.
If you want to scale your business, you need to have a plan for your content. A content strategy will help you create a system for producing and managing your content. This will make it easier to scale your business without sacrificing quality.
The following is an easy approach to developing your own content strategy:
1. Define your company’s objectives.
The first step in creating a content strategy is to define your business goals. What are you trying to achieve with your content? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or generate leads?
For each of your goals, test to find which types of content perform the best for that goal.
For example, some people won’t even know they need your product until you educate them on their problem and how your product solves it. The content you write in this case will be a lot different than if people already know they need a product like yours, and you just need to show them why yours is the best one for them.
2. Know your audience.
Another important step in creating a content strategy is to know your audience. Who are you creating content for? What are their needs and interests?
Consider the demographics of your target audience such as age, gender, education, and experience.
Create a buyer persona of your ideal prospect and then target that person. According to Hubspot, using buyer personas make websites 2 to 5 times more effective as well as improves the user experience.
Find your prospect’s interests, their problems related to your niche, and what they are complaining about. Go to sites that sell similar products and see what people say in the reviews, both positive and negative. Check out forums, social media, niche groups, and any place where your ideal prospect hangs out.
The more you know about your prospect, their problem, their desires, and their objections, the better you can craft your own messages.
3. Decide what type of content you will create.
Once you know your business goals and audience, you can decide what type of content you will create. Will you create blog posts, video content, or podcasts? What format will your content take? The type of content you create should be based on your business goals and audience needs.
4. Choose your platforms.
Find out where your ideal prospects hang out and then reach them where they are.
If your prospects are on Instagram, then that’s where you go. If they are on LinkedIn, then you know where you need to be.
If you’re unsure, you might need to do more research or simply test one platform against another until you find the right fit.
5. Create a content calendar.
Once you know what type of content you will create, you can start to develop a content calendar. This will help you plan and schedule your content so that you can stay organized and consistent. A content calendar will also help you measure your success over time.
Ideally, you want to take your prospect through a buyer’s journey that results in a sale.
One of the most common buyer’s journeys looks like this:
- They discover your business through social media, a blog or a video
- They join your email list and or visit your site
- They find out more about your product and if it’s right for them. They also look at reviews and ratings.
- They compare your product with your competitor’s product
- They purchase
But if possible, you want your product to be perceived as having no competition at all. This way you will eliminate comparisons with competition, removing that step in the buyer’s journey and getting to the sale that much faster.
6. Promote your content.
Promote your content once it’s created. Share it on social media, email it to your list, and make sure it’s easy for people to find. The more people see your content, the more likely it is to achieve your business goals.
Be sure to keep your content updated as well. Old, outdated content is not going to help you and in fact, it can even turn people away from you.
7. Run a content audit.
This is where you will analyze which content is bringing in the most traffic, which content is converting to the most subscribers and which content is bringing in the most sales.
It’s possible that one piece of content will bring in 1,000 new subscribers but none of them will purchase, while another piece of content will bring in only 100 new subscribers and 7 of those will purchase. It’s important to analyze not just which content brings in the most eyeballs and the most subscribers, but also which pieces result in the most sales over time.
Double down on the content that is converting and stop wasting time with content that isn’t working.
Mediums you could use to share content:
Written content:
Visual Content:
Audio Content:
Interactive Content:
- Contests
- Games
- Polls
- Quizzes
Types of Written Content:
- Articles
- Case Studies
- E-Books
- GIFs
- Guides
- Images
- Infographics
- Memes
- Videos
- Visual Content:
- White Papers
Types of video content:
- Demonstrations
- How-To Guides
- Vlogs
- Webinars
Creating a content strategy is worth it because it provides you with clarity and makes it easier to know what kinds of content are going to bring you the greatest return for your time.
Instead of randomly posting odd bits of content as you think of it, you’ll be able to focus on exactly the types of content that do the most work to bring in the most sales.
Learning to build and use my own content strategy more than doubled my sales in a very short amount of time, and it can do that for your business as well.
And a well-thought-out strategy will save you time and effort in the long run and help you create only content that is aligned with your business goals and audience needs.
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