How to make every content marketing campaign a success!

Develop content marketing strategy and content strategy

A marketing strategy can be compared to the construction plan of a house. If there is no underlying plan, the measures implemented will stand on a shaky foundation. There is an immense risk that many things will not fit together and that the results will not meet the expectations or requirements of the (construction) managers and the target group (clients). Nevertheless, many companies still proceed without individual marketing tactics. Especially in content marketing, topics, content formats and channels are still often determined pi times thumbs. The information played out sometimes works better and sometimes worse. A comprehensive and long-term overview is missing.

Alone, since a lot of money is usually invested in the generation and display of content, you should make sure that such activities ultimately bear fruit as desired. If you want to use your budget in a targeted manner and efficiently achieve the results that are most helpful to your own company, you should proceed with a well-founded content marketing strategy and a specific content strategy.

But what actually constitutes such strategies, what is the difference and – most importantly – what is the best way to build them? Answers to these and other key questions about content marketing strategies and content strategies can be found below!

Content marketing as a marketing funnel. The marketing funnel in particular is often a major challenge and should be strongly reflected in the content strategy and guide it. It is important to understand this marketing funnel in particular and thus gain a better insight into the target groups.

 

Definition: What is the difference between a content strategy and a content marketing strategy?

The terms “content strategy” and “content marketing strategy” are often used interchangeably. Although the two and the practice behind them are closely related, they do not describe the same thing. The difference should be clear from the definitions of the individual strategies:

• The content marketing strategy forms the organizational framework and documentation for all content marketing. The content strategy is also included here. The central work steps are to identify specific goals, define the target persons for the content and their customer journey, analyze the competition and determine the perfect channels for distribution.
• As mentioned above, the content strategy is part of the content marketing strategy. It covers the central areas of responsibility of content producers and defines how these professionals should proceed when implementing the content marketing strategy. In particular, this includes the content audit as well as the planning, production and operational management of the content. It also includes the continuous monitoring and reporting of completed measures.

 

 

How are the two strategies connected?

The content marketing strategy comprises the content strategy. The latter is organized within the former. Accordingly, the content marketing strategy focuses primarily on management aspects to create an optimal framework for content marketing. Whereas the content strategy relates more to operational content marketing. The two are, of course, very closely linked.

When you develop a content strategy, this is always done in relation to the overarching content marketing strategy. This means that in the course of setting up and also during the final implementation, you must always check whether all measures are planned in line with the objectives, target customers, customer journey, etc. defined in the content marketing strategy.

It is rather rare that the content strategy also influences the content marketing strategy. It may be that when defining the execution of the content marketing strategy, it becomes clear that some factors cannot be implemented. In this case, the content marketing strategy needs to be adapted or additional resources need to be created.

 

 

Typical components of a content strategy and a content marketing strategy

The content marketing strategy and the content strategy are (at best) individually tailored to the requirements of the executing company and its target customers. Nevertheless, there are certain standards that are typical for the strategies.

 

 

What does a content marketing strategy consist of and what does it not consist of?

Put simply, the content marketing strategy defines which (content-related) communication measures should be used to reach your company’s target customers. The following questions in particular need to be answered before creating the strategy:

• Why do you generate content (goals)?
• Who do you want to reach (target customers)?
• How do you want to reach your target customers (content formats, topics and channels)?

Corresponding answers and all measures to implement the relevant facts in practice must be clearly written down in a document that is easily accessible to all parties involved. For the final realization, you can fall back on numerous methods. These include, above all, the approaches of buyer personas, the customer journey and marketing strategies for individual channels. These practices and tactics are not part of the content marketing strategy, but are closely coordinated with it.

Content creation is not organized directly in the content marketing strategy, but only in the content strategy. A social media marketing strategy or an email marketing strategy make use of various procedural patterns of a content marketing strategy or can be subordinate to it.

Content creation and finding editorial topics is above all a major challenge and is not created in the content marketing strategy, but only during content creation.

 

What does a content strategy consist of and what does it not consist of?

The content strategy refers to the planning of all necessary measures relating to operational content marketing. It is also recorded in specific documentation, which should be optimally accessible to all persons concerned. The key questions you should answer before developing a content strategy are as follows:

• Is there already content that I can use appropriately (audit)?
• Who can/should create the content (in-house production or external)?
• How and when is the content played out (seeding)?

When implementing the corresponding responses, different further strategies are used, which are clearly linked to the content strategy, but which are fundamentally separate approaches.

A typical example is the SEO strategy. The content strategy or target group-specific, high-value content with the right keywords can have a strong influence on search engine optimization and should definitely be considered in an SEO strategy. However, a content strategy itself does not define any specific measures that are intended to optimize the ranking of individual pages.

 

What is content marketing?

The term “content marketing” means something like “content sales promotion”. It is about using content to convince (potential) customers to perform previously defined actions (conversions). These actions are ultimately purchases. However, content marketing can also be used to target smaller conversions before they are completed.

In fact, content marketers should definitely choose smaller steps. This is the only way to fully exploit the great strength of content marketing. Appropriate content does not work like traditional sales promotion or advertising. Recipients are never pushed more or less insistently to make a purchase.

Rather, it is about subtly moving (potential) customers towards a deal with content that is valuable to them in their particular situation. Building understanding and trust plays a very important role here. The (simplified) scheme behind this is as follows: “I will preferably choose a brand that knows my challenges, requirements or wishes and is always helpful to me (in its content).”

Now once again to the great strength of content marketing: under the conditions just described, content marketing is ideally not even recognized by its recipients as sales promotion. They merely get the impression of comprehensive assistance. How successful this is ultimately depends largely on how differentiated the content marketing strategy and the content strategy are.

Content marketing as a vital measure in the modern and digital marketing mix is almost indispensable today.

 

What are the goals of content marketing?

Content marketing does not want to be recognized as a form of marketing or sales promotion. This is how it achieves its greatest effect.

In addition to this all-encompassing goal, content marketing is particularly concerned with optimally positioning your own brand on the market, acquiring customers or initially leads and ultimately also retaining existing buyers.

When considering the goals of content marketing in the context of the content marketing strategy and the content strategy, it is important to distinguish between short-term and long-term goals. Strategies usually pursue long-term goals and individual campaigns short-term goals.

Short-term goals in content marketing are examples such as generating reach or maintaining social buzz. Long-term goals, on the other hand, include building a loyal community of readers and creating loyal customers. These and similar objectives often take several years to achieve. This is why content marketing strategies are always geared towards the long term.

 

 

Why is a content marketing strategy important?

Without a content marketing strategy, content marketing is possible, but it is like shooting in the dark. Content is created or played out without pursuing specific goals, without really serving your own target customers with the information they want/need and without reaching them via the channels they really use.

Only with luck will some positive results be achieved. However, the huge potential of content marketing cannot be fully exploited in this way. Last but not least, an approach without a strategy always means a lot of wasted money.

 

 

How do you create a content marketing strategy?

The creation of a content marketing strategy essentially involves the following to-dos.

1. Define overarching goals: Content marketing should always be based on specific goals. You need goals simply to be able to measure successes or failures. Without goals, you cannot focus your content marketing on fixed points. This makes it extremely inefficient. Ideally, goals should be set according to the SMART principle. The acronym “SMART” represents the terms “specific”, “measurable”, “attainable”, “relevant” and “time-based”. This means that appropriate goals for content marketing are as unambiguous as possible, measurable, achievable, relevant to the company’s success and time-based.
2. Identify target customers: Before you can create the customer journey (more on this in a moment), you need to define the individual requirements of your typical buyers. The best way to do this is with the help of so-called buyer personas profiles. Demographic data and common challenges or wishes of your target customers are recorded in these profiles, which you then process with your content.
3. Defining and understanding the buyer’s journey: People normally move through certain phases from recognizing a problem or need to solving it by making a purchase. This customer journey needs to be determined in as much detail as possible for your individual business area or your target customers. Ideally, you will then serve your (potential) customers at every point of the journey with perfectly fitting content.
4. Competitor analysis: Firstly, knowing what your competitors are doing in terms of content marketing is very important, as it gives you an overview of what you should also be delivering in order to be competitive. You can also see where there is potential to outdo your competitors with your content.
5. Collection of topics: The next step is to crystallize the topics that are particularly important to your personas at certain points in their journey.
6. Define the content formats: In addition to the topics, you should also clarify which formats your target customers want (text, video, audio, graphics, web applications).
7. Selection of channels: At the very end, you define the channels through which the topics and content formats will be played out (company website, blog, social media, email). The composition of topics, formats and channels should fit perfectly. If just one of these factors is not right, you will not be able to reach your (potential) customers sufficiently or possibly not at all.

Why is a content strategy important?

Just like the content marketing strategy, the content strategy is an important efficiency factor. Even with the best content marketing strategy, if it is not organized which content is available or is to be produced, when which content is played out where and whether the content distribution achieves the targeted goals, content marketing can hardly be operated effectively.

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to do without it; we are talking about a content strategy that includes content marketing and makes for strong brand communication. In 2020, more than 84% of advertising companies in Europe worked with a content strategy and content marketing, and the trend is rising (source: semrush).

How do you create a content strategy?

The main tasks you should carry out if you want to develop a content strategy are as follows.

1. Content audit: During the content audit, we first check what content is already available and how it can be optimally integrated into content marketing. The aim is to critically scrutinize what existing content brings you.
2. Content planning and project management: In content planning, ideas are collected and filtered (based on the audit, among other things) and a content roadmap is drawn up. You should now know what content you can continue to use and what new content needs to be produced. You also create briefings for content generation and assign responsibilities. Everything is done with a strong focus on your target customers, their desired topics and their preferred channels.
3. Content production: You or the responsible (external) specialists can now start to create or adapt the required content.
4. Content management and upload: Ideally, content management should also follow certain guidelines. These include specific approval processes, analysis processes and, of course, archiving processes. An appropriately structured approach ensures in particular that the content can ultimately be distributed as desired.
5. Content distribution (seeding): The content is then played out via the specified channels at the previously defined times. The basis for distribution is a small-scale editorial plan.
6. Success control – monitoring and reporting: Content distribution is not the end of the content strategy. Based on the content marketing goals you have previously defined, it is now important to measure success. Corresponding data provides important information on where content marketing can be optimized or expanded. There is always room for improvement!

 

Conclusion

Content marketing can be a very powerful tool for customer acquisition and retention or sales promotion. Ideally, your target customers will not even notice that they are being influenced by corresponding measures.

However, content marketing is not a sure-fire success. Simply publishing content that roughly matches the concerns of your typical customers via random channels is not enough to bring out the full potential of this marketing approach.

Your approach should be structured and as holistic as possible. An individual content marketing strategy and a content strategy form the basis for correspondingly efficient content marketing.