CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE

HOW TO DEFINE CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing strategy is a methodology to create magnetic content that will attract a specified target audience and help in building relationship with them gradually by regularly providing relevant top-notch content they actually want.

Actually you have to be a great content creator and put yourself in audience shoes both at the same time. You need to understand what your audience really wants.

Also consistency is the key, you need to keep posting the quality content in order to attract a large number of audience. Basically you need to take your content marketing strategy very seriously if you want to make real profit out of your website.

Achieving success in this domain is not an overnight accomplishment. It is not a matter of even days. It takes a bit longer, may be some months but once you have set the foundation concrete the road ahead will become easy.

So let’s start by first understanding the difference between Copy and Content.

COPY AND CONTENT: Integral Part of Content Marketing Strategy

Basically the entire matter in your post consists of two parts: COPY and CONTENT.

What is COPY?

Copy is basically informative, its function is to provide information about something.

It Provides facts and figures that customer needs usually in order to make a decision.

Copy is based on WHAT, WHEN, WHERE depending upon which is relevant to your post.

It is usually (not necessarily) written in third person. For example they, it, them or about the things which you are     describing.

What is CONTENT?

The whole purpose of content is to build a relationship with your readers.

Content is something by which you provide value to the customer, in which you provide them something that they can  use right away.

It is based on Why and how– These pieces are important because they engage people by providing them answers to their questions and engage them at emotional level. As we know people make decision more often based on emotions.

Content is always written in First person. From YOU to SOMEONE, from the WRITER using I to the READER using YOU.

A lot of business flips just because of the ratio of both these components. Usually the Copy should be very less as compared to the Content. Generally this ratio is 1:5. If there is only Copy used in a text, trust me it won’t serve you. Making connection to the reader throughout the post is very much important to serve a long term goal.

I am going to walk you through 9 Content Marketing Strategy to help you cut through the noise and reach your ideal customers.

9 CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

FIND YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

You cannot sell anything to everybody!! Right?? So you must analyze which segment of audience you are targeting. It is based on many things like age, sex, location, profession etc. If your website belongs to male specific products, services or anything for that matter then you have to always keep this thing in mind while creating the content.

This is the first step in orchestrating a great Content Marketing Strategy. You must target the age range of your audience and this should be as much precise as possible. In other words, the range should be very narrow.

Speaking of finding the target audience, one technique that can be used in this approach is keyword search, aimed at finding out what your ideal customers are searching.

There are various tools available on internet for keyword search. I think you all might be familiar with Google AdWord. Some other great tools other than that are

www.ubersuggest.org
soovle.com/
tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-information/
www.zuula.com/
www.keywordbuzz.net/

The purpose of all these is to know about your readers, more you know them, more precisely you can base your content creation on them, and more effective your whole content marketing strategy will be.

FOCUS ON FACTS AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

While creating a content always give the reference of some facts in the form of statistics or any form for that matter from the reliable sources like various studies and researches. Also tell your personal experience wherever you can, it will help your audience to relate the things better.

When they will get to know your success story and your methodology to achieve that then they will feel more connected. More connected they feel more they get engaged. It will basically serve the entire purpose. What else do you need!!

CREATE FLEXIBLE CONTENT

By saying flexible here it means adaptability, your content should be adaptive irrespective of what device your audience is using.

In other words, your readers should be able to access your content on a desktop computer, then continue where they left off using their smartphone or complete their purchases through your mobile app, with absolutely no hassles at all.

Your content should be like water, like water takes the shape of vessel in which it is poured, your content should behave the same ability. Whether you use it on phone or on desktop. It should be highly compatible.

GO SLOW AND SMART

If you have just started, I recommend you to go real slow. Do not worry about why your website/blog is not generating 1000 monthly visits yet. Instead start smart and steady, focus on monthly 100-200 visits, once you get that you can replicate the methodology and once you started getting success you will upgrade your skills and that will result in great conversions.Many successful bloggers uses the same tactics. They believe if you are able to hit the smaller goal then you can hit the big one gradually.

Apply the same technique to your E-mail list. Instead of rushing towards your first 100 Subscriber make a goal of getting 4-5 subscriber daily. You will end up having 100-150 Subscriber at the end of the month.

BE COMPETITIVE AND GOOD SPY

You should keep a competitive mind set and always keep spying on your competitor. Try to find out what is he doing to gain more visitors. You can do this in many ways. Try to analyze from where he is getting the traffic for his website. In other words, one way of doing this by Analyzing their Backlinks.

But first you have to spot who actually your competitors are. After that you can spy on them. This is one of the best Content Marketing Strategy.

But always keep one thing in mind, he didn’t achieve that position overnight. So you need to sit tight and analyze everything and act accordingly. May be you won’t get the results immediately but gradually you will start getting the results. Patience is the key.

Okay!! Now the question is how to do all these things, I am a beginner and don’t know what’s all this!!!

If this is the case let me tell you how to pull this.

So here we go. First thing first!!

Know your Competitors

Follow certain proven methods to know exactly with whom you have to compete:

Open Google and type your main keyword.
Starting 4-5 websites are your topmost competitors.
You can make a list of them

It will be difficult and time consuming to go through all the links. Analyzing a few is okay. You just have to induce your analysis in your work and trust me everything will start working fine for you.
GO THROUGH TOPIC TRAINING MODULES

Are you one of those who is so passionate about writing something, have everything in mind but still do not know how to start or with what to start, thinking of a suitable topic to meet the demand of your subject??? If yes then you will have to go through some training. Not so-called orthodox training which is boring and tiring.

I am talking about an interactive training. Content marketing became easier these days considering all the statistics, you can find the data and content online for free.

According to Shift ELearning, online learning has grown significantly. In 1995, just 4% of U.S. companies were using online learning. In 2011, that figure was 77%. So why don’t you get some help from such online platforms like Udemy, Lynda and a lot more.

Why don’t use the brains of experts by learning from their courses and modules. If you are a beginner and having a hard time to find a topic you can just use this method without wasting so much time.

CUSTOMER IS GOD

In India this is a very profound ideology. If you treat your customers as God then no one can steal that customer from you. To understand this you have to understand a simple concept.

A customer is no good if he just visit your webpage and make some purchase and disappear. You never get to know who that was. It is just onetime money making policy. Are you realizing what you have lost actually???

Think about this in another way, he may be your potential future customer also which you have just lost. Now how to retain that customer?? Here you need to give that customer some value.

You can give this value in any of the form like an E-book or extra discount or anything of his interest in exchange of his Email address. Once you got his Email, keep this Email in a separate prospect list and keep telling him about the new offers via Emails.

Don’t flood his mailbox, keep it organized. It is same like bribing God for something while praying to meet your long term goals.

PROVIDE CUTOMERS WHAT THEY WANT

If you know your customers well as I suggested earlier then you may understand their demands also. Provide them with the content what is useful to them. Your primary motive should not be making quick money out of their pockets but to develop a relationship.

This relationship will only build if you provide them top-notch content that is unique and helpful to them. This is an integral part of Content Marketing Strategy.

If you keep continue this practice then you will surely get success. I am not the only one saying this. Refer to any expert in this domain he will have the same point of view.

Here I am talking about the great user experience. Even Google puts this first. If you keep providing unique and useful content, Google will love it and you will be granted higher page rank in Google search results.

BE PASSIONATE AND KEEN LEARNER

Are you one of those who thinks that you are not a great writer?? If yes, then there is nothing to worry about because according to TeachThough “fewer than 50% of college seniors feel their writing improved during college.”

This can be improved as everyone around on web was not a great content writer from the beginning. One needs to be passionate about the thing he wishes to learn.

If you fuel your passion and start learning today then you can be a great content maker. Put your interest on fire and keep learning. This is a proven fact that if you are passionate about something then nothing can stop you learning that, no matter what.

Successful content marketer don’t have it all from the beginning, they have put their efforts to make it happen. Consistency is the key, keep learning and gradually things will become very easy and you will not be able to believe that you are the one who made it.

This business, like every other business needs creativity. There will be many challenges and setbacks but if you are creative, you are unique then nothing is stopping you to achieve what you deserve and you will come out from all of this as a strong and influential person.

CONCLUSION

Probably you cannot recall all the 9 points i mentioned above but do remember what i am telling you right now. Customers are very selfish, they don’t bother about you and your long stories.

They just need the answers to their questions. So you have to at least know your audience as well as you can. That will give you an upper hand in creating the appropriate content.

Remember once you get to know your audience well, you will win half of the battle and soon you will be able to see traffic rushing towards your website.

Apply these Content Marketing Strategy while creating a content. Hope this article will help you built the great content. Feel free to drop a comment below if you need to ask anything related to this post or any other Content Marketing or SEO related query. I will appreciate that.