5 Steps to a Successful Content Marketing Plan

Content marketing is defined as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action,” according to Content Marketing Institute. Content marketing, an inbound marketing strategy, is providing relevant and useful content instead of (or in addition to) pitching products and services to potential customers. It comes in many forms: blogging, e-newsletters, social media posts, videos, infographics, case studies, checklists, white papers, e-books, etc. It’s referred to as inbound marketing because, if done properly, you will gain incoming traffic from other blogs and websites that link to your content, as well as traffic from people who share links to your content via email, text, or other means.

Inbound marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing but generates more than 3x as many leads, so it’s no surprise that content marketing has become one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies used by 88% of B2B marketers. Furthermore, if you are in a business where gaining trust is key, such as when providing expensive services or goods, having plenty of high-quality content can build trust quickly and greatly reduce the time to convert a lead into a customer. However, as with any type of marketing, you need to have a plan, or it can quickly become a waste of time and resources.

Who are your ideal customers? What makes them tick? What are their pain points? How do they prefer to communicate – Facebook, email, etc.? What type of information are they looking for?

What do you want to achieve with your content marketing campaign? Set a quantifiable goal and then track your progress toward that goal, so you can make adjustments as needed.

Look at the holidays, seasons, events, and those “special” days. There’s a special day set aside for just about everything. For example, there’s a World Heart Day, National Beach Day, and even an International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Is there anything specific to your industry, such as when new products are generally launched or an annual conference? Look at what is going on within your business such as any new services or events planned. What are the typical questions you get from customers, common mistakes you see them making, or their pain points? What content can you give them that will make their lives better?

Creating content takes time. Who is going to create all this content? You can have an in-house writer dedicated to content marketing or outsource the writing. Another option is to spread the work out across multiple people within your company (each focusing on their area of specialty). You want to make sure that you have good content that people want to consume, so don’t take this step lightly. Think about who is going to proofread and edit the content? Who is going to optimize online copy for search engine rankings? If you decide to utilize a content marketing firm, determine who will be responsible for locating and hiring that service.

Don’t make your content calendar too complicated, or no one will look at it. Include vital information that is needed to accomplish your goals, and realize that this is a dynamic document that may change. If something within your industry suddenly becomes a hot topic, you may want to jump on it. There are programs designed to create content calendars, but one of the easiest ways is to create an Excel spreadsheet. Every business’s calendar will look different, but some of the column headers you may want to include are topic, date to be posted, keywords, CTA (call to action), who is writing it, who is proofreading it, and who is optimizing it for search engine optimization. This may sound like a lot of work, but if you have decided to cash in on the success of content marketing, you need to approach it strategically, or you’ll just be wasting valuable resources.

Don’t have the time, energy or personnel to do content marketing right? No problem – we’re here to help. And, if you add up the cost of the time that would be spent by your internal staff you’ll quickly realize that our services are a real bargain. So give PMI a call at 484-297-6395 or contact us online to learn about our turnkey approach to content marketing. And by the way, we walk the talk. Check out our website for lots of high-quality content related to the services we provide!

This post is adapted from “ 4 Secrets Behind Creating an Awesome Content Calendar .”