Start with strategy
Many organizations jump right into content marketing before addressing the foundational strategy. Strategy is the blueprint that aligns your efforts with your overall business goals and subsequently drives the content you create.
Simply put, it outlines why you’re developing content, who you're targeting for your content and what content to create. It should also determine the KPIs that you’ll use to measure success.
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3x as many leads.
Source: Demand Metric
Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing followers (19.7% vs. 2.5%).
Source: Aberdeen
STRATEGY CHECKLIST
WHY?
Why Are You Developing a Content Strategy?
Set Goals, Objectives and KPIs
Bring together cross-functional teams (education, operations, membership, marketing, etc.) to assess your organization’s current content mix (SWOTs are helpful frameworks) and set your goals and objectives for content marketing in the coming year. For example, will you use content as a new “product” to generate revenue? Or as a lead magnet to acquire new contacts into your database for nurturing? Or as part of a year-round engagement strategy to increase loyalty and lifetime value?
Your objectives should drive all decisions around budget, content development and implementation.
WHO?
Who Are You Creating Content For?
Identify Target Audiences
Your target audience will depend on your goals. For example, your audiences will be different if your goal is to retain core audiences vs. attracting a new audience segment.
Develop Personas
Once your target audience is confirmed, build out personas to get a deeper understanding of interests, media habits, behaviors and emotional appeals that might make them more receptive to the content you share. Personas are fictional descriptions you can create that summarize a particular audience group.
WHAT?
What Content Should You Develop?
Buyer Journey
Identify and define the types of content that your audiences will be looking for at the various stages of the buyer journey, from awareness through conversion. We’ve found that even great messaging can be misaligned—translating into wasted efforts and, more importantly, budget dollars.
Competitive Review
Your approach should also include insights gathered from outside your organization. Focus on both direct competitors (e.g., other events or associations in your space) and indirect competitors (e.g., media outlets that serve similar audiences) as a way of identifying gaps and opportunities.
Listening & Performance Testing
How will you know if your content marketing strategy is resonating? Through listening, performance testing and a constant review of analytics. Keep a good pulse on your audience so you can quickly pivot from initiatives that aren’t working and double down on those that are.
THE DESIRED OUTCOME
Your organization will be best served by creating a content framework—a living document that establishes a strategic through line from your overarching objectives down to granular content.
At mdg, we routinely build content frameworks to provide our clients with an overview of our process and strategic guidance for the creation—or curation—of content.
As a living document, the content framework is intended to be reviewed regularly to ensure it remains aligned with objectives, audience interests/needs and KPIs.
