The 4 Simple Answers You Need To Create The Best Content Strategy
This is the definitive guide to to finding the 4 simple answers you need to create the best content strategy. Included in this guide are tips and tricks to help identify the real answers to crucial questions about your target market, company preferences, and more.
Every good content strategy has a clear objective with a plan on how to best utilize their resources. Each stage of the marketing funnel or buyer process requires attention and time. But each business will have different strengths and weaknesses as it relates to these areas. Define your priority and strong points and start there. Keeping the answers simple, means the content should be simple.
Identifying Your Marketing Objective
In order to understand your objective it is key that you understand your past strengths and weaknesses along with your customers buying process. The marketing funnel is a great way to visualize both your customer and where you may need to improve. A common mistake is attempting to focus on everything at once. When in reality the most strategic approach is to hone in on the stage that requires the most attention and then rinse and repeat.
To help you in understanding which stage you should select, a case study for each is shown below. Additionally, the list of recommended objectives that fits within each stage is outlined.
Awareness
Company xyz kept trying to sell their products through multiple e-commerce platforms. While company xyz was spending the entire budget on search engine marketing (display adverts), customers still were purchasing the product. After 6 months of spending the company decided to run some focus groups. Turns out people had little to no understanding of the products capabilities or purpose. In this scenario, company xyz skipped the educational/awareness stage in the hopes of making sales immediately.
Consideration
Company GHJ was having strong and consistent web traffic to their website, where they sold a project management software. But, for some reason, with all this traffic, there sales were decreasing. Why? The buyers were well aware of the software but company GHJ kept losing out. In this scenario, Company GHJ was failing to communicate that final piece of value to the customers in order to push them into the decision stage. With small adjustments to Company GHJ’s SEM (remarketing) and communication strategy (Email - Value props) they were able to get return traffic with a much higher conversion rate.
Decision
Company Z was doing a fantastic job attracting and educating prospective clients but the customers were leaving there shopping carts empty. The intent of decision phase was being cut-off last minute. With a properly timed email marketing campaign that included special offers for items in the users carts the sales skyrocketed. Company Z needed one last marketing push to increase profitability.
Retention
Company T was having a very successful first year of launch but had forecasted significantly higher user retention numbers. This meant that Company T’s residual income wasn’t keeping up. On top of that the company was having a difficult time getting users to engage with their content. With a new focus on customer feedback and incentive to post and share success on in-house forums, Company T quickly noticed not only a spike in retention but a bump in the new customers due to the online presence of happy customers.
Objective Breakdown
Stage: Awareness
Objective: Brand Awareness, Web Traffic, Organic Growth
Consideration
Objective: Web Traffic, Engagement
Decision
Objective: Sales
Retention
Objective: Engagement, Sales
Resources
The key to understanding your available resources is by calculating with tangible examples.
How many tweets could your marketing team comfortably put out in one week? How long would it take them?
How many blogs can your content creator write in a month? How long?
It is with these tangible examples that the expectation becomes more realistic. Don't be afraid to include your entire team during this process. They will without a doubt appreciate the opportunity to chyme in on there content output.
Strategy Settings
When selecting your strategy settings you need to consider how you want to execute your strategy. Consider the speed at which you want to distribute content and how you want to spend your resources. Choosing between a blitz and a long-term approach will completely change the marketing activities you should utilize and the content you should create. Tactycs also utilizes your industry information to identify specific activities where your competition may already be excelling.
Target Demographics
Target demographics are a crucial component in generating a content strategy. Often times companies get comfortable with their target market and stop monitoring the vital details. Before entering demographics details for your content strategy be sure to verify the information. There are multiple ways of doing this. Creating buyer personas and monitoring Google Analytics are two of my favourite methods of verification.
Personas
Take the opportunity to interview some of your customers. Creating a buyer persona is a great way to further understand your target market. Digging deeper into the pain points that drove them to purchase puts you in a position to market your solution even better. Here a few specific questions you can ask a consumer to get better information for Tactycs:
Describe your personal demographics?
Tell me about your key traits?
Do you purchase products from companies that you empathize with?
Walk me through a recent purchase?
For more questions, check out Hubspots Blog: 20 Questions to Ask When Creating Buyer Personas
Google Analytics
If you don't have Google Analytics set up on your website then you're already behind. Understanding the data collected on your website visitors is extremely powerful. When filling out Tactycs target demographics section be sure to verify your target markets age, gender, geography, etc. All of this data is being collected for you, use it! Furthermore, if you've run any previous campaigns, take this opportunity to once again analyze the demographics of buyers.
Preferences/Customization
Take advantage of Tactycs content strategy preferences. Applying to both your strategy and your content calendar! You will have the opportunity to customize the marketing activities included in your strategy. Additionally, you can customize the amount of time and money you want to put into each activity. Don't be afraid to play around with these preferences at the beginning, your strategy will automatically re-generate with your settings.
