How to Build your first Content Marketing Strategy

For a business owner, your Google ranking is what it’s all about today. If you don’t have a strong content marketing strategy in place, your website is not giving you as much Return On Investment (ROI) as it could. The days of building a strong outbound telemarketing team is fading out with strong well designed SEO marketing plans replacing them.

A solid SEO content marketing plan will drive traffic to your website and increase conversions, all while establishing or expanding your brand online. Even better, content marketing costs over 60% less than outbound marketing while generating triple the number of leads.

But what is needed to build a successful SEO marketing strategy?  You need to create a Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization that attracts, engages, and retains your audience. This can be achieved by creating and sharing articles, podcasts, videos, and other media and forms of Organic Search Marketing.

The following 5 elements are essential in establishing expertise in your market and promoting awareness of your brand. It also positions your business at the forefront of potential clients when they’re ready to buy.

You need to define your audience first to outline a successful SEO marketing strategy. Targeting “anyone” or “everyone” isn’t going to work if you want your brand awareness to be established as a knowledgeable and reliable source.

For a small or start up business, it is important to narrow your Content Marketing Strategy so that applies to a specific group or a niche market. In this way, you can better measure where your competition is and where your business stands against them. How can you do this?

#1 Your Current Customer Base

Re-evaluate your current customers and determine. Who are your customers, what and why are they buying from you? This information will help you know what is working and why. This form of Organic Search Marketing method will show you where your potential is for new business.

#2 Evaluate Competition

Who is your competition targeting? Are they having success? Maybe this is where the niche you need to focus on, or maybe you’ll see who they are that you need to design your SEO marketing plan around.

#3 Your Demographics

For your content marketing strategy to be successful, learn the demographics of your target audience. This task will help you match the right product or service to the people that need it the most and have the biggest interest.  Factors to consideration, even the simplest factor, includes:

• Age Group
• Gender
• Location
• Occupation
• Income level
• Education

#4 Get Personal

With the basic demographics determined, now is time to get personal with your audience. Familiarize yourself with your target audience and their personal characteristics. The key traits to learn are:

• Beliefs and values
• Attitude and personality
• Behavior and their online activity
• Lifestyle and interests

These are clues how you should go launch your Content Marketing Strategy. So, how do you get this information? Most of it is probably at your fingertips right now. No need to become a mind-reader or sleuth.

With some research of articles and blog posts that already exist, you can find a lot of information on your audience with similarities.  Study surveys and interact directly with your current customers can tell you a lot about what your audience needs and uses. Keyword research is a vault of information for your SEO marketing plan!

You need to set the goals you want to achieve from your marketing campaign. This will enable you to monitor the progress and success. If your goal is to enhance user engagement, generate new lead or nurture existing leads (yes, some companies have leads and no idea how to work them). Leads are one of the best Organic Search Marketing tools available to a business.

With your goals defined, you have something to reach, keep you motivated will confirm each step taken is going in the right direction. When goals are vague and unrealistic, you’re wasting your time. Set SMART goals following these tips:

Be Specific

• Avoid vague terminology like ‘increase traffic’ or ‘increase engagement’.
• Detail your content marketing goals, be specific you’re the facts and figures. Determine a clear image of what you goal success will look like.

Be Measurable

• Marketing goals should be clear and measurable in order to keep focused. With goals well-defined from the start, you know where you’re going.

Be Attainable

• Make sure you have the resources you need to achieve your content marketing goals.
• Setting goals can only be achieved if you have the knowledge, skills, budget, and other necessary tools to achieve them.
• If articles and blogs are a tool you need, but writing is not your best skillset, call in an expert.
• If you determine your goals are not attainable, then reevaluate and change them so that they are attainable. Knowing your limits are important for your content marketing strategy to be successful.

Be Relevant

• Keep your goals relevant to your company’s larger goals. If social media is in your SEO marketing plans for increasing revenue, make sure it doable. Social media can be time consuming, and be overlooked, but it is a key tool in today’s market.
• But then again, depending on your target audience, working your email list may be more relevant for your industry and targeted audience. A more relevant tool for you would be investing in lead magnets, newsletters, and planned email campaigns.
• Looking at your company’s current marketing goals, if you reach these goals successfully, ask yourself, will the results be relevant to your brand?

Be Timely

• Your best friend in reaching your goals are deadlines. Create a schedule for getting the results for your SEO marketing strategy then stick to it. This is your anti-procrastination and tool!

With the competition so heavy in the content marketing arena, ‘everyone’ is online today, make sure your website is standing out! Be clear in defining what your brand has to offer that the other’s aren’t by highlighting what you do better, different, what is it that makes you “the” one to go with.

How do you do this?

By doing a Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization that targets the benefits a customer will have by going with your brand. Make them a proposition of clear value – state how your product or service will be an improvement, how you can help solve their problem.

Without a target, you’ll never hit the bullseye. And without a clear value proposition, you’ll never reach those marketing goals.

A major part in content marketing goals is establishing a strong identity for your brand. No matter the size of your business, you need your digital identity established with a clear brand message. To establish an online identity, this includes taking visuals like your web design, logo, tagline, and create a unique voice.

With your brand image created, it is time to find your position in the big game. Find your position in the niche community. This will require some market research. You this through the social media platforms you’re using. Twitter is great to get your brand voice heard – start tweeting and interacting!

If Instagram is where you target audience is, you need to increase your brand’s visual representation. If Reddit is the place for your brand to be heard and seen by your target audience, get involved in those discussions. Take notes on your target audience interactions, the follow those leads.

Establish your brand by telling the story of how your brand came to be. This will give your brand a personal touch that will position you ahead of the online crowd. This will enhance your brand’s engagement, interest, and transparency with Organic Search Marketing results.

Measurement is a way to mark success and a way to know where which efforts aren’t working vs what is working, and what you need to change. But you need measurements that create a clear picture of your website’s performance. Research and define measurements that will track your brand’s performance and your Content Marketing Strategy and SEO marketing plan.

Using these 5 elements, along with some effort and time, you will create successful content marketing strategies that will give your brand immediate results.