A Guide to Content Strategies: How to Develop One

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By Ingenia

May / 25 / 2022

A Guide to Content Strategies: How to Develop One

Effective content strategies can boost your content marketing by a large percentage. Discover how to develop one and the importance of having one now.

Content marketing generates three times more leads than paid search. People trust businesses that provide valuable knowledge to the public. It can be challenging to establish authority online without the proper content strategy.

If no one trusts you, why would they buy from you? Quality content can help you achieve and strengthen your marketing goals. If that’s what you want, keep reading to learn how to create robust content strategies.

Use Design Thinking to Create Empathy

Design thinking empowers your organization to adopt an empathic content strategy. It pushes your brand to examine material from the perspective of your audience. This helps your content marketers to create material that users will find meaningful.

Customer personas and journey mapping are two design thinking tools for content planning. Customer personas are profile cards that define the goals, difficulties, and preferred channels. A journey map is a visual depiction of the stages a consumer take before and after they are closed.

Find Ways to Promote Customer Engagement

Content development can persuade people to make a purchase. Remember, your brand material should not be seen as a sales pitch. Customer-engaging content provides long-term advantages by building loyalty and facilitating meaningful interactions.

To generate content that supports consumer engagement, you may need to be creative. You can add user-generated material to your company's blog or showcase customer testimonials. Why not create a social media campaign that encourages followers to reshare material.

Follow Brand Guidelines

When determining what content to create, your marketing team must be consistent. For example, Old Navy sends surprise discount emails where consumers spin a wheel for an offer. This style is compatible with Old Navy's playful and millennial-centric marketing identity.

A B2B IT business aiming to retain a professional tone may find the discount game weird. An email that informs consumers about an industry trend is more suitable. Customers love material that excites them, but it should never deviate too far from the brand.

Adopt an Omnichannel Strategy

Companies with multichannel customer interaction retain 89 percent of their clients. Businesses without such a strategy only kept 33 percent. An omnichannel content plan should not create material on all conceivable channels.

Instead, your brand should focus on the channels in which your clients are most active. For example, it makes sense for firms with the majority of GenZ clients to post content on SnapChat. After all, this platform reaches 90% of all 13-24 year-olds.

Metrics Are Your Friends

The failure to identify KPIs is one of the main causes of an unsuccessful content campaign. High-quality material is crucial, but what determines that level? Metrics help businesses optimize their content for success.

Your company may find that sending reports to social media creates a low impression. This does not imply that the social media audience for your brand has no interest in the reporting. It may indicate that your team should promote blogs based on the data to make them more consumable.

Know the Goals of Each Channel

While all content channels should operate concurrently, the objectives for each channel vary. For example, the purpose of a blog is to increase SEO rankings. The goal of an email campaign is to nurture leads.

Keep Testing

Time is required to determine what material works for your target audience. A/B testing can expedite the process and compare materials for effectiveness. Most email solutions have A/B testing capabilities.

For landing pages and blogs, tools like VWO and Google Optimize are useful. It helps compare the clicks and conversion rates of different online content. For channels without access to these tools, you can try one content strategy at a time and compare.

Segment Content to Promote Interpersonal Interactions

After receiving a tailored customer experience, 44% of consumers said they would return. Content is a terrific approach to offering a personalized experience. Your company can use data to segment content to get info geared towards the customer's interests.

Instead of emailing the whole client base advertising the same blog, why not customize it? You can personalize the content based on industry or job description.

Create Content Based on Relevant Events

To prevent randomness, your company should take time into consideration. For instance, reacting to current events through a blog may be a good marketing strategy. It is essential to promote these blogs across platforms within the same week, if not the same day.

You may also want to create content around major corporate events and holidays. For example, material around National Cyber Security Awareness Month is suitable for the tech space.

Steady and Constant Flow of Material

Your content flow should remain constant. For major events, your brand can release more material than normal. Make sure to maintain a regular posting schedule.

That implies your organization should not send clients an email every day for a week and then stop communication for three months. In fact, Forbes reported that 71 percent of buyers want a unified experience across all media. That means your team will need to find the optimal posting time for each channel.

Which Material Is Acceptable?

One size does not fit all, and this is particularly true with content. Audience demographics differ, so the same material is unsuitable for all channels.

For example, a technology blog is suitable for an email to consumers who are knowledgeable about your product or service. It may not work well on social media, where your audience may include individuals who are less familiar with your brand.

Why Is a Content Marketing Strategy Important?

Content strategies help businesses prepare cost-efficient website traffics and leads. It enhances SEO by attracting visitors to a single blog article after you hit "Publish." Not only that, it will also educate your prospects and enhance brand recognition.