How to create a content marketing strategy.
Have you ever found yourself running out of content ideas after posting a couple of times on TikTok or other social media platforms? It’s happened to me too, but I found the cheat code: creating a content marketing strategy or plan. It’s basically a detailed document that includes your keyword research, audience analysis, buyer journey, funnel stages, type of content, distribution plan, and success metrics. It might seem like a mouthful, but don’t worry, I’ll show you steps to take to create one with an actual example. A content strategy keeps you aligned with your marketing (growth) goals, so you don’t create a video on TikTok just because the sound is trending. It also increases your chances of success since it is based on what your audience’s problems or interests are.
Here are 10 steps to take when creating a content marketing strategy:
1. Set SMART Goals
Having a goal is so important because it spearheads the direction of your strategy. The goals should be set based on where you are now and where you want to be.
Example: Our Casestudy, Sugarfairy is an online pastry store located in Calabar, Cross river that currently specializes in cakes for all events and cookies. Sugarfairy wants to move from very little sales (sometimes no sales for weeks) to regular sales by maximizing the power of social media.
The business goals includes:
- Grow social media handles, specifically Instagram following from 194 followers to 1000 followers in the next 2 months
- Get organic sales of 100k (naira) in the next 2 months. The business currently struggles to make decent sales month to month so it can barely afford to pay for ads.
- Build a presence on TikTok and Facebook with about 500 followers on both platforms. Sugarfairy currently does not have an account on those platforms, so that’s zero followers.
2. Audience Research
It is important to understand who consumes your content and where they consume it, your different audience segments, the problems they face, and what type of content drives the most engagement. At this point, it’s advised you create a buyer persona (a pictorial representation of your ideal customers). You can build a buyer persona by carrying out surveys, user interviews, focus groups, etc.
Example: Sugarfairy’s target audience are students and working-class people. I would be creating two buyer personas to represent both classes of people. Since Sugarfairy sells perishable goods, it’s very important to also consider location because the majority of sales will be from people in the same location.
3. Research Competitors
You usually have two types of competitors, indirect and direct competitors. Direct competitors are those who have similar offerings and the same target audience, while indirect has the same target audience for different product offerings. You need to identify the top players in your industry and observe their strategy so you can check for what’s working and possible gaps to fill. It’s also advisable to look at other top players in other industries so you can learn a thing or two from them. You can do a SWOT analysis of 3–5 competitors so you can collate and interpret the data.
Example: For Sugarfairy, their direct competitors are those that sell Cakes and pastries in Calabar, while their indirect competitors are those who own food businesses. I carried out a SWOT analysis and came to the following conclusions:
Threats
- They had a comfortable working space that people could come to, i.e., they did not work from their kitchen and could also afford to train students which was a major source of income.
- They all offered catering services as well.
Opportunities
- Many of her competitors post content online consistently in recent times. I would attribute this to the fact that they already have a steady network of people who trusted them, and when they posted, they posted only pictures of their finished product, which in my opinion is not enough. So this is clearly an opportunity for Sugarfairy since not many bakers are using content to build trust.
I also observed competitors in states like Lagos and the content that gets the most traction were BTS videos whether icing a cake, mixing a batter, or packing an order, people seem to really love that type of content.
5. Complete Topic and Keyword Research
Now you know your audience and competitors, you need to find out what your audience is searching for online. There are several tools for this, but one of the cheapest ways I learned recently is to use Google or YouTube. Type in your area of interest, and automatically the search engine begins to assume what you need based on popular requests. Finding relevant keywords will give you new ideas for content.
Example: For Sugarfairy, her area of expertise is Cake and Cookies so I used YouTube to get popular search results.
5. Review Your Existing Content and Channels
What channel are you currently using? Instagram? Website? Tiktok? Which content brought you the most sales and traction? You might already have good stuff published, so you need to analyze why that content and channel did so well.
Example: In the case of Sugarfairy, her primary channel is Instagram (which is shown below), and the post that did extremely well was a video of her showing the 360 view of a cake. Her secondary channel is WhatsApp but has barely yielded any fruits.
6. Brainstorm on ideas
From your research, you have more insights into what your audience wants. Get your brain to work. Don’t restrict yourself to the keywords; generate as many ideas as possible. Don’t bother about refining it, the more ideas, the merrier. After brainstorming, you also want to think about your distribution channels. Where will your content live and in what format? Will it live on your blog, website, or social media? Will it live as an interview, template, video, etc.? It can exist in various forms across different channels.
Example: For Sugarfairy, I did a brainstorming session and came up with the following ideas:
- Easiest way to decorate a cake.
- How to properly mix cookie batter
- How to measure your ingredients when baking a cake
- How to bake a cake
- Common cake decorating mistakes.
- Ingredients required for making cookies.
- Trying new recipes
- Recreate the cake from a popular cake vendor.
- Pack an order with me.
- How to preserve your cake
- Get creative when eating cakes (a desert video)
- Get creative when eating cookies.
- How to make a fruit cake
- How to make banana bread
- How to cost your cake as a beginner.
- Decorate a cupcake order with me.
- Decorate a cake with me.
- How to bake a cake without an oven
- Tips for baking a cake.
Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook will be used as major distribution channels since most of her ideal customers hang out there. Although I recommend starting a YouTube for longer videos or a blog for detailed posts as those channels help build and if done properly can rank on search results leading to more traction for the social media channels. But we need to consider the fact that Sugarfairy is bootstrapped and needs to focus on doing the best with what she has in hand now.
7. Group Your Content Ideas
Here, you begin to group your ideas into funnel stages. Think of the funnel as movement from awareness, consideration, and perfect candidate for the job. Using Sugarfairy as our case study, I will define the funnel stages.
- Top of the funnel: These are visitors who are just learning about cakes or baking. They usually have no intention of buying as they might just be consuming your content as a way to relax, learn, or kill time. So Sugarfairy needs to diversify with digestible formats on the chosen channels. For example, an Instagram reel or TikTok showing how to decorate a cake.
- Middle of the funnel: Content in this stage are usually for people who have given their problem a name. They will often search for stuff like how to bake chocolate chip cookies. Thankfully, Instagram and Facebook allow their users to post videos that are more than 10 mins. So Sugarfairy can make longer-form content like talk-through videos on how to make chocolate chip cookies.
- Bottom of the funnel: People in this stage are very ready to make a purchase. They will most likely be on Sugarfairy’s page looking at pictures of her work, reading through comments and testimonials. So Sugarfairy will have to utilize user-generated content (collation of reviews collected, a client reaction video, etc.).
- Post Purchase Content: What follow-up content will buyers need to use your product? In the case of Sugarfairy, contents like how to preserve your cake or creative ways to enjoy your cake or cookies will come in handy.
8. Plan Your Resources
It’s time to touch grass! You have all these amazing ideas, but can you afford to do all of them? What do you need to execute excellently? When will you execute them? You need to organize your content strategy in a calendar, which details the following:
- Keyword
- Content type
- Funnel stage
- Distribution channels (for websites, it would be the section of the layout where it fits into)
- Title of content
- Editor assigned to the content.
- Progress or status update
- Assets needed to support content.
- Publish date
- Distribution strategy.
For now, I have not created a content calendar for Sugarfairy, so I currently can’t give practical examples. However, you can find downloadable templates on google, so you don’t have to build one from scratch.
9. Create Content
Remember to focus on your users. In this day and age where attention is currency, whatever you are creating has to be valuable. For text content (anything that will be read), it has to be free of ambiguity, simple terms win, make use of storytelling (don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t get it the first time, it’s a learning curve).
10. Lastly, Distribute Forever!!!!
Publish, publish, publish. Let the world see your creation. You can use one platform to promote another content on your primary channel, i.e., using WhatsApp to promote your post on Instagram and vice versa. You can also choose to back your stuff up with paid ads, but I personally do not recommend it if you are bootstrapped or just starting your content creation journey. It’s good to note that content can be repurposed after 3–6 months by chopping it up into bite sizes.
Bonus: Measure Results
In the words of Peace Itimi, measure everything. You need to know if your efforts are failing or not. From what I have learned so far, these are the metrics to measure your marketing effort (This list is based on a website/blog angle, so tweak where necessary).
- Organic search traffic
- Session, dwell time, and bounce rate
- Social media engagement
- Conversions
- Lead generation
- Keyword ranking
- Backlinks
- Sales
- Topical authority.
In summary, with the right content strategy, you will have your own fanbase of loyal customers, your brand becomes easily recognizable, you can ask Cowrywise for confirmation.
Sidebar:
Sugarfairy is a real business (fake name used), hopefully I will post results if it’s approved by the owner (who btw is my friend).
Thank you all for the love on my last post, it was super encouraging. I am always open to feedback so don’t hesitate to leave one. Happy New Month, People.
