6 Key Components of a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

Published in

ART + marketing

6 min readMay 7, 2018

Content marketing is undeniably the best digital marketing asset with the potential to easily skyrocket your business, if done correctly.

To back this claim, recent study shows that content marketing generates more than 3× as many leads as outbound marketing, and cost 62% less.

Outbound marketing is less effective when compared to content marketing because it is more of promotional messages, ads copy that only tries to promote a brand to consumers.

Further studies by HubSpot shows that 53% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority.

In the same article, companies that are publishing over 16 blog posts per month saw a boost of 3.5× more traffic than those publishing 0-4 blog posts per month.

Consequently, companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month, according to the research saw an increase of 4.5× more leads than their counterparts that published 0-4 blog posts per month.

With these staggering numbers, many marketers are wondering and, trying to figure out the best components for a successful content marketing campaign.

Interestingly, there are many components that can help you execute a successful content marketing strategy.

Please, ensure to read the entire article to discover the best components for your marketing campaign.

Here are a few key components you must consider while creating your content marketing campaign.

#• Establish a strong brand image

Create a strong brand image that will appeal to and, have a powerful effect on your target audience.

This step calls for you to consider the following:

Brand name
TaglineWebsite
URLHashtag
Website design, etc.

My brand name at mossmedia.biz for instance, denotes a mass communication outlet that is involve in every broadcasting and narrow-casting services.

Which means, Moss Media broadcast its information via the following medium:

Podcasts
Videos
Magazines
Direct emails
Blog post publishing, etc.

As a result, my target market or audience know that when they visit my site, they are sure to get the information they need via the above mentioned mediums.

The idea is to help your target market know what to look for when following your brand.

How about your URL? MostlyBlogging.com is the URL of Janice Wald's website. The URL clearly tells visitors to her site that they will mostly get information about blogging, blogging tips, tools and resources about blogging.

Thus, creating a strong brand will help you build a target following and significantly grow your business.

#• Create a content editorial calendar

In order to implement a successful content marketing strategy, it is important to create an editorial calendar. Depending on your approach, you can either create a weekly, monthly, or annual calendar.

This is necessary because it will help you map out your content strategy which includes but not limited to, content creation, schedule, distribution, and assigning content in a transparent editorial calendar that will create an amazing visibility and coordination across different initiatives.

It will allow you and your team to focus on what is important.

Furthermore, an editorial calendar will help you to work smoothly even when working on multiple projects - in terms of identifying deadline and other important factors.

#• Pinpoint the purpose of your content

As you may already know, content marketing is the creation and distribution of content to attract and retain your audience and customers.

However, to implement a successful content marketing campaign, you need to identify the purpose of the content you're creating.

Consider the following:

Do you want to create brand awareness?
Drive traffic to your website or business page?
Do you want to grow your readership?

You have to pinpoint the reason for the content you're creating.

The bottom line is to tell your brand story in ways that will resonate with your targeted audience and clientele.

#• Identify your target market

Yes, you cannot be creating and sharing content randomly without knowing who you are writing and marketing to, which is why it is important that you identify your buyer persona.

How can you identify your target market?

To help you identify your target market, use data from social media analytics or Google analytic. Personally I'm using Google analytic to see who your buyers are, such as:

Age
Gender
Demographics
Who is engaging with your content
The topics that interest them most
What content type they love to engage with and share with their friends, etc.

Use the information you collected to create content that are tailored to the needs of your target market.

But if you're new to Google analytics, please, read this article for how to use Google analytics tool.

#• Identify your customers’ journey

Why is this necessary? Because all the content you create will not have the same effect on all your target customers - your customers are in different stages of their journey, so they need different content for different needs.

Yes! It is true that we often advice bloggers to identify the pain problem of their target audience and create content that solves those problems.

It is a remarkable way to write or create viral content.

But it is also true that you cannot create content that will solve all their problems, because as mentioned earlier they're in different stages of their marketing journey.

For instance, 2 of my LinkedIn followers are bloggers with different blogging problems… I will not use real names so as to protect their privacy.

Mark is a newbie blogger who wants to know how to rank high on Google with a non self-hosted Google blogger website.

Sandra have been blogging for a couple years on a self-hosted website but, want to know the best tips to land guest posting opportunities on authority sites.

As you can see, both are my target market with different needs that must be addressed accordingly.

Thus, creating one piece of content that solves Mark's problem will not solve Sandra's problem, because they're in different stages of their journey.

Accordingly, you need to identify your customers’ journey and create content for all stages of their journey.

This way, you will not only solve their problems, but also convert them to loyal customers.

#• Choose the best content promotion & distribution channels

How you distribute content to your audience is critical to your marketing success.

What distribution channels work best for you?

You need not be everywhere, instead, figure out the most effective distribution channels to get your contents out to your readers and customers.

There are many distribution and promotion channels that can help you in this regard, such as:

Advertising
Direct emails
Guest Posting
Social media sharing
Sponsored posts, etc.

The point is to get your content out to your target audience when they're sure to engage with it.

However, despite the many distribution and promotion channels available, I suggest using social media, email marketing, and guest posting because they're cost effective.

But if you have the budget, then you can go for sponsored post, ads, ppc, etc.

Remember, you don't have to be on every social media platform simply because you want to get your content out. First, analyze the platforms to know which ones works best for you and focus on those.

For example, I'm getting more traction from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. As a result, I'm spending more time on these sites than the others.

Wrapping up

Interestingly, there are other key component that will help you maximize your content marketing campaigns.

However, the 6 key components mentioned in this article are certainly going to take your content marketing efforts to the next height.

Implement them accordingly and let us know your thoughts.

This article originally appeared on https://www.mossmedia.biz

About the author

Moss Clement is a blogger and digital marketing freelance writer, social media & content marketer who blogs at mossmedia.biz. He has been featured in many websites and publications including Statusbrew, Blogging From Paradise, Mostly Blogging, RankWatch, ProvenSEO, Inspire to Thrive, Arts & Marketing, etc. He is helping businesses and individuals like you to generate leads, increase engagement, and maximize ROI by delivering consistent high-quality content that are tailored to the needs of your audience.

Connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.