We are in a world of content marketing! Do you have a planned Content Marketing Strategy? No?? Not yet?? Wait, let me give you an example! No subtitles needed when we talk of a lion being the king of the jungle! The very roar of its fierceness and the very soar of its furious nature horrifies the others in the jungle. Though the jungle brims with numerous creatures who reside there as their natural habitat, yet the lion has an area, and no one dares to step into that! The very aura of the lion makes the others indifferent to their presence in the jungle and they are subdued of their very own being. Aggravated and aggrieved the other creatures may be but are helpless enough to just call out for help at the very sight of the lion.
“Will this end as the same old lion tale? Or is this any lesson reciting session? Or are we reading the jungle book?”
Well, to put an end to all the speculations and presumptions, just relate to the governance of the lion towards its jungle. Rightly so, when it comes to the game of monopoly in the jungle, it’s only the king that holds the major market share. The same goes for the content marketers and their competitors, though every marketer in itself is the king, and when we focus on the latter half, only a few seem to hold the major market share. Let’s now compare this with the major part of the marketer’s lobby getting involved in the fight with their competitors within the circumference of search engine marketing(being their jungle)
“We will approach it in a better way!”
A deceitful or a deceiving appearance of the lion holds its prey stay confused till the time actually when the lion pounces upon! Yes, the same goes here, the competitors of your in the world of B2B content marketing should remain confused with the stratification and the roadmap of your campaigns. They should be able to read nothing except your percentage in profits. A thoroughly researched, well-optimized, and highly analyzed content marketing campaign lets you set your Smart goals for getting the users converted and seep down your sales conversion funnel.
The Comparison:
Here the approach, the Strategy, and the application may though, be governed with a set of predefined goals! But when it comes to the lion attacking its prey, it is at the very best with its homework. Yes, reading the movement of the prey, the lion traces the path traveled by the prey, then restructures its approach accordingly. Similarly, in the content marketing world(specifically for a B2B content marketing world), to gain better and expensive brand exposure, to understand the aerodynamic of the market trends and to restructure to suit the business needs should be the predefined goal of your marketing campaigns.
The lion knows that treading the path, its prey would be a vulnerable option and an easy picking as soon as it would trespass the boundaries that are defined for it. As grueling as it may turn up to be for the lion, everything seems fair when it gets the desired results. Similarly, to hold the lion’s share in the market, your content marketing campaigns should follow a consumer lifecycle, studying the consumer traits and attributes, the behavior that he possesses and the interactions with your products or services. Understanding whom, how, when, where and which types of audience to choose for what type of products and to pitch them when, and what could be the Strategy behind should be the sole approach.
And Their Decisions…
The awareness, the consideration, and the conversion stages, to nurture your prospects to well-defined purchase actions and mold them up for repeated purchases, the Strategy has to be graded accordingly the allow a constant consumer interaction throughout. As and when your customer finds your product to services top-notch, they would unknowingly shoot down the sales conversion funnel. Though understanding the concept of lifecycle marketing may seem easy but causes mayhem to shutter up when you have to adhere to it and revolve around for a comprehensive breakthrough in your content marketing campaigns.
Their actions follow a protocol!
Downloading the pdfs, subscribing for the newsletters, signing up for the emails, downloading the eBook, approaching for contact, etc., the way the prospects has been approaching, his reaction and interaction with the brand, the products or the services, may tighten the screws for tweaking the campaigns strategies. Targeting the right set of audiences, knowing the search behavior, precise bidding upon the keywords targeted. Reading the target marketing trends, understanding the demographics, and reallocating your campaign budget, are all termed under the umbrella of a thoroughly researched, well-budgeted, and highly optimized content marketing campaign.
“The act may look good on scripting, but shows its flaws when done on stage, why can the stage practice not be done from the very first day!”
On this note, your content marketing campaigns could be reprimanded in the market, from broadening its horizon, if the campaigns aren’t performing well. As simple as that! Why would you keep exhausting your budget on such an unfruitful campaign? Would it do any good for you? Why would you not just tweak, stop, or pause the campaigns, instead of losing a complete connection with your audiences with their gestures of disapproval? Will you want to lose your customer’s trust and the credibility factor through repeated failures? No, not, the very next moment you invest thinking of choosing the alternatives!
“And when you choose the alternatives, shuffling with your strategies constantly, turns up to figure out the right strategy for successful campaigns, let’s see how!”
Your Content Marketing Strategy for a well defined and goal-oriented campaign!
In the world of B2B content marketing, whether the small or medium-sized business, a business approach was required. Nothing there is done without predefined goal setting. Whether your organic listings or the ranking of your products or services on the search results(for greater brand visibility). Your PPC campaigns, your social media marketing campaigns, or specifically your content marketing campaigns. You would never achieve greater returns on your investments or exponential profits unless and until you define the goal of your campaigns. This modern era of marketing, the consumer lifecycle marketing has to be, and the intent centric approach, knowing the reason for the user’s interaction with the brand, may turn up a profitable solution.
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A business to business then a business to customer approach really needs Smart content marketing goals for getting your campaigns salvaged from the wreck and function smoothly. Acquiring prospects, nurturing leads, getting sales, and thereby the adorable profits altogether, a well-researched content creation, followed by thorough and diversified distribution of it and the creation of a well-optimized campaign, is all needed for surging growth investing for greater returns on investments. Create promote and convert should be the mantra spelt out.
They are attracting your website visitors through the blog posts, the web content, and the articles. The goal is to nurture the prospects initially through information and education, thereby making the reader get informed and then act accordingly.
Try and match the intent…
Gather information about the reader. Therefore the use of ebooks, e-newsletters, the webinars are conducted. Followed by subsequent interactions throughout the numbers exchanged the phone calls, the consultations, the assessments, so this is how your prospect has been through to the conversion stage, you have to keep promoting the content aligning with the user’s choices, and then the actions are taken. The thirst to propel the user to take steps inside the funnel activities for a smooth flow needs the 4’s of content marketing, naming the Consumption, the Curation, the Creation, and the Connection.
Before putting your content strategy on the table that would surely comprise the planning, the production, the publishing, and the payoff, the content should reveal the intent and remain goal-focused. And not to forget the goal should be smart- specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
2)A-360 degree content marketing approach
Planning, producing, promoting, analyzing, and amplifying! All these steps define how you analyze your audience’s interest and determine the propagation of well-stratified content marketing. let’s look at how we can go about these steps one by one:
1)Plan:
Once you know the goal behind the content you create, you create better content altogether! The blog posts, the webinars, the whitepapers, the pdf guides, the ebooks, video content, whatever the content format is, it has to cater to the intent centric approach of the audience. Keyword research for a targeted set of people, the demographics targeting, the geo-location targeting, understanding the marketing trends and analyzing the competitors at the same time, lets you create the content much needed by your audience, to seek their answers for.
2)Produce
Analyzing your competitors, reanalyzing the performance of your campaigns, reckoning the loopholes that could be improved on for ensuring that you aren’t exhausting your budgets on the campaigns that don’t work anymore. Seek the results on the ongoing campaigns, tweak, stop, or pause the campaigns. Working on a more strategize the content, research what your audience loves to read, why they hate, what they might interact with more, which is the type of content you aren’t working on, and is there any room for making a difference between you and your competitors.
3)Promote
Distributing the content on various social media platforms depends upon the traits of the audience that visits there. Additionally, how the audience reacts with the platform, what are the queries raised and the extent of interaction of the audience with the brand, the products, or the services. The way the people engage describes the proportionate decision making for the recovery from the platform before just pitching your content blindfolded. Yes, the time at which the content would reach the audience also matters a lot. It is this module of internet marketing that would help you get a traffic boost from the inbound sources. The engagement on the communities and the forums, the microblogging culture, and all this make prospects get engaged with your brand for better brand visibility, more leads and enhanced sales.
4)Analyze
Results cannot be analyzed at once! Repeated results with contradictions on the board, let you go back to the basics and start again. To break through the clutches of failures, repeated testing for content marketing campaigns is necessary. The help of analytics can be taken into account here(say, for instance, Google Analytics). Your results are your data, the pillar of marketing is data, and data never reveals false claims. You have to abide by the changes, as mentioned after the analysis of your data. Whether the performance of the blog posts, the social media engagement frequency, and the interactions, engaging with the community, the extent of the capabilities of the interlinking, the reactions to your webinars, the case studies, the organic results, etc. are some other aspects of being looked after. Yes, to be aligning your bulk email shooting strategy or the individual mailing strategy, etc. concerning the performances of the campaign on the ground, etc. define your future statistics and the needs to restructure the requirements for them.
5)Amplify
Understanding the data for the performance of the ongoing campaigns lets you tweak, stop, or pause them accordingly. With the change in the strategic approach to the current campaigns, whether it be content optimization, the management, the distribution, lets you mold according to what your audience needs. Whether the organic search rankings, the paid campaigns, the social media marketing strategies, the content marketing strategies, to nurture the prospects into the funnel to drive more leads, thereby cater to enhanced sales, thus raising your conversion as a token for higher returns on investments..
“To customize your ongoing campaign performance for greater customer acquisition, a constant tweak has to be carried out at the campaign level. This is what a 360-degree marketing approach speaks off.”
3)Content for focus; Marketing for attention!
As a contingency measure, your content marketing strategy always has a backup plan. Not to let your efforts sweat out in vain, you have to feel the fact that content brings in focus marketing in attention. Strategic plan, positioning, value proposition, the business case, etc. are the checkpoints in the roadmap to a successful content marketing campaign. Content brings in focus, marketing brings in attention, for sure, if you have your goals set and campaigns optimized for those goals, in particular, the campaigns are sure to run through profits till the very end. Engaging content, the adequate content marketing ideas, targeted set of audiences, the right keywords targeted, set marketing budget, well planned and coordinated alignment of the ongoing campaigns, etc., bring in the attention with the content.
From the customer acquisition to the conversion to the retention, the customer lifecycle marketing has to be adhered to. We have to have a well planned and coordinated content marketing campaign, and the following steps should be kept in mind:
1)The strategic plan:
- Who do you want to appeal to with your content?
- How will that content be significantly delivered to the targeted audience?
- How will you focus on measurable results, and what steps would be taken to achieve them?
2)The Positioning:
- What does your brand offer uniquely from the other brands?
- Do you have a better chance of gaining the visitor’s interest, is there a strategy difference you follow that illustrates you differently?
- Have you got a backup plan that your competitors might not have even thought of?
3)Unique Value Proposition:
- What value can the audience seek through your content?
- Will it be of use to the audience, will it inform them, educate them, and offer them a reason to turn to you for a service?
- Have you got your editorial calendar set? Will, you b able to stand out of your competitors?
3)The Business Case:
- Do your business plans form the backbone of your content strategy?
- Are your campaign goals aligned with your business ideas?
- Can content marketing be the best practice to make your prospects fall into the sales conversion funnel?
So, the reader’s goals, linked and followed with your objectives, the content topics selected, the tone and voice of the content, are the parameters that are to be checked through for setting up a benchmark in your content marketing campaigns.
4)The perfect Strategy pays off at the end:
Yes, to get greater returns on the investments on your content marketing campaigns, a strategic approach to the content marketing lifecycle has to be followed. Listening in and fine-tuning with the buyer’s journey, doing the market-related research, and the competitive analysis for the selection of the theme of topics, switching on to create content with the research data collected and the resources allocated. Following it is the distribution of the content through the various promotional channels. After which the response of the audience engaging with the social media channels and other platforms is taken, data is collected and analyzed that caters to measure the performance of your campaigns and deploy the necessary tweak in them for better ROI.
It’s not ended as yet, last but not least, the rephrasing and repurpose of the content for not letting your customer’s conviction dwindle, and establishing brand authority and exposure over the audience already familiar with the kinds of products or services you deliver. This bridges the gaps that disable the visitor from being a purchaser. And therefore brings in the lost intent reinforcing the purchase. This is a cumbersome informal journey at the start that has to be formalized into a relationship over time. The prospect travels
- from being unaware,
- to getting aware,
- to getting informed,
- to build the interest in getting the intent,
- to choosing the preference,
- and buying decisions for purchases,
- followed by the advocacy for repeated purchases,
Create, attract, gather, interact, and then request, follow the steps under the goals you have set for your campaigns the audience you have targeted as per your intent. The subject you have selected, the budget you have allocated, and the return you have expected, all of this needs thorough efforts and the best possible combination of resources and time management.
The Conclusion:
Therefore if we talk of content marketing and the content marketing world(specifically for the B2B content marketing world), it is never the end. But on the contrary, to end this part of your learning, your content marketing strategy should have a reverence for business-oriented goals aligned with the consumer-centric lifecycle marketing model. This model of internet marketing should be dependable enough to generate revenue at the end. From the customer acquisition to the retention for the repeated purchases so as to build the authoritativeness and the credibility for the entire current and the expected prospects shortly, the content marketing strategy guiding your campaigns should be viable.