How To Create An Effective And Engaging Content Marketing Strategy?

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Is content marketing strategy your piece of cake? Asked too early, isn’t it? Just take your time and read!

Eagerness at the start followed by a restlessness in the middle? Starting over with a novel might not seem as hectic as it becomes somewhere around the middle of your reading? Don’t you see yourself shacked up with a reflection of yours, who isn’t diligent enough to finish reading it? Hasn’t that very reflection of yours lost the integrity and the determination of completing the novel, with which you started reading! Indeed, your industrious efforts have deemed a success, only when you finish reading it and even go on to remember the gist at the end!

“What if I keep on extending the above paragraph inexplicably? Would you be able to find reasons to read it any further? Or will you just stop?”

Yes, you guessed it right, you will just stop right in the very middle of your voyage! Primarily a content marketing strategy defines the content marketer as an author at the very first. It is the art of storytelling when portraying your content. Thus, this is the point where a strategic content marketing approach comes into play. To persuade the reader into the topic and to divert him from getting distracted in the middle, getting him hooked till the end is the only feasible response through your content.

To start with, 65% of the content marketers face an inevitable challenge to produce engaging content(source: Zazzle Media). As a result, even consistency is lacking, and 60 % of them can’t produce content consistently(source: Zazzle Media). Though above 70% of them still feel that content marketing increases engagement.

“Ok! So if the point is about the effectivity of the content, then where to go?”

Well, getting effected by the statistics mentioned above could turn irrational and a bit sloppy! It can be understood by taking factors into consideration and statistics attached aside. Some factors that rope in the interactive and ever expansive audience engagement, stimulating brand awareness, building brand authority, credibility, customer interaction, and propel the engagement through the content marketing funnel. The image below could be the best example of explaining those!

Those mentioned could be the areas where your content could grip the readers! Therefore, being the jack of all trades and master of none leaves you to sail in two boats, and you won’t land up anywhere. You are bound to go with a set of fixed strategy. Thus either growing up or getting down depends on your business goals and content orientation. Nevertheless, to excite you at the very first, user’s are there with a query and looking for a one-stop solution, and what if you provide it, the deal cracked right!

Additionally, not forgetting that majority of those B2B marketers believe that using a documented content marketing strategy is rather resulting to be effective and result oriented for them(source: CMI). Undoubtedly, a comprehensive content marketing strategy leads you to a fair share in the market. Indulging in creating useful and engaging content happens to be on the right track when “the smart policy “is followed—defining a specific goal.

Eminent foresightedness for setting a measurable and achievable goal leaves with a higher return on investments. The goal should be worthwhile and meet your needs! Your objective should be the timely attainability of your goal.

Though nearly 45% of the B2B marketers say that they are effective at their content marketing strategy(source: CMI), and 60% of them create one piece of content every day(source: eMarketer), but not everyone is successful. Seems contradictory right?

And rightly so, only a well-defined content marketing planning and strategy would let you survive in its world. Just crying over spilt milk in the later stages shouldn’t be your cup of tea, when you know how to deal with it earlier.

“And we’ll help you out, so just sit back and just read unanimously and keep noting the parameters!”

Parameter 1:

Engaging and compelling storytelling!

The power of storytelling defines that the content should be written in the format of a story. Every paragraph within which should be displaying the connectivity with the other. In a way, similar to the changing scenes of the story. The intent behind writing should be very clear. Significantly emphasizing with the description of the story, which revolves around the intent of the main protagonist.

Remember, your audience judges your content, and it all depends on your engaging elements, whether the intent comes out as the protagonist or not. Therefore, the relevancy with the audience effectively delivers and triggers an emotion straightaway. The content that is written should be affixed to the queries and solutions for the user. Wherein the art of storytelling is used as a bait to keep him attracted.

Reinforcing the brand, communicating the value of the product, describing the affinity with the existing audience, takes you through. More than 70% of the audience feels that custom content fosters healthy relationships with the brand(source: Key Difference). Not to forget, including the real-life examples!! So the user does not feel alien about the queries being searched for by him/her.

In the world of B2B content marketing whether the brand awareness, the traffic driving, the engagement, the sales or the lead nurturing, etc., the trust and the credibility only build around the intent centric content. The end goal of the user’s search should be sketched beforehand. This is what helps to create the buyer persona, remember the content marketing lifecycle that revolves around a pin-point approach to the buyer persona.

Understanding to understand how to make your content unique and compelling is only the problem and the only solution! Complementing the former, users in search are always in a problem, and they are seeking a solution that could make them indirectly enter your conversion funnel.

Apprehending how to make your brand communicate uniquely is what the power of storytelling tells. Thereafter, we would see how the content creation framework works, where the other parts of the content marketing lifecycle would be displayed.

Parameter 2:

How the content creation framework works!

Starting to write the content on presumptions? Without proper research? What about the ongoing marketing scenario? So apprehending the role of your target market? The efforts would seep down the drain, effective enough only to give you nothing. Hold on!

Let’s now see how to get on with the strategy of the content creation layout or the framework. That refers to a draft which has to be laid based on the alignment with the buyer persona understanding the buyer journey.

1)Research and insights:

Conducting the research on your target market, the surveys and subsequent analysis of the attributes of your market gives a better idea of how to approach it.

2)Goal setting:

What you extract out of your content marketing strategy is actually the prioritization of the goals you define at the very beginning.

3)The content layout stratification:

The planning and procedure of the creating content layout, to achieve the desired outcomes, is what the content layout stratification appeals to.

4) Finally content creation:

The skill of creating content based on the strategy sketched beforehand. The content creation is the most difficult part of the content marketer and the most essential part of his content marketing strategy. It needs to be dealt with regular optimization based upon the market research. Knowing when how and where to publish your content is the key, for the goal-oriented content marketing campaign. The understanding of your customer journey, mapping your content calendar, defining what you want out of content strategy, creates the purpose of building the content.

” The four are the pillars of a fine-grained content creation framework!”

Parameter 3:

Planning a long term content strategy!

Smart marketers follow the building of long term content marketing strategy that could be defined in slabs, such as…

!)Be specific about your goal!

Who? What? Where? When? Understanding the intent needs these question marks to be answered as a part of the goal orientation of your content marketing campaign. Highly specified and target-based content marketing strategy includes questions and solutions, thereby, curating the order and management for building the content marketing framework.

Are your strategies meeting your goals? Get a Free Marketing Audit!

2)The perfect goal measurement!

Numbers and numerical facts! Your content is your data! Analysis, and gathering the data insights about your content leaves you with hard facts put on the table! Those legitimate questions that would bolster your marketing campaigns. Even the art of storytelling alludes to the fact that you need to refer to those hard facts and figures to be at the forefront for the inch-perfect goal measurement and its timely achievement.

3)Check for the possibility of the goal accomplishment!

Once you have marked a goal, analyzed and prioritized it, the next step is to see whether your content marketing strategy is workable enough to achieve it. Can you stretch to the limits, using the time resources, the promotional strategies, the marketing budget, and you have to take into account, the entire scenario that would create a roleplay once you frame your content. And finally to check for the feasibility in the management and the distribution of the goal set(the marketing of your content).

4)Does that goal really matter or is realistic?

Why do want to achieve your goal only comes when you are clear there about the reality of the nature of your goals set. It shouldn’t be a dream far off attainability, the relevancy of what you have picked matters when your goals determine the efforts that need to sink in to achieve it.

5)The goal should be time-bound!

Achieving the goal within the deadlines is the need of the hour. Your goal accomplishment would only leave you positive feedback and impacting review only when it is achieved within the desirable limits. Addressing the limits and time boundations at the start aligns you with your goal measurements and the efforts needed for their accomplishments.

Parameter 4:

Generating content ideas!

1)The motive behind choosing your content writing platform, rather the format for the content listing should be crystal clear. The idea behind framing the content depends entirely upon the perception of the audience, thus tracing the traits and the attributes of the target market and the strategy needed to approach the respective audience dynamically.

2)The setting for writing the content should be drafted down, what makes your content effective becomes the next headline of your content. Whatever the content format is either the webinar, the blog post, the infographic, the ebook guide, the whitepaper, the case study, the pdf, the micro contents, etc, there are some factors that need to be taken into consideration, these are stated below…

• content should trigger a reaction
• impacting through storytelling
• effectively delivers the message
• content should be search optimized, keyword optimization in specific
• delivers originality-instances and examples
• highly personalized and likely to be reused and repurposed(this would be studied in later stages
• easy to produce
• highly resourceful and time-bound

Though there are numerous content generating ideas and uncountable writing styles. Not to forget the immense types of formats where those pieces of content should or can be written. There is one format that is certainly a blessing in disguise and proves a silver bullet in the overall content creation and its optimization, i.e. blog posts.

It is believed that nearly 80% of the marketers who blog witness a positively impacting ROI(source: HubSpot), as the blog posts deliver quality and dedicated solutions to the questions, creating a lasting impact on the customer.

“Let’s take this in detail!”

Parameter 5:

Blog posts are an effective content marketing strategy!

Indeed, creating quality blog posts is an art! Succumbing to failures is a natural procedure and happens when procedural planning is not followed while drafting the blog. Proper keyword research, synchronized with content optimization and the framework chosen, lays the foundation of a highly customized and detailed content. Considering the fact that 61% of the customer’s buying decisions are influenced through highly customized content(source: Dragon search marketing), and if the marketer spends a major portion of his marketing budget in content marketing, writing blog posts is the prominent choice.

Though an effective B2B marketer on an average uses 13 content marketing tactics, the preference to writing a blog post comes out of the uniqueness in its expression, leading to an emotional, social and psychological grip and impact on the reader. Let us now see how you could create a blog post that your audience loves and shares humongously:

• Document every experience, try giving something new, with every piece of the specific post you create.
• What are the goals set for the times to come, how would your content help achieving it, etc, should be the bread and butter of the content you frame!
• Expressing what your business’s vision and mission are taking into consideration the intent centric behaviour of the content, that has to be user-focused.
• What is the inspiration of writing the content? Your inspiration triggers and action in the user’s mind when he feels that engaging with your content would make his vision very clear, indirectly inspiring his thoughts!
• Understand your audience and select a theme thereby. Get stuck to it, following it rather strictly, revolving around it throughout the blog post. Make sure the readability of the content is a layman and therefore, it gets highly shared throughout the audience that understands your niche!
• Keep your content simple, positive and highly creative with quality. What really excites your reader is the creativity blended with simplicity. If the user finds an answer easily, there is no need for roaming here and there, and he would choose it as a preference. Being creative and of high quality captivates and enthrals the intent of the user very precisely. Additionally, giving information that is statistically true and data-oriented is what the audience dwells in for answers!
• Make sure the content is power-packed and driven by a force of regular social shares and other promotional activities. Whether on communities, the engagements with the forums, there’s always a way to connect with the audience professionally. Symbolizing how particular you are with your content creation, its management and distribution.

” Be data-driven, to analyze significantly, contact the experts!”

Parameter 6:

Repurposing the content as the core of content marketing strategy!

A major portion of the visitors to your website leave without taking an action! Therefore to create more clicks, get a potent and high-value audience, data explosion and building brand authority, etc, just repurpose your content, establishing your relations and improvising on the engagements with an already known audience

Blog posts, presentations, infographics, webinars, video content, ebook guides, etc are the best ways of repurposing the data insights collected to the audience who is already aware of your business’s vision. This could create an impact and lead to the revival of their lost connection. Reinforcing messages increases your brand visibility on new platforms, improves your site’s SEO for better traffic, thereby generating greater leads and better sales.

At last:

These were the various parameters to be taken into consideration to build an effective and efficient content marketing strategy. You always have such blog posts to get the insights and the experts to ask to for becoming the king of b2b content marketing world. Recognizing the importance of the intent of the audience delivers the quality in the message you want to convey, that helps to trigger an action in return.

Therefore, inherit the art of storytelling, guarantee the preciseness in your content and ensure that it is search engine optimized in order to create content that stands out. Try to create content which is unique, original, deliver quality, and at the same time strengthens the bond of the customer relationship.

Make sure that your content is well-off achieving what is termed as the end goals of your business through enhanced conversion, sales and greater revenue. Though it is a long journey, a highly personalized content with purposeful and resourceful marketing would take you through.