Content Marketing is the right bait of my digital marketing theory. However, before we get into my theory let’s talk about what content marketing is. Content marketing is the process in which free content is made and shared in order to attract potential customers in the hopes of turning them into a buyer. This is a very important process of your digital marketing strategy. Now if you have not heard about my theory, I basically compare digital marketing for small businesses to fishing. The small business owner or entrepreneur is the fisherman and the potential clients are the fish. In order to catch the desired type of fish, or to get your desired customer to buy, the first step is to have the right bait or content (To hear this full theory listen to my new podcast called The Social Sea). William Shakespeare said, “bait the hook well. This fish will bite.” While I’m sure he wasn’t talking about content marketing LOL, this still does apply. If you do your research and have a solid content marketing strategy, your potential client will purchase your products and/or services. The difference between traditional marketing (television, radio) and content marketing (social media, mobile) is that when you do your research you are creating valuable content for your specific target market. So basically, you are attempting to provide a resolution to a problem your potential buyer may have, rather than just have content in front of as many people as you can and hoping that someone will just purchase. Content marketing is intentional marketing, because you are actually taking the time to do the research and find out what your potential clients actually need and provide a solution. It is more important to have 500 followers in your target market, than to have 200,000 that are not in your target market.
There are 10 steps to content marketing. 1) Set your mission and goals, 2) Establish your Business Objectives and KPIs or key performance indicators, 3) perform a digital marketing analysis, 4) create content marketing plan, 5) create a digital marketing plan, 6) create content calendars, 7) produce content, 8) distribute and market that content, 9) measure your results, 10) Repeat steps 6-9 until your digital marketing campaign has been complete.
- Set Your Mission and Goals
- This is one of the most important parts to your content marketing strategy. If you do not know what your mission and goals are then how will you know the right content to post. You are then doing unintentional marketing and this will not produce as many results. If one company’s goal is to get more followers that are in their target market and another is to increase their interactions, the content of the post to achieve these goals may look slightly different.
- Establish Your Business Objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
- Your KPIs are qualifiable values that show how well your business is achieving its objectives. These need to be actionable, measurable, and directly link to your business goals
- Perform a Digital Marketing Analysis
- During your digital marketing analysis you need to discover who your target market is, what forms of digital marketing are they using, and how well your current content is doing on helping them solve the problem you are providing the solution to.
- Create a Content Marketing Plan
- After you have done your digital marketing analysis and found where your could use some improvements in order to reach your goals, a content marketing plan needs to be created. An example of a content marketing plan would be, if you are a baker and your business goal is to boost brand awareness you may focus on different types of desserts each month that you offer. Maybe January will be cake month, February cookies month and so on. From here you could focus on a different type of cake or cookie each week.
- Create a Digital Marketing Plan
- This is where you decide which forms of digital marketing will be the most beneficial to your content marketing plan.
- Create Content Calendars
- Create a content calendar with what post you will post each week. I also like to put what goals I am trying to achieve with what contents. This helps me be sure that I am staying on track.
- Produce Content
- Here it is time to create your videos, photos, info-graphs, etc.
- Distribute and Market that Content
- Now it is time for you to post the content that you created. You can preschedule your content, post them as you do or both. I prefer to do a combination of both.
- Measure Your Results
- This is an extremely important step. Here is where you look at your metrics and discover what is working and what is not. Here you can make adjustments and continue with what is working and adjust what is not.
- Repeat Steps 6-9 Until Your Digital Marketing Campaign Has Been Completed
- Once you have measured your results you create a content calendar for the next month based on the results from the previous month and continue the steps all the way to the end. You will keep repeating steps 6-9 until your campaign is complete. Then do an analysis to figure out if your campaign was as more effective than the last.
To listen to a more in-depth explanation of this check out the “Right Bait, Right Content” portion of the Social Sea Podcast: https://anchor.fm/sociallinkage/episodes/Ep–14-Right-Bait–Right-Content-e12e932
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