Today, at the time of writing this, 3,819,542 blog posts have been published, according to Worldometers live update.
On WordPress blogs alone, 70 million new pieces of content are published each month.
There’s an awful lot of noise on the internet.
Consequently, it’s now more difficult than ever to make your content stand out from the crowd. But while this might be true, there’s also more opportunity in front of you.
To get your content marketing campaign perfect, then, just requires a little know-how.
Here are the 8 steps of a successful content marketing campaign.
1. Know your buyer persona
The first and most important step of any content marketing campaign is to know who it is you’re trying to talk to.
Inbound marketing works on the principle that you produce content that your audience will want to see, and in turn, will visit your website for.
Without knowing who your audience is, then, isn’t just a fundamental flaw of your marketing strategy, but it’s a fundamental flaw of your business model.
After all: Why are you in business if not to solve someone’s need?
2. Get your strategy in place
Next up, you need a clearly defined, well-rehearsed strategy in place.
There’s more to content marketing than writing a blog post and hitting publish.
Ask yourself:
- How do I plan on promoting my content?
- What content do I want to be running paid ads on?
- What does my SEO strategy look like?
- How does my website’s performance tie into this?
- How do I convert website visitors into leads?
- How do I sell to the inbound leads I receive?
Before you do anything, make sure your content marketing strategy is watertight and that you have a strong process in place.
Otherwise, you might be throwing money down the drain.
3. Consistency is key
I hate to break the news to you, but your business will never be an overnight sensation. And that’s because there’s no such thing as an overnight sensation.
The real key to a successful marketing strategy is consistency over time. It beats all odds and, like an AI, if you can learn, iterate and improve over time, you’ll be guaranteed success.
Publish content across multiple channels as regularly as you can. Make sure it’s high quality, well-researched content that provides value to a reader.
And make sure that it ties into the wider context of your business.
By keeping regular, you’ll see continual growth and eventually find the success you’re looking for.
4. Analyse, report, iterate, repeat
Although I just touched upon it, I want to repeat myself as clearly as I can.
To make a content marketing campaign as successful as possible, you need to experiment to see what works, analyse what has worked, and then iterate and improve upon those success markers.
Don’t get caught in the vicious cycle of publishing content without learning from it. It won’t do you or anyone else any good.
5. Create keyword-targeted content
If your content marketing strategy is to boost organic traffic and visits to your website, and thus, to increase inbound leads, you need to do your homework on what your audience is searching for.
Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush and Moz to generate keyword-focused ideas for content, and then brief these ideas out to your writers who can add the value and compose a story.
If you didn’t know already, this blog post is about content marketing strategy. Just saying.
6. Work to a budget
When it comes to inbound marketing, it can be difficult to accurately benchmark an ROI.
After all, much of what you pay for is more visibility, not necessarily direct sales.
So, to make sure you don’t throw all your money at a Google Ads campaign that generates no clicks, be sure to either hire an expert who can manage these areas properly, or run pilot tests yourself and learn from the data you receive back before you throw money at it.
A successful content marketing campaign is a considered content marketing campaign. Don’t throw all your money at the wall just to find out what sticks.
7. Make sure your content has a lengthy lifespan
Whether that’s writing evergreen content that will continue to generate visits over time, or putting the budget into a reliable promotion strategy, your content needs to last longer than the day it was published.
There’s ample research online that can help you set some benchmarks about what will give your content the best chance of indexing high on Google, and sticking around those top spots for a while to come (this study and this study are both worth reading).
8. Be creative
Nobody wants to read the same blog post six times, and Google doesn’t want to index the same content six times.
While there is a case for skyscrapering top-performing content, your best chance of succeeding with your content marketing campaign is to write original, thought-provoking and witty content that engages a reader.
And that brings me to my final step.
Write for the reader first
If you want your content campaign to succeed, don’t forget who you’re writing for.
Yes, SEO is important, and yes, your social media statistics are important, but nothing builds a brand like community engagement, a loyal readership and word-of-mouth advocation.
If you want a successful marketing campaign, then, write for the reader first.
To find out more about how I can help your business achieve digital growth, continue reading my blog or contact me here.
