Digital Content Strategy The Key to Content Marketing for Businesses

Traditional marketing methods cannot compare to digital marketing’s lower cost, measurable results, higher ROI, and better exposure and engagement. It is not even an option anymore since today’s consumers use the internet to find the products and services they need. However, digital marketing requires a more natural approach in the form of content or else your business will not only waste money in marketing to your target market but also risk creating a negative brand image in the market and industry.

This is why content marketing is an essential component in any business’s digital marketing arsenal. It provides your audience the content they seek, makes your business relatable, builds trust between you and your customers, generate quality leads, and improve customer conversions. However, your business will find it difficult to achieve these benefits without a digital content strategy.

What is a Digital Content Strategy?

A digital content strategy provides the framework for the creation, distribution and management of content as a means of achieving business objectives. It is the long-term plan that guides all the content-related decisions for connecting your business to its customers through content. It is different from a content marketing strategy that deals with creating and distributing content to attract, engage, and convert an audience.

A digital content strategy answers the following questions:

What do you want to accomplish with your content?
What is the main story you want to tell through your content?
Who are the target audience for your content?
What are the common questions, needs, concerns, and objections of your customers?
What are the resources available and allocated for content marketing?
Who is in charge of developing content?
How will content support your branding objectives?
What is the brand voice used across all channels?
What are the types of content you will will use for marketing your business?
Where will you publish your content?
How is your branding maintained across various content channels?
What makes your content different from the rest?
What makes your content distinct to your brand?
What are the metrics that define success in the use of content?

Your answers to these questions will then be used in your content marketing plans to develop content that has a significant influence in meeting business objectives.

Why You Need a Digital Content Strategy

Now, you might be wondering why you should go through the trouble of creating a content strategy framework. Why not go straight to creating content or go ahead with content marketing planning? Well, here are a few reasons why:

It translates business goals to content marketing goals

All marketing efforts should lead your business towards its objectives. Content marketing is not any different. A content strategy plans how you can achieve this through the content you create. It ensures that all your content creation and distribution efforts are goal driven and lead to tangible results for your business.

It sets the standards for measuring your content marketing results

A content strategy will provide the short- and long-term goals by which your teams or agencies will use as their basis for content marketing planning. These goals will provide the key performance indicators that these strategies must primarily take into account during the planning stage and for measuring the progress of their campaigns.

It coordinates your content marketing strategies across different channels

A content strategy serves as the basis for the different content marketing strategies your business may have. There is no such thing as a website content strategy and a separate one for social media and the other content channels. There is only one content strategy for a business. Because of this, your audience can easily associate your content with your brand regardless of the channel where they found it. It also coordinates your different channels and helps your channels complement one another for better overall results.

It helps you save on content marketing expenses

Content marketing can get expensive if you are not careful. A content strategy provides your marketing team a guide to follow when creating their strategy for content marketing. This includes which content channels they should use, how much they should spend for each channel, and when to cut costs if it does not return the expected results.

It defines the performance metrics of your content marketing team

A content strategy identifies the ones responsible for your business’s content efforts. It defines the schedule and standards for content creation, guidelines for social media interaction, goals for content channel performance, SEO goals for rankings and features, and more. From these, your content marketing team knows the standards for their work and determine if they are falling short or performing as expected.

It helps you create effective content on a consistent basis

Businesses will first research and test the ideas found in their content strategies. This ensures that the content created using these are effective in achieving the specified purpose of each content type. Because of this, content marketing teams only need to follow the foundations set up by a content strategy in order to create effective content consistently.

How to Create a Digital Content Strategy

To create a content strategy, you will have to follow a blueprint referred to as the content strategy framework. It will help you outline everything that your team needs to implement effective content marketing campaigns for your business.

Setting the goals of your content strategy

You must first know what you are expecting to gain from using content in marketing your business by identifying your goals. However, you need to go beyond creating goals by specifying the reason behind each goal and identifying the method that you will achieve. This makes it easier for your content team to plan and act for the task accordingly.

For example, one of your objectives is to increase your social media engagements by 20 percent within the next 6 months. You may be aiming for this goal because you noticed an increase in social media engagements have brought more customers to your business. You will then state under your goal the plan that will lead to the achievement of your goal. In this case, it could be to by increasing the frequency of your posts and posting more of your effective content.

Identify the problems your content is going to solve

Value is the key to the effective use of content in marketing your business. Your content is valuable when it solves your audience’s problem that are relevant to the products or services you offer. You need to identify which problems that your audience may have and use them as the basis for creating your content. When you do this right, promoting your content and attracting an audience to it will become significantly easier.

Know what sets your brand apart from the competition

It is not enough to provide solutions to your target audience. Your competition will also do the same through their content marketing efforts. To make your business stand out, you need to provide something that your competition will find difficult to imitate. These are the strengths you have as a business.

These strengths can come from the product or service you offer such as a patented feature or your unique expertise in the industry. Alternatively, it can also come from what you offer together with your product or service such as a lifetime warranty, free video tutorials, and 24/7 customer service. Whatever this may be, you need to highlight this in your content and use it in your call to action to make it stand out from the rest.

Identify your audience

Knowing your audience is essential for creating effective and valuable content and choosing the right channels for distributing and promoting said content. Moreover, you can segment your audience further based on where they are on their buyer’s journey. Knowing them will help you create content suitable for the stage of their journey and helps them move towards a buying decision.

Create calls to action for your audience

Effective use of content does not stop at providing information to your audience. It must also have them act towards an action that moves along their relationship with your business. Some examples of these actions include browsing further in your website, signing up for a newsletter, leaving their contact information, requesting a quote, and buying your product or service. Whatever this may be, your content must lead your audience to take the action that drives them toward buying your product or hiring you for your services.

Your content strategy must specify what these calls to actions are and which content format you will use it. Of course, each call to action should be relevant to the product or service you offer. For example, if you are offering a meal service, you can offer a free downloadable meal planner for those who sign up for your email newsletter.

Choose which content formats you will use and which channels you will distribute them

You need to choose which forms of content your business will use for marketing to your audience. You can categorize these different formats and channels into the following:

Online advertising
Video marketing
Webinars
Social media
Online publications
Email marketing
Search engine optimization
Digital advertising
Online groups and communities

The key in choosing the right one is to identify which formats or channels are preferred by your audience, and which ones will be more effective in delivering your content.

Audit your current marketing content and content marketing plan

You do not have to waste your efforts even if you have already made some strides into content marketing before making your content strategy framework. However, you need to perform an audit on your existing content and content marketing plans. This will help you identify any inconsistencies with your new content strategy marketing plan so you can make the necessary adjustments.

Do You Need Help With Your Content Strategy Framework?

With the importance of a digital content strategy template for your business, it is crucial that you get it right. Its quality will dictate how your content marketing efforts will go moving forward. Because of this, it is important to seek the expertise of those who have done it for several businesses across different industries. Here at Big Market Solutions, we can provide knowledge and expertise borne out of years of providing digital marketing solutions for businesses, contractors, and professionals. Contact us today to schedule a free marketing consultation!

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