- Every day, businesses publish articles, podcasts,
and videos that their customers just won't see.
That's because it's easy to produce lackluster content
that gets lost or ignored, and unfortunately,
that's what happens when many companies
invest in content marketing.
While it's certainly a challenge,
producing remarkable content for your customers
is possible when you're following the guidance
of a content marketing strategy.
This document is where your organization
should map out how exactly you'll use content
to reach your goals.
Creating a strategy is an opportunity
to define who, what, when, where, why, and how
of your approach to content marketing.
The point of this strategy is to make sure
you're setting up a framework
for making purposeful decisions and setting business goals
to guide those decisions at every step of the process.
With your goals clearly defined in your strategy,
it'll be easier to set priorities,
plan out each content campaign more thoughtfully,
and collaborate with others.
While a strategy doesn't guarantee success,
I've seen many companies succeed with content marketing
when they're organized and deliberate.
For me, the first and most important step
to starting with a content marketing strategy
is setting strategic goals
so the results you're looking to achieve
are clear from the beginning.
A strategic goal is an outcome
that's meaningful for your business,
easy to understand at a glance,
and straightforward to measure.
Some common content marketing-centric goals are
establishing thought leadership, improving customer loyalty,
demand generation, increasing sales,
audience development, and earning brand awareness.
One way to guide which goals you'll focus on and when
is by being aware of the two types of goals,
ongoing and campaign goals.
The first are ongoing goals,
which are meant to measure the results
you're looking to achieve on a regular basis.
For example, let's say your company publishes
articles weekly, and your team would like to measure
the ongoing engagement from visitors reading this content.
While there are many ways to measure increasing engagement,
you could look at how these articles increase
or decrease the time spent on your website
on a monthly basis.
This is considered an ongoing goal
as it's an outcome your company will likely monitor
for the longterm, since there isn't an end date
associated with publishing these articles.
Campaign goals are another type of goal you'll set
as they are directly related to measuring the success
of time-sensitive activities.
I recently worked with a client publishing case studies
and an executive interview series
as part of a three month-long launch campaign
for their latest service offering.
For them, a major goal of this short-term campaign
was to generate 300 leads from potential customers,
providing their contact info
in exchange for viewing their premium content.
This goal of generating 300 leads is a campaign goal
because it indicates their progress of an initiative
with a defined start and stop date.
So, keep these goal types in mind
as you think about the right mix of outcomes to focus on.
And remember that no matter what your content goals are,
you are more likely to achieve them
with a solid content marketing strategy.
So, start thinking about yours.