Member Article

Do you Have a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content Marketing

According to Econsultancy and Outbrain’s recent Content Marketing Survey Report, only 38% of digital marketers working for a brand said they had a clearly defined content marketing strategy in place. Amongst digital agencies, this figure was even lower, with 13% saying that they or their clients have such a strategy already in place.

The survey asked in excess of 1,300 professionals working in digital marketing, ‘Does your company/do your clients have a defined content marketing strategy?’ But it seems that the statistics could soon change in the next couple of years, as 58% of agencies and 55% of marketers working for a specific brand replied ‘No but we/they are planning one’.

So what about you, do you have a content marketing strategy? And why exactly would you need one?

Putting method and structure into your online marketing

If you’ve ever published a blog post, article, white paper, video, podcast, tweet or anything in between, you’ve indulged in content marketing. It’s essentially an indirect means of spreading awareness of your brand without going for the hard sell, and can be used to create positive sentiment towards your company and its products which will, hopefully, lead to increased sales or greater uptake of your services. Furthermore, it’s essential for search engine optimisation purposes and can potentially lead to you climbing the search results rankings.

The ‘strategy’ part just means you’ve spent a bit of time thinking about it and have put a coherent plan into action. And with the benefits of good content marketing well documented, why wouldn’t you want to plan it out and optimise your efforts?

Creating a content marketing strategy that works for you

To create a content marketing strategy that is suited to your business you need to first ask a number of questions:

Who are our customers?
What types of content do they prefer?
What niches can we capitalise on?
What are our strengths?

From these questions and others like them, you should be able to figure out what kind of content you should be creating, where you should be positioning it, and how often you need to do so. All that remains is to ensure that it’s top-notch content, which puts your brand in the best possible light.

If you don’t feel you have the expertise to do this yourself, speak to a local SEO agency that will be able to develop a content marketing strategy with you that will deliver results.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jon Celeste .