Whether you are a new business owner or new to marketing, this guide is a handy introductory guide that could help you with content marketing. Creating and sharing online material to stimulate interest in your products and services, in other words content marketing, is a fantastic way to drive customers to your website. Studies show that consumers prefer to learn about products through blogs and articles, as opposed to adverts. In addition, digital content marketing is a lot less costly than traditional advertising such as billboards and television. It is true however that content marketing requires specific planning and execution. Posting content that is uninspiring and dry will not produce the results you want. If you don’t know what you are doing content marketing can be tricky.

Competitor Research is Key

There are several online tools that can help research your competitors in terms of digital marketing. You can also do it yourself by searching with Google and browsing the relevant social media channels as well. You will probably already know who your immediate competition is but take this opportunity to look a little deeper. Find out who is ranking high in the Google search results for keywords related to your products and services. Keywords are the search terms and phrases your customers will use in the Google search bar when looking for a business like yours. Choose 25 keywords you want to rank first in, find out who is ranking first at the moment. Research their content, including copy. Find out how often they post and if there is a pattern. The detail of your competitor research should match your customer profiles. Content marketing is extremely competitive as things move and change much quicker on the web compared with other marketing.

Create Customer Profiles

In likeness to any marketing campaign the first objective should be to know who your target customer is. A thorough way of doing this is to create customer profiles. This should deepen your understanding of who they are and what they want. In turn this will help you adapt your message to interest them in your content. First of all split your customers into groups, if you have a lot then focus on your top 5. You should research your target customer age, relationship status, where they live, gender, education, job, and income, method of transport, friends, and family, social media platform, how they spend their free time, their aspirations in life etc. The list goes on and on. If you have the budget you could conduct a survey. The purpose here is to know as much as possible to create a detailed customer profile for each group. Your content marketing campaign will not do well without this key step.

Content

Using the information you have gathered from your customer profiles and your competitor research you should lay out a plan for the type of content you are going to create. Don’t be afraid to explore different options. Good content marketing requires variety. You could create podcasts, blogs, buyer guides, infographics and more.

Create a Task Plan Board

You know what sort of content you want to post. Now you need organise when you will post. Organisation is key to successful content marketing. You need to set yourself deadlines for creating the content and know which platforms you will post and when. Your task plan board should look something like a calendar. Make it big, bold, and colourful and in view at all times. This visual representation of your future work will help you to allocate your time and resources plus keep you focused on the target.