3/52 Four Components to a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

A winning content marketing strategy is a funnel with a built-in sift. It attracts potential customers to your website and refines them to the leads most likely to convert to sales.

This is the third of 52 articles about what business owners can do to grow their businesses this year.

Question: We post on social media all the time already. What do you mean by “a content marketing strategy”?

There are four key components to a winning content marketing strategy.

Define Clear Strategic Goals

Decide upfront what you want to achieve from your marketing efforts. Set SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) that align with your business objectives.

Remember that if you can’t measure your goals, you can’t manage them, and you won’t know when you have achieved them.

For example, a SMART goal may be to increase website traffic by 20% in the next quarter or to increase signups for the Newsletter by 25% by year-end.

Create Targeted Content

Know your customers’ demographic criteria, interests, behaviours, location and online activity. Develop content that resonates with your target audience (your customers) and showcases your brand’s unique personality.

Focus on providing value through educational content, user-generated material, and authentic storytelling [5] [6].

Different platforms may be strategically suited to different customer groups. For example, LinkedIn is most often for business-to-business (B2B) partnerships, Facebook for business-to-customer (B2C) marketing, Instagram for brand affinity, and X or Blue Sky for customer service and influencer engagement [1]. Some organisations send delivery information or special offers via WhatsApp for business or text messages direct to mobile phones.

The goal is to reach potential customers who are most likely to be interested in the product or service being advertised, thereby increasing the chances of conversion and optimizing ad spend. This approach should utilise data analytics and platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads to deliver personalised and relevant ads to the selected audience segments.

Create Engaging Content

Remember the 50-30-20 rule: post 50% engaging content (content that is passionate about the topic it covers and attracts others to read it), 30% curated content (selected posts from other sources, carefully chosen for relevance), and 20% promotional content (advertising, offers, etc.) to keep your audience interested [3]. If your content is engaging, people will read it, watch it and not scroll on by. To be engaging you need to be memorable. What content can you create that will engage your target audience?

Post consistently

There are two aspects to consistent content:

• Focus on posting consistently. Set posting goals that you achieve.  It is better to grow and develop your marketing slowly with a solid foundation than to go in at random with volume and collapse from burnout. Don’t over-commit yourself and, as a result, give up.

• Maintain a consistent brand identity across all social media platforms, including logos, colour schemes, fonts, and tone of voice. You may also want to consider your post’s style – what best reflects your brand identity?

In conclusion:

Use analytic tools to track performance, then refine your content marketing strategy, to maximise your return on investment (ROI)  based on data-driven insights. In other words, use the numbers to create better posts that reach the right audience and hold their attention long enough to respond to the call to action included in your posts.

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Links

[1] https://www.hootsuite.com/resources/social-media-strategy-guide

[2] https://www.maddyness.com/uk/2024/10/12/5-proven-strategies-to-leverage-social-media-and-grow-your-business/

[3] https://www.kontentino.com/blog/social-media-strategy-make-the-most-of-a-social-media-plan/

[4] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/8-ways-leverage-social-media-small-business-success-imran-chaudhry

[5] https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-strategy/

[6] https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-business/

[7] https://chekkee.com/harnessing-social-media-platforms-for-business-growth/