Content creation is more than just a buzzword; it’s an essential part of any successful digital marketing strategy. However, creating content for the sake of it is a futile endeavour. The core principle is to produce great content that genuinely resonates with your target audience by enriching their lives.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how to craft a digital marketing content strategy that genuinely adds value for your target audience and in turn your business.
It starts with a strong digital marketing strategy
Without the right strategy, you’re just going to create average to poor content that doesn’t help anybody. A well-thought-out strategy is the foundation of effective content marketing.
Your content strategy should seamlessly align with your digital marketing strategy. Before diving into content planning, ensure your overall digital marketing strategy is on point. Identifying your target audience, their emotional needs, and your value proposition is paramount.
Align your strategy with your value proposition
Your content strategy should be rooted in the value you intend to provide to your target audience. Consider it as sharing little nuggets of gold that add value to your audience’s lives:
- Who – You need to be crystal clear on who you’re talking to, who your target audience is, and what their emotional needs and wants are. You also need to be crystal clear on the emotional connection that you want to create.
- Their fears: Fear is an amazing motivator.
- Their opportunities: What are their hopes and dreams?
- Your value: What value are you adding to your target audience? This is your value proposition, how well-defined is it and how well are you sharing it?
- What change are you making: How will you change your customers’ lives for the better?
- How you make their lives easier, better, simpler: How are you looking to make their lives easier, simpler, better, cheaper, faster, quicker, or whatever else it might be?
So once again, answering those two core questions is fundamental in developing a great content strategy.
Develop relevant content pillars
Content Pillars should be your first port of call once you’re happy with our digital marketing strategy. Once you’ve defined who you’re talking to, and what value you’re going to add, then it’s time to create a few pillars or foundations that really give you guidance and direction as to the type of content you’re going to create and why you’re going to create it.
There are different versions of the content pillars, but ultimately, they fall into the below four core categories that you can tweak and twist until your heart’s content:
Product and technical information
Technical information about how the product can be applied or how the product/service is delivered that’s going to add value to your audience:
- What are the things people need to think about?
- What’s the post-sales information that people need to know to maintain the product or service?
- What are the things that are really going to add value to the experience of using this product or service?
Authority and expert knowledge
How are you becoming the expert that you are, ensuring you’re adding to the body of knowledge in your industry? You need to continually demonstrate how good you are at what you do, that you’re doing this for a greater good, and that you’re actually contributing to building a better industry, or better product or service.
Viral content
The last pillar is to go viral. So how do you get some creative juices flowing? How do you inspire your target audience in a way that is related to your product or service? This is really about how you can bring life to what you do and bring excitement to your target audience’s day.
Answer common questions
There is a great book by Marcus Sheridan called “They Ask, You Answer”. This is what you want to build for your business. Every single question that you get asked by a lead or a customer, write it down, and you’re going to answer it. Because if one person’s asking it, chances are 10 or 100 people are asking it.
So write them down and start writing a blog article about them, do a webinar about them, or create a video about them.
Know What Your Audience Is Searching For
Think about what content, information, titbits or questions are your target audience searching for. Google has some great keyword tools to help you with that and there are also third-party applications and websites that can assist. Create a list of the 42 big questions that your target audiences are asking, then you need to produce content around them.
Create a Successful Digital Marketing Content Strategy
Remember, a successful digital marketing content strategy doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a continuous process of providing value to your audience, adapting to their evolving needs, and delivering content that enriches their lives. By staying focused on your strategy and consistently delivering valuable content, you can build trust, engage your audience, and achieve your content marketing goals.
