Content marketing strategies: how to plan the best one
Deliver value to customers and then sell it – this is a business maxim of recent years. Although this is a labor-intensive task, it is a good alternative to traditional advertising activities. That is why in this article we will discuss how to create a content marketing strategy that brings real profits.
Content marketing – strategies
Marketing activities that consist in creating valuable content are called content marketing.
Specialist texts are useful for recipients, which increases the visibility of the company in search engines, and also creates an expert image of the brand. This translates into an increase in potential customers, and consequently – in sales.
However, the trend of content marketing came some time ago from Western countries and has been going on in Poland for several years. Companies intensively create content to fight the competition for customer attention. This raises some complications that make high-quality texts not enough. A well-thought-out content marketing strategy is necessary, turning the effort into tangible benefits. So let’s move on to the first step, from which we will start building a plan.
Companies intensively create content to fight the competition for the attention of customers.
Step 1 – analyze your resources and market situation
First, you need to determine what resources are needed to achieve any benefits. The growing strength of competition makes the requirements more and more, excluding the “small players”.
The most common mistake in content marketing is that you invest or put a lot of work into content that will not bring any profit. Why? Because the competition:
- creates even more content
- has a more extensive page
- invests more resources in off-site positioning (link acquisition)
All of the above factors not only support the activities of the competition, but also reduce the effects of your work, because the attention of recipients is directed to companies that conduct content marketing better. Intensity is key, as is time – why?
When entering the market, don’t expect to quickly surpass a five-year-old company that has created 200 blog articles in that time.
This situation illustrates the importance of regularity – 40 articles a year is not an impressive result, but in the end, a considerable amount of content was collected. It is worth noting that the greater age of the domain also works in favor of competition.
However, we do not want to demotivate, but to make you look at the market situation soberly. If you want to get significant benefits from content marketing, be aware that it will take time, work and often money. Innovators who enter the market with a new product can count on the effects, as well as companies without established competition, but if you are opening another shoe store – check your search engine competitors to see what keywords you should be ranking for.
Step 2 – plan your publishing schedule
A content marketing strategy only makes sense with a plan counted in months, not days.
One article does not guarantee any success, but the publication of the content in the example above builds a gradual advantage over a certain period of time.
Of course, in this case, it would be unwise to stop creating content after “outperforming” the competition. Other companies can resume publishing articles at any time, so make sure you get a significant advantage. Only a year of such a strategy allows you to produce 180 articles, which will not be so easy to make up for among the competition. What’s more, such an amount of content already builds solid organic traffic, as well as brand recognition. Only in such a situation can we unquestionably say that the company achieves benefits through the use of content marketing.
Thus, the proverbial insertion of “two articles crosswise” is not a strategy, but an ill-considered action that takes time or money, giving nothing in return. The content marketing strategy is always long-term to gather the necessary resources of valuable content.
Summary
- The content marketing strategy consists of two basic steps: researching the market situation and publishing content in the long term.
- The first element determines the real chances, and the second simply fulfills them.
- The effects of content marketing depend mainly on the activities of the competition and the company’s resources, which is why the effort combined with time is necessary to bring results. Remember that you are building stable foundations that will constantly bring valuable customers in the future!
- A well-thought-out strategy maximizes the likelihood of content marketing success.
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