Discover 5 Steps to a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

Hey there!

Welcome to Episode #11 of The Athena Arena Podcast – The Content & Digital Marketing Strategy Academy for Aspiring 6, 7, and 8-figure Wonder Woman Brands & Mastering Your Inner Game

If you’re looking to get the most out of your content marketing efforts, having a solid strategy in place is key.

Developing and executing a well-researched strategy can help drive traffic, engage customers, and increase conversions for your business.

Learn how with this five-step process for creating an effective content marketing strategy.

Define Your Marketing Goals and Objectives

Setting goals and objectives is an integral part of content marketing success.

Your goals should be:

• Specific,
• Measurable,
• Achievable,
• Relevant and
• Time-bound (SMART).

Before launching your content marketing strategy, ensure you clearly understand your goal.

This could include:

• increasing website traffic,
• driving more leads,
• building social media channels,
• educating potential clients on your YouTube channel,
• building brand awareness.
• or boosting customer retention.

Goals are broad and aim to provide a vision for success, while objectives focus on the exact steps you need to take to reach your goals.

Objectives should be measurable, meaning you can track the results of your efforts and know when you’ve achieved them.

Content marketing objectives might include:

• creating a certain number of blog posts per month,
• growing social media followers by a certain percentage% each month,
• building a YouTube or podcast audience by a certain percentage %,
• or setting a target for landing page conversions.

Having well-defined objectives will keep your content strategy focused on goals that generate valuable business results.

Identify Your Target Audiences

You must clearly understand the people you target with your content.

The more you know about their interests and motivations for engaging with your brand, the better able you will be to create content that resonates with them.

Conduct market research to gain insight into your target audience’s needs and wants, then use this information to produce relevant content they will find valuable.

Researching your target audience and creating buyer personas can help you define who you want your content to reach. After learning as much as possible about your ideal customer, brainstorm topics that would be interesting and appealing to them.

You can also use social media listening tools to gain insights into conversations around specific topics related to your industry or brand. This can give you an understanding of what type of content will resonate with your target audiences.

With a focused content strategy and a detailed understanding of who they’re targeting, marketers can create content that builds relationships with potential customers through informative yet engaging pieces.

Create Content That Resonates With Your Audience

Once you know your target audience and what they want, you can craft content to meet their needs.

Focus on delivering informative and entertaining content in a format that is easy to digest.

Aim to make your content shareable, reaching an even wider audience than just those already familiar with your brand. Incorporate visuals to keep readers engaged and ensure the tone of your writing reflects your customers’ values.

When it comes to determining the type of content you should focus on, research is key. Look for topics that have been successful among other companies in your industry. Keep an eye on social media conversations in your niche and respond with content that resonates with people’s interests and concerns.

Additionally, if you haven’t already gathered important customer feedback, now is the time to ask them what kind of content they want to see from your business. Gathering customer insights can help create content that resonates with your target audience.

Once you’ve identified the most critical elements of a successful content marketing strategy, you need to create an actionable plan. Start by setting realistic goals, such as increasing your website traffic or boosting conversions, and determine how these objectives can be achieved.

Identify the channels where your target audience is most likely to find your content and create a schedule for launching campaigns across these platforms.

Additionally, don’t forget to measure the success of your efforts so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

Finally, don’t be afraid to touch on controversial topics to spark meaningful conversations and draw more attention to your brand.

Understand the Competitive Landscape

Understanding the competitive landscape is one of the key steps in successfully creating your content marketing strategy. Start by studying existing content that’s already available from competitors and related businesses.

A great to start with this is on your competitor’s social media channels. Look for posts with a significant amount of engagement, like comments, likes, and shares. A great tool I use for this is Smarterqueue, a social media scheduling app with terrific competitor analytics capabilities.

This will give you a good idea of what works and doesn’t in your space. Knowledge acquired from this step can then be applied to developing your strategy, helping ensure it stands out among potential customers.

When researching your competition, look specifically at their content mediums, topics, and keywords.

Also, please pay attention to the stories they’re sharing, as this can indicate what resonates with the people in your target market. Knowing these details can also help inform more significant questions, such as ideal campaign length and execution strategies.

Your goal should be to identify weaknesses where your strategy can outperform, driving more qualified traffic to your website and hopefully increasing conversions.

Allocate Appropriate Resources for Success

Creating content and getting it seen isn’t easy, so it’s important that you properly allocate the necessary resources to make it successful. This requires not just financial investment but also time, energy, creativity, and dedication from in-house employees and external agencies or freelancers.

Having enough resources will ensure you can create quality content that people really care about — so don’t skimp here!

Although you may have the financial capabilities to hire an expensive content production agency or a team of high-paid writers, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best decision for your budget.

Consider whether hiring someone could help streamline the process, but also consider the effectiveness of having an in-house working team that is knowledgeable and passionate about creating valuable content. Additionally, compare different approaches to ensure you’re getting everything out of every dollar spent.

Being conscious and aware of where resources are allocated can help optimize success when launching a new content marketing strategy.

Other podcast episodes related to this topic:

• Part 1 of Content Marketing Strategy Basics
• Keyword Marketing Research

Tools I Use & Recommend for Content Marketing:

• Smarterqueu, a social media posts scheduling app with excellent competitive analysis and content topics tool.
• Tailwind, is another social media scheduling tool I LOVE that now has AI functionality that’s super helpful!