How to Create an Actionable and Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing isn’t easy. This post shares useful tips on how to put in an effective strategy that takes your business to the next level.

It feels great when you post content and after a while you see it appearing on the top pages of Google and other popular search engines. But it’s not easy to outcompete your competitors and gain visibility. There are some tricks to an impactful content marketing strategy that you must know. We’re going to share all these tricks with you below. 

It’s true that “content is king”. However, we’ve witnessed platform algorithms such as Pinterest prioritizing unique content. Indeed, Google loves fresh, unique content to index it for searching too. 

But the constant need for content to keep your business up and running makes it hard for an entrepreneur to deliver the volume required for a strategic marketing plan. It also makes it hard to create content that interests the target audience effectively. 

So, what are the secrets to an actionable content marketing strategy? Below, find four tips from a content marketing expert that you can execute and make a difference.

Plan your content purposely

a.) Set and write goals in your calendar

b.) Identify the steps you require to take to achieve those goals. Write down an effective to-do list and record the things on the calendar marking a path towards the completion date of your goal. For instance, you could come up with 15 blog topics, do blog research, and carry out SEO research for the first blog topic.

c.) Find out the challenges, needs, and wants of your target audience. Once you understand all these, you’ll be able to speak the language of your target market and, therefore, create content that they will be interested in reading. 

d.) Have a separate document containing content ideas that address the needs, challenges, pains, and wants of your target market. Ensure you only write about the things your target market cares about. 

Pro Tip: Brainstorm a clear idea of what your customer’s life is like 3 to 4 months before they require your service or product. Come up with another idea of what your customer’s life is like 3 weeks to 2 months before they require your service or product. 

After that, create content that tries to answer the questions they may be typing into their browsers for answers. There’s no better time to connect with your target customer and establish a relationship than with well-planned content before they make the ultimate decision to purchase a product or service.

Plan Content Consistently

You need to plan your content consistently. To be consistent, plan to create content the same way you plan other projects in your business. You need to layout all the steps and put due dates for execution. 

Attach it to your calendar. You can also choose a predictable time and an interval. For instance, you can let the first Monday of every month be your ideal time to prepare next month’s content. You can then put it into effect weekly, every Friday for the succeeding week.  

Perhaps you have a better plan depending on your flexibility. Whatever your plan is, ensure it’s on the calendar, and prioritize it. You could adjust it if needed but make sure you commit no matter what.

What’s the “Big Picture”?

You need to understand the “grand scheme” of marketing strategy. Generally, there are 3 essential components for actionable marketing:

a.)Patience – As a content marketer, you can’t succeed overnight. Marketing is a long-term journey. You’ll need to be patient to see results. 

b.)Consistency – Consistency is a must-have ingredient in strategic marketing. It’s through consistency that you tell your customers and target audience what they should expect. The lack of consistency leads to confusion, which can be disastrous for your business. 

c.) Measuring and Adjusting – Not every time that everything goes as planned. If you realize something isn’t working, you need to change it right away. Measure what’s working, know why it’s working and try to re-incorporate it as much as you can. 

Practice Content Repurposing

Content repurposing is important to your rationality as a marketer. So, how can you repurpose content? Here are some suggestions to consider:

a.) Take one of your blog posts and adjust it appropriately, and convert the content into emails. You can turn the content into a video or even a social media series. 

b.) Create a live video. You can turn on the Google transcription software to auto-type out what you’re saying. Convert the written content into a nice blog post, and then into email content and social media captions. Also, create a podcast from the audio. 

c.) You can create an effective page of FAQs on your site from customer inquiries. If some of your clients are asking you those questions, there will surely be potential clients who are asking the very same questions on Google. These people will be happy to find exactly what they are searching for on your site. They may end up becoming ideal clients for you.

Final Thought

Well-planned quality content can outperform the competition and quickly gain visibility to reach the target customers who are highly likely to buy from you. 

Unfortunately, a lot of business owners haven’t identified an actionable and repeatable system to put their content forward. 

If you’re a market and need your content to rank on top pages of search engines, you’ll find the above expert tips useful. If you effectively execute them, you’ll soon your content ranking and realize increased ROI.  

Pro Tip: As mentioned, “Content is king”. Quality content is powerful enough to convert leads into clients by establishing a relationship and cultivating trust. However, creating content isn’t easy. It requires a lot of dedication and patience. 

You need to change your behavior effectively and to do that you first need to change your thought processes. When you value the result of quality content creation, you’ll be motivated to make things happen.