How smart companies develop content marketing strategies

We would like to explain step by step on what is content strategy , how to develop a "content strategy" with a small series of contributions. The point is, you're always going to give your audience exactly the information that they want and need at each moment, the exact formats that best transport the message, and the channels that feed the content and audiences are suitable. Simple. So to speak. And today in the first part of the series we talk about the "strategic basis".

Read more about the importance of content strategy in creating successful brands and companies.

Before listing down the points of creating a content strategy, it is important for business to know how their target audience is, what do they like to read, in what format they prefer to consume the content etc. and all this info can only be taken out from the 4P's of marketing mix that the business will be developing


1. Your own goals
At the very beginning of every strategy are their goals. It has always been like that, and that has not changed in times of content marketing. Yes, you must provide benefits to the reader, an "added value". Yes, you also have to think a little bit like a publisher, as is always said, so provide good editorial content. And yes, you also have to do a content audit on a content strategy.

But you do not do that at the beginning, but only after the "strategic basis". Because without a strategic basis you can not rate the content in the Content Audit - which also? Because: At the end of the day you have to create value for your company! You work in or for a company or organization. And your job is to make this company or organization more successful!

• From corporate, marketing, PR or other strategies, pick out the goals you want to support through content. For example: "gaining confidence". The closer you are to the goals of your colleagues and your company with your content strategy, the greater the acceptance of what they do. However, it is difficult with the aim of "increase sales". For direct "sales promotion" is very difficult to achieve with "content". Then you have to consider what is suitable for other goals in order to promote this sales, eg "competence leadership", if you are eg a consulting company. And although it's called "content marketing," those goals do not necessarily come from marketing. You can also come from corporate communications (eg "Crisis resistance") or from the HR department (eg "getting higher qualified applicants"). The important thing is to make it clear that you are helping your colleagues do their job better!

• Make it a list. A list of all the points for which you want to contribute with your content. Explicitly include in your strategy: "Content marketing should help strengthen our company's resilience to crisis." Or "content marketing should contribute to our company being perceived as a competence leader". Or "content marketing should contribute to our company being perceived as a service leader."

• Think about what they can and must do through communication so that you can actually achieve these strategic goals. For example, "crisis resistance" is "informing" or "creating transparency". For "service leadership" this is for example: "solve problems". Or for "competence leadership": "sharing know-how". You will find that some communicative tasks serve multiple purposes. And that's good.

• Take up these two points later in the editorial planning. For each piece of content, define to which destination this content should make a contribution and which communication task it should fulfill. In each case, two or three keywords suffice, eg "crisis resistance" and "creating transparency". The rule is simple: If you can not define a value for a later scheduled post or article: Do not post it! He is then in the literal sense of value-going. This is how you later "operationalize" your content strategy and use it as your operational business. She then has a leadership and leadership function.

2. Value creation for the public :

Just as important as the definition of one's own goals is the definition of added value for the reader. That's almost a rush: No matter what they read about content marketing, it is always said that you have to create "useful content" or "editorial content". But how to write engaging content? The key is to put yourself in the other person's place. So not from "own eyes" to look, but from the perspective of the interested parties. And there are methods for that:

• First, define who, in concrete terms, are the people you want to reach. You will first do this through target and stakeholder groups. It is also important that you take up the concepts that are used in the strategies of your colleagues, ie marketing, PR or human resources. Again, the more you make it clear to your colleagues that they help them with their work, the stronger the acceptance and support will be.

• Then define "Personas". A "persona" is a typical, concrete person who is representative of comparable types. Create a very specific profile with your colleagues from marketing, market research, sales or support: give the persona a name, select a picture for the persona from an image agency, and define their specific "pain points" with regard to your persona Relationship to each other, so their problems. Define the motivations as well, from which the persona develops its impulse. The more concrete this "profile" is, the better. It's best to imagine a real person you know. Find out the prototypical customers. The more you bring in from practice, the better. To describe someone only theoretically does not help. And do not create too many personas. 5 to 6 are quite sufficient. It does not depend on scientific accuracy, but rather on starting to change perspective. And stupidly said: Everything else is better than to look at your egocentric glasses. Because you already did that in step 1. Developing Customer personas not only help in developing awesome content marketing strategies but also help in defining basic marketing concepts for the company 

• Make a list of the possible benefits you might want to create for these personas, such as "entertainment" or "problem-solving" or "orientation" or "inspiration." Think about what your concrete "gift" is for this persona. Very helpful is also the question of whether this Persona theoretically would be willing to pay for your content money. Keep in mind the so-called "customer journey", ie the phases that a prospective customer typically goes through in order to differentiate themselves for you or your product. For toilet paper, this should be quite simple, but in the B2B area and in the case of an investment good, this can already be a few test steps. Talk about this with your sales or marketing.

• Later, for editorial planning, use both lists, ie those with the personas and those with the concrete benefits. Again, if a piece of content does not provide a concrete benefit to a very specific persona, then it is worthless. Then you should do without him.

• And later, use the topic definition issues. We'll come to that in one of the next steps.

3. The conversion

A proverb says, "There is nothing good unless you do it." And that's what it's about here. The third part of our strategic base is to define what your personas should do (!). Here we come from strategic goals to operational ones. And the joke is: they are all measurable! That's another reason why we rely on "doing". Because that is visible. No one can see or measure what someone thinks, or desires, or has a mindset. And they are all irrelevant - unless they lead to concrete actions.

• Take back your personas and create a list of what they should do: The list of possible points is infinitely long! But in concrete terms: "Subscribe to the newsletter" can be a point. Or: "Comment" (that was easy and short now). But also "like". Even "clicking" is a very good goal, but then you should make sure that you later have a defined "call-to-action" that just asks you to click somewhere.
• It is important that you align this list with the goals from point one. Does this action pay for a strategic goal? This is the filter so you do not define any actions. Again, what does not pay for the strategic goal is worth nothing. For example, you can justify the value of a "Likes". Because a Like can certainly contribute to your being perceived as a competence leader. This is certainly not a big contribution (as the substance of your content is more important), but it is a contribution. Because people generally meet specialists with a lot of followers with a higher respect.
• Now you can write a "KPI" for each action, a "Key Performance Indicator". Well, to be precise: The action is already the key performance indicator. For getting people to do something is just the "performance", that is the power and goal of communication. And in the second point we have ensured that this is also a "key": Because we have checked whether this action helps us achieve a strategic goal. What we really need to do now is determine the measurand. But since we have defined actions, that is not difficult. Newsletter registrations can be counted. Also comments. And also likes.
• And last but not least, you then have to set target values for these KPIs. If you are just starting out with your strategy and you do not have a base yet, that's difficult. Then set no target values, even if everyone always says that you should define goals exactly. That's right, but it should not lead to simply advising. So start with a so-called "zero measurement", eg by recording these values for one month. And then set goals, such as increasing these values by an average of 10 percent each month.