What are you trying to achieve with this content?
Like any form of marketing, a goal establishes a foundation for the whole campaign. In the case of content marketing, it helps you choose the appropriate type of content and measure return on investment (more on these below). Content marketing is primarily used to establish trust with your audience, so it’s a particularly effective way to generate warm leads such as signing up for a trial or subscribing to a newsletter. But it can also achieve other goals, like increasing brand awareness, establishing thought leadership and converting leads into sales.
Who are you writing for?
One of the most effective ways to use content marketing is to solve a problem for your audience. But before you can do that, you need to make sure you understand them and their problems. You can discover what your audience would like to learn about by carrying out a simple survey using a tool such as SurveyMonkey. Alternatively, speak to your sales team and find out what questions they get asked on a frequent basis.
What kind of content is right?
There are all sorts of content you can produce- blog posts, white papers and case studies are among the most popular. There are also newsletters (like this one!), press releases and articles. But did you know that certain types of content are more suitable for achieving particular goals? For instance, if you’re trying to convert warm leads to sales, a case study showing how your solution helped a client (or user) solve a problem can be very effective.
What should you write about?
You should aim to provide value for your audience whenever you publish a new piece of content. That means putting time and effort into researching a topic and not resorting to easy wins such as news roundups. There are loads of ways to come up with ideas so don’t feel intimidated. For example, look at some of the recurring themes in the investment or Fintech industry right now. Do you agree with them? If not, don’t be afraid to share your view as it will help your content stand out from the crowd.
How will you know if the campaign has been a success?
One of the great things about content marketing is how easy it is to track the success of a campaign or even a single piece of content. If you’re publishing on your own platform, Google Analytics can tell you how many people visit the page and how long they stay. External platforms like Medium provide these stats too. You can also include a call to action at the end of your content and measure signups or subscriptions.