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Many of the marketing campaigns in today’s world use content marketing in some shape or form. In this article, we will cover how to create content marketing strategies for startups.

The end goal for any type of content you create is to engage and encourage your target audience with a call to action.

We will cover this and more, but first, we got to talk basics!

How to create a content marketing strategy

Step 1: Your goals

Before you create a useful marketing strategy you first need to know what you plan to get out of it.

Ask yourself these six questions to help create your content marketing goals.

1. What do you want to achieve?

Do you want to create a new buzz around your brand, gain more Instagram followers or just create an online presence for yourself? You need to set out clear achievements before starting your strategy otherwise how will you know if you have met them.

2. What type of content appeals to your audience?

What is your audience’s age range, what do they respond best to?

Do they like content-rich articles or are they more visual?

Know who your target audience is and the trends they follow when they consume online content.

3. What valuable experience can you provide your audience?

You need to have content throughout your buyer’s journey but you also need to provide content that your audience needs so they keep coming back. This could be blog posts, guides or how-to videos. Anything that will keep your audience engaged.

4. Do you have sufficient resources?

You need to make sure you have enough resources to successfully roll out your content marketing plan. This will take time and effort, make sure you have a team dedicated to this.

5. How much time can you allocate?

As mentioned above content marketing takes a considerable amount of time to undertake. The average time to write just one blog post is between one and two hours, so you need to take this into consideration.

You also need to be aware that it might take some time before you start to see results. This is a long-term commitment and results will not happen instantly.

6. What happens if it fails?

There is always a possibility that you might not get the results you want the first time around.

Step 2: Create a content marketing persona

To ensure you make content that will engage with your audience, you need to create a marketing persona.

A marketing persona is a fictional representation of your target audience. You will need to focus on their age, gender, education, income and marital status. You will also need to include goals they want to achieve, pain points and challenges they currently face, type of content they prefer and their favorite social media channel.

The more detailed, the better.

Step 3: Choose your content marketing framework

You can choose from two different types of content marketing frameworks all depending on which goals you would like to achieve.

Trial-and-error framework

This is the framework that most businesses use. Businesses will create different types of content based on a theme, they then publish it and monitor to see which content appeals to their audience the most.

Skyscraper framework

This is designed to create content that builds upon an idea already done. This framework is best suited if your goal is to use influencers to promote your brand awareness. Once you have created an additional article or blog piece that can add value to an influencer’s content, you can reach out to that influencer with your work. Your aim is to get them to recognise the added value of your content and then promote it through their channels.

Step 4: Your writing process

Your writing process needs to be seamless and follow the same set of guidelines and tone throughout. You have to write in a way that best represents your brand. This will help ensure that the quality and tone of the content you publish is the same and has the same goal.

Step 5: Where to publish?

Knowing where to publish your content is just as important as creating it. Afterall it doesn’t matter how good your work is, there’s no point if your target audience can’t see it.

This is where your marketing persona comes into play. You can use this to determine which social media platforms are your target audience’s preferred choice. This helps ensure that your content will be seen and consumed by the right people, making all your hard work worth it.

Step 6: Measuring your campaign

This is the most critical step of your content marketing strategy. It is important that you can record the reaction of the content that you publish. If you don’t do this, then how can you know which content engages effectively and which needs to be improved.

Start off by deciding which key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll monitor. These must align with the goals you set at the beginning of your strategy.

The most common groups of metrics used are:

• Consumption metrics
• Sharing metrics
• Lead metrics
• Sales metrics

While the rewards are high, it is clear to see that creating and executing a content marketing strategy will take a lot of time and effort. However, it will be worth it for the level of engagement and brand awareness you will create for your startup.

Written by Stuart Cooke, Blog Editor at www.niparcels.com a courier comparison services for startups looking for shipping solutions.