The Value of Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.[1]

According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, 83% of marketers consider a content marketing strategy very effective in increasing revenue.[2] As we enter into the new year, a closer look at your content strategy may be responsible for increased web traffic, a growth in leads, and more loyal clients.

Here are four simple steps to create a content marketing strategy:

1. Identify your goal and your prospects buying persona.

Be specific with your goals and discuss them with your team. Identify your why, what, and how and by doing this, the process will be easier and more enjoyable. Who is buying your service? For the retirement plan advisor, it's a business owner but what kind of business owner? What are some industries that dominate your territory? Uncovering these demographics can help you tailor your content better towards those types of business owners.

2. Conduct a content audit

Let's look at what you currently have for content; this could include email campaigns, newsletters, articles, videos, etc. Are you consistent with your current content? Or are these posts very spread out demonstrating inconsistency? After you conduct your audit and answer these questions, identify what pieces of content you'll be able to remain most consistent with and which ones you will not. For example, if it takes teeth pulling to get you to sit down and write a blog article, but creating a newsletter takes an hour, focus your energy on your newsletters and delegate blog writing to another team member or outsource blog writing.

3. Determine how you will manage your content

In a previous article, Clicks into Customers Pt 1: Automate the Important, we discussed automating your content through email automation. Distributing and managing content can be streamlined and easy if done correctly. Email marketing programs, Hootsuite, and CRM platforms are all solutions to distribute and manage your content.

4. Create an editorial calendar and stick to it

An editorial calendar will help you determine what topics to promote, and what type of content pieces to create. We recommend splitting your calendar up by quarters and giving each quarter a theme to follow for consistency. While the year moves along you won't have to pause and brainstorm content for that quarter, you'll already have a foundation to begin with.

As you create content, a lot of it will be evergreen as they are important topics today and will be months from now. However, don't ignore timely topics; they won't be a big part of your strategy but might make good use to generate spikes of traffic.

It takes time, effort, creativity, and organization to create a content marketing strategy. But the efforts result in your firm having a strategy that will save a lot of time, help attract leads, and will help educate your target prospects and generate awareness for your firm.

Happy marketing!