This checklist will ensure that you create the best content for your business.
Creating the best content for your business starts with a comprehensive content marketing strategy checklist.
Content marketing has made it possible for smaller companies to compete with larger, more established companies. New marketing strategies are allowing marketers to be fully equipped with engaging, high-quality content marketing methods. These methods are allowing every marketer to be able to compete with even that biggest, most established organizations.
B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist
The first strategy on a content marketing checklist is to identify the business goals you’re looking to accomplish. When the marketing team has a clear understanding of the things the business wishes to accomplish within the next year, they will know the first steps they need to take to complete these tasks. It is important, though, that these goals align with the content strategy and are meaningful, measurable and can be accomplished in a timely manner. Some important goals having compelling content can help your business achieve include:
- Building Brand Awareness
- Educating Buyers
- Serving Existing Customers
- Cross-Selling
- Up-Selling
- Generating New Leads
- Engaging with Influencers
- Nurturing Leads
- Establishing the Company’ Expertise
The second content strategy is to create your buyer persona based on the demographics and psychographics you’ve obtained from the data you’ve collected. Figuring out everything there is to know about your audience, especially their demographics and psychographs, is the key to developing the best buyer persona. Aspects like age, gender, location, marital status, nationality, buying habits, hobbies, spending habits and values are important information to help you gain a deeper understanding of your audience. Also, answer the following questions will help you gain more knowledge about your target audience:
- What sites do they visit frequently?
- Which channels do they most frequently use to communicate?
- Which influencers do they listen to?
- What are their pain points?
Strategies three and four, to create a successful content marketing checklist, are to target your audience with content based on their stage in the buying process and based on events. Whatever stage your audience may be in within the buying process, it is essential to provide content that will move them to the next stage and through the buying funnel. The best way to achieve this is to strategize content based on AIDA; Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. Buyers at the top of the funnel need more informative content while buyers closer to the bottom need compelling and persuasive content. Creating content based on events happening within the company you’re targeting could trigger interest in the solutions you offer. This is better known as lead nurturing.
The next strategy is to know the expertise your company offers. When you know the core strength your company offers, you will create the most useful content which will lead to more meaningful customer relationships. The most competent companies influence their clients to choose their product or service to use over their competitors. Also, your core competency as a company should be difficult to imitate and open many potential markets.
As with any successful strategy checklist, performing an audit of the content you offer is essential to ensure you’re providing the best content you can create. This audit will allow you to understand any gaps that must be filled. The basic steps of a complete content audit include: inventorying existing content, organizing and tagging content by topics and other features, adding success metrics like traffic, and analyzing data for patterns and gaps.
SEO is an important aspect of being visible to other companies and clients. Deciding on the SEO keywords you will use is a mandatory strategy to ensure your well thought of content is reaching your potential clients. High-volume, relevant SEO keywords should be established before any content is created. To find keywords that will provide the maximum results for little or no cost, the following tools can be very helpful:
- Google Keyword Planner
- SEMrush
- Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool
- Google Trends
- Term Explorer
- Keyword Tool.io
Another strategy to follow when creating your content marketing checklist is to define your editorial calendar. This calendar is to help you and your team understand the production and delivery schedule you want to follow. Without this calendar, your content marketing will be inconsistent and an all-around mess.
The final checklist point is to promote the content you have methodically and strategically created. Now that you have spent 26-hour days creating the best content to attract your target market, it is all useless unless you promote your content for those clients to find. It is essential that you promote your content on your own channels, to influencers, on social media and paid media.
So, what is B2B content marketing? This is an effective content marketing strategy that will enhance your company when done correctly. When the proper B2B marketing strategy framework is accomplished, any company can become a master at creating the best content strategy, even B2B content marketing companies that don’t specialize in the matter.
