There’s no doubt that, on the internet, content is King! That’s right - your audience is searching for valuable content that relates to their interests and needs. That’s why it’s critical to craft a content strategy with your inbound marketing strategy that focuses on producing engaging, high-quality content that informs, persuades, and provides solutions for your customer’s problems.

One common challenge for businesses attempting to engage their target audience is knowing how to provide the right content and what content to produce. Figuring this out can take immense research and planning, but the effects of doing so are long-lasting and can ensure that your content resonates with your target audience. But where do you begin?

4 Steps to Developing a Content Strategy

Define Your Goal(s)

When creating content, there must be a specific, defined purpose. Creating content with no end goal will waste money, time, and resources. We recommend using the three stages of the Buyer’s Journey to influence how content is produced. Essentially, the buyer’s journey is the process a customer goes through before making a purchase. It consists of an awareness stage, a consideration stage, and a decision stage. Once you have clearly defined goals, you can begin thinking about how your content strategy will help you achieve those goals.

Research Your Audience

Defining your target audience is a fundamental step in creating a content strategy. You can use tools such as Hubspot’s Buyer Persona Generator or Google Analytics to plunge deeper into whom your content should be directed. Also, knowing your audience’s demographics, such as age, gender, location, income level, interest, goals, and occupation will assist you in creating content that will appeal to and influence them to buy your product or service. It is also relevant to conduct research yearly and ask questions like:

• Should we target a new group of people or expand our current target audience?
• Do we want to introduce a new product/service to our current target market? If so, how should we begin marketing that product or service?

Questions like these allow you to stay updated in a continuously changing market.

Review Past Content

It is necessary to review previous content and assess your top-performing and lowest-performing content. Evaluating this content will allow you to know which content resonates the most with your audience. Once you know this, you can begin building similar content that produces that same positive feeling among your target audience. On the other hand, knowing your low-performing content opens the opportunity to re-purpose or improve that content so that it is engaging to your target audience.

Measure Results

Now that you have determined what to focus on, it is critical that you consistently measure the results of your content. Take into account metrics such as bounce rates, page views, conversions, and clicks. These metrics will help you decide which content interests your target audience the most. In addition, you will want to measure results by listening to your customers on social media, engaging with customers through comments, and asking them for feedback/suggestions.

Conclusion

Having a successful content strategy requires a deep understanding of your buyers. Therefore, be certain to set goals, research your audience, and receive feedback so you can create an award-winning content strategy.

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