A Beginners Guide to creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Getting Started

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A Content Marketing Strategy  is about creating the right marketing campaign for your business, using content to showcase your company's brand and values. Your content should be helpful, engaging, and create value. A content marketing campaign builds relationships with your customers and prospects and, over time, ensures that they become familiar with you and your brand. People buy from people they like and trust, and by producing valuable content, they'll be more willing to move through the touchpoints of their customer journey until they finally convert.

Content Marketing is a form of marketing that looks at organic posts to attract buyers on social media and uses offline strategies such as print media. This type of marketing requires a comprehensive understanding of many strategies used to create and share valuable content.

A content marketing strategy aims to generate leads with the right audience and increase sales by increasing customer engagement by providing value to your customers with informative articles or blog posts on relevant topics. For example, at Dash Social, we talk about marketing campaigns and branding by providing valuable information, such as marketing tips.

Content marketing can take many forms: video tutorials explaining how to fix common household problems, an infographic detailing class rules, or how-to guides and resources.

Lead Magnets are your tools for capturing conversions on your website. So these can be interactive (see 'What is a Lead Magnet' - On the Right or click here here to view detail ) or they can be intuitive content segments that position the reader to keep reading and engage with the content on the page. See below:

Valuable tips -ensure you are not trying to sell to your audience.

Inspirational content to inspire a change or action your audience has already decided is beneficial.

Entertaining content designed to make your audience have emotion.

Showcase your brand identity for yourself and your company. This is a time to shine and create your reputation(reputation management).

Build your content by using storytelling to build trust.

Share the right content at the right time and on social media channels where your audience is.

Use Google Analytics to view what content is getting the most engagement.

SERVICE BASED BUSINESSES CONTENT STRATEGY

You should be using a BDC Triangle

A BDC triangle is a content marketing strategy that is great for service based businesses who want more contact with their target market and to position themselves and a leader in the industry.

By combining three content types: a blog, a directory, and a conference. By adding these three types of content together, you can bring all your content together into one place and allow prospects to find the perfect platform for them. This combination of marketing ensures that your audience will see all the suitable types of content tailored to their interests to get them interested in learning more about what you offer.

You want to entice your target audience on social media with a blog post. Your main call to action should be to direct your viewer to your website or blog page - to capture new traffic and add them to your database for re-marketing.

You can then follow up with some new directory listings this is a known strategy implemented by off-page SEO providers which helps boost your organic visibility. Then, use directories like Yelp, Trust Mary, Trustpilot or Google My Business Map applications to help generate leads from people who may be looking for your service.

Hosting an online conference or webinar. Especially live streaming as this fulfills the need for people wanting to see what you are up to and what they can learn from you for free or little cost. Events are very prominent in social media for visibility and engagement is much higher than organic post content - this should compliment an existing strategy however. 

These three methods will help achieve one goal: build trust with your target audience by showing them what you offer and directing them towards other resources they may need to learn more about it!