Don't let a lack of direction hold you back from achieving success with your content marketing. Taking your content marketing to the next level all begins with strategy.
Having Clear Goals
Without a content marketing strategy in place, how do you know what you’re trying to achieve through your content?
Is your goal to boost brand awareness, increase sales, or build an online community?
Every great content marketing strategy needs clear goals, as they help you to understand how successful your marketing efforts are, keep you focused, and push you to succeed.
A common mistake when setting goals for your content marketing strategy is not having realistic, achievable goals. It’s essential to be specific and make them clear and easy to measure.
S.M.A.R.T Goals
A brilliant tool to ensure you’re on the right track when setting your goals is S.M.A.R.T. goals.
S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-based
It is a helpful tool that enables you to create goals and targets for your marketing strategy with clear timelines that your outdoor brand can reach.
Once you know your end goals, you will have a better understanding of your target audience and the type of content you should be creating for your outdoor brand.
Includes a Bank of Killer Content Ideas
As I might have mentioned, one of the biggest hurdles outdoor brands face when it comes to content is thinking of ideas.
Within your content marketing strategy, write a list or create a kind map of potential pieces of content you could be creating for your different marketing platforms. This could include:
- Videos
- Q&A’s
- Service posts
- Product posts
- Meet the team
- Tips/ stats
- Testimonials
- Behind the scenes
Once you have your bank of content ideas, it will make it easier to plan ahead and avoid drawing a plan in the future.
Ensures Your Content Messaging is Consistent
As your target audience starts to discover your outdoor brand, whether that’s through your website, on social media or through print media, they get a first impression of what your brand is all about.
As they see more and more of your content, they will start to build a picture of your services, business values and brand ethos.
Having a consistent message across throughout your content is crucial in helping potential prospects understand your offerings, build trust, see you as a credible source and help them remember your brand.
If you’re pushing different messages across within your content, it can start to confuse your customers.
Always know your brand story, who you’re targeting and what you want to achieve through your marketing and include it within your marketing strategy. It will ensure you have consistent messaging across the board.
Ensures Consistency with Regular Content
A big part of your content marketing strategy is planning your content in advance.
A lot of people struggle with their content because they're either not sure about the ideas and the types of content they should be creating or don’t know where they can look for inspiration.
Whatever marketing content you decide to create for your outdoor brand, make sure you are publishing content across all of your marketing channels on a regular basis.
If you are inconsistent when publishing content, it can often be worse than not publishing any at all.
A content marketing strategy can help you to better plan your content and help you stay consistent.
Ensures Your Content Works Across All Four Stages of the Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel is an integral part of any marketing strategy. The funnel is the path your customers travel through, from the moment they become aware of your brand to long after they’ve worked with you.
With careful analysis, a marketing funnel lets you know what your business must do to influence consumers at certain stages.
The marketing funnel, also known as the sales funnel, has four key stages:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Retention
Having a content strategy in place will help you to ensure all your content work across all four stages of the marketing funnel.
Your key messages, the content you create, and the marketing channels you choose to reach your audience should all work together, turning warm leads into paying customers.
Ensures Your Content Inspires, Educates and Entertains
The best type of content does one of three things, inspires, educates, or entertains. Every piece of content you plan on creating needs to do the same, which is where your content marketing strategy can help.
Too many people focus solely on their end goals, such as increasing sales, but by doing so, it can result in very sales-led content that doesn’t engage their target audience.
Instead of pushing the hard sell, your content strategy can ensure you incorporate strategies and content that teaches your target audience something entertaining and inspiring them.
By doing this, you will engage your audience, gaining authority, and trust and increasing your chances of them buying from you when they’re in the market.
These content-driven strategies are a great way to reach customers in your sales funnel's awareness and consideration stages.
Hook them in with valuable content centred around your outdoor brand, then convert them with a sales-driven strategy during the decision stage of the funnel.
