Having the best content marketing plan in your industry is a proven way to get more attention and more customers.
Content marketing is more than just having a blog. You need a comprehensive strategy focused on a defined audience. When this happens, you should see your revenue start to grow.
This guide will explore the six components every best-in-class content marketing plan needs to successfully attract your ideal customers.
Key Takeaways
- A content marketing plan is strategic documentation of your content goals and production.
- A documented content marketing plan typically leads to more effective results.
- A content marketing plan defines your content goals, creates audience personas, and delves into competitor research.
What Is a Content Marketing Plan?
Content marketing is producing and releasing various types of media to draw in new audiences and customers. A content marketing plan involves strategic planning and distributing your content marketing materials.
A content marketing plan typically includes a content calendar where you plan the topics you will cover, the format it will be in, and when you will publish it. You should produce multiple types of content to reach a wider audience. This content may include:
- Blogs
- Videos
- White papers
- E-books
- Photos
- Infographics
Why You Need a Content Marketing Plan
Being spontaneous with your marketing tools usually does not lead to good results. According to the State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report, 81% of companies who reported unsuccessful content marketing results did not have a content marketing plan. Compare this to the 78% of respondents who had successful results thanks to their documented content strategy. This is why having a thorough content marketing plan is so important.
If you have ever experienced any of the following situations, you need a content marketing plan:
- You don’t know what type of content works best for each channel
- You have run out of ideas for content
- You don’t know what topics your audience connects with the most
- You forget to post your content
This video goes into more detail about why content market is important and how to build your strategy.
Build a Best-in-Class Content Strategy with These 6 Components
A documented content strategy is much more likely to produce productive results. To achieve a best-in-class content strategy, make sure you include these six components.
1. High-Level Content Goals
Your content marketing strategy must have well-defined goals. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, it will be hard to know if your strategy is having an impact.
Here are some common content marketing goals:
- Increase brand awareness
- Attract a new audience
- Expand into a new market
- Recruit new talent
- Conduct customer research
- Increase the average customer lifetime value
While all these goals are valid, be careful not to have too many goals at once, as this could dilute your efforts. At the most, focus on three goals at a time.
2. Brand Story
All your content should tell a cohesive brand story. While each piece of content should be different, they should all fit together to tell a complete story. When creating this story, make sure you tell it from your customer’s perspective. You need to focus on your customers’ priorities and their problems.
Some companies make the mistake of producing a single blog post or “About” page and then never telling their brand story again. There is always something new happening. Share these details and reframe past events to keep your brand story in the spotlight.
3. Audience Personas
An audience persona is a characterization of your ideal target audience. While you want your audience to turn into customers, not everyone reading your content will be a customer. They could be readers or viewers who appreciate your content and share it with others, who become customers.
Your audience personas should be well-researched and based on real data, not assumptions. You gather this data from your customers and content consumers.
You can use some of these methods:
- Customer interviews
- Social medial surveys
- Sales calls
- Support requests
- Conversations at industry events
- Customer satisfaction surveys
With the information you gather, you can create your customer personas. You should craft these like they are a real person. Include a short bio, their pain points, their goals, and what they are looking for in a business like yours.
4. Competitor Research
A thorough understanding of your competition’s content can help guide your strategy. You should not copy their content. Instead, look for gaps in the market to differentiate yourself from your competitors. You have your own unique brand story to tell and unique audience personas to appeal to. While competitor research is important in your content marketing plan, be careful not to spend too much time delving into the competition. Use your energy to create your own unique content.
5. Keyword Focus
One of the key benefits of valuable content is that it becomes an excellent traffic source from organic internet searches. You can achieve this by incorporating specific keywords into the content.
As part of your content marketing plan, you should create a list of short-tail keywords (one or two worlds) that are primary drivers for your business. As a medical supplier, these could be the names of some of your products.
For single pieces of content, you should also focus on long-tail keywords (short phrases) that correlate with the content.
6. Publishing and Promotion
In your content marketing plan, you must decide what types of content marketing you will use and where and when you will publish each piece of content. You also need to decide how much effort you will spend promoting your content. This will not be the same for every piece of content.
- What you do every time: Create a list of low-effort tasks you will do with every piece of content. This could be emailing your subscribers and sending out a few social media posts.
- What you do for high-level content: Your larger content, like whitepapers or e-books, will require special consideration. Make sure the promotion level matches the amount of effort it took to produce the content.
Get the Best Content Marketing Plan with Share Moving Media
As a medical supplier, you need a content marketing plan focused on the right audience. At Share Moving Media, we dedicate ourselves to giving our customers access to the customers they need.
We are a full-service media company focusing on quality content through blogs, videos, articles, e-books, and webinars. We want to help you succeed.
Ready to learn more about our content marketing strategy? Contact Share Moving Media today to get started.
