4 Steps to Create and Test a Content Marketing Strategy

You’d think that, in a world of cat memes and YouTube sensations, content marketing would be a thing of the past. As marketers, we might seem quick to categorize the average Internet surfer as one who’d rather watch videos of baby goats than read the latest New York Times bestseller. By assuming this, however, we’re not giving our customers enough credit. Sure, a meme here or there can add levity to your brand, but most customers crave content about your product and the ways it can benefit them.

Creating a customer-focused content strategy can ensure that you’re delivering the most helpful content to your customers in the ways they consume information, whether that be a tweeted fact or e-book about how to use your product. However, content marketing is more than just logging onto Facebook and posting a few statuses to your page each day. A successful strategy is one that has been intentionally planned, implemented, and evaluated, and it’s easier to create than you’d think. In addition, a carefully-planned strategy will save you time during the action stage.

Here are four simple steps to build and execute your content marketing strategy:

1. Research your content marketing “wins.”

Before even thinking about your new content marketing strategy, you need to discover what your customers want to read. Research your most popular company blog posts using Google Analytics, or leverage Facebook Insights on your page to discover the most engaging content. If you want to pick your customers’ brains even more, send them a survey and ask them what kind of content they’d like to see coming from your company. Throw in a coupon or a chance to win a gift card for a higher response rate.

2. Create content around your content strategy.

You might be thinking, “Well, my company already has a content strategy.” Is it written down somewhere? A well-developed content marketing strategy is one that is planned out on paper (or on Microsoft Word. Whatever!). After you’ve determined your most consumed content, take a few hours and write down your complete content marketing strategy, complete with objectives, strategies and tactics for all of the media you choose to leverage. This might seem like a hassle, but I guarantee it will make your efforts more deliberate, and it will also allow you to scan the entire strategy to ensure all of the tactics align with your company’s mission.

3. Plot your tactics on a daily calendar.

After you’ve written down your content strategy, put your daily tasks on a calendar. This can be as simple as writing, “Schedule 5 tweets today” or “Publish infographic on the blog” on a daily or weekly calendar. Plotting your tactics out day-by-day will help hold you accountable, and it will also give you insight into how much time you need to devote to your content marketing strategy. This calendar will also come in handy if you ever need to delegate the tasks to an intern or a coworker, like when you choose to cash in those PTO hours and hit the beach.

4. Stick with your strategy to evaluate success.

The only way to know if your content marketing strategy actually works is to stick with it for a few months. After at least three months, evaluate the success of your tactics and make adjustments. While it may be tempting to change course as soon as you see something you don’t like, like lost followers or a bad comment on a blog post, you need a few months’ worth of data to truly see what worked and what didn’t.

Once you’ve created a solid content marketing strategy, you’ll be able to seamlessly deliver the content your customers want to read. From guides to Instagram posts to walkthrough videos, you will become more confident in your marketing efforts because you will have the peace of mind that what you are producing is actually being consumed. And consumed content leads to conversions and sales, which sounds like a pretty sweet tradeoff to me.