Use our 35-page guide on how to craft messaging for your clean tech company and get started content marketing aligns with the sales process and how leads can be effectively converted to customers.
Remaining current with your marketing tactics ensures program performance. Content strategies that worked just five years ago may be less effective now, and using current techniques will bring better results with the same amount of effort and resources.
According to Semrush research, 80% of successful content marketers attribute their success to a well-documented strategy. Our experience with numerous customers confirms this daily. As content marketing best practices continue to evolve, so does the approach to content strategy.
Five years ago, we would start building the content strategy by considering our client's overall business growth strategy. We would make you answer the following questions
This part didn't change. If our customers don't have clear answers to these questions, we go and fix their brand positioning first.
Secondly, we would define the content goals. Every content should have a purpose. Are you cross-promoting to get more business from existing clients or attracting new clients in a specific industry?
Today, we aim to not only understand your goals, but also clearly answer the questions, "How does your content assist your audience?" and "Why would they choose your content over your competitor's?" Competition is fiercer than ever before. Even without the influence of AI in content creation, more companies view content as the key to marketing. They allocate substantial resources to content production, resulting in a significant increase in content quality and quantity.
We establish the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) early in the content strategy process. The metrics we outline, such as website visits, generated leads, social media mentions, and engagement, depending on the goals set. Later, we use tools like SEO software, Google Analytics, and HubSpot to report these metrics to our clients.
Today, we are going much deeper and more granular in the description of our audiences. Working with general buyer personas for the business as a whole is not enough, even if your company is small. The markets are very fragmented, and every segment needs dedicated content.
The best way to represent these fragmented markets is a Rubik's cube. We write down personas on the red side, use cases for products and services on the blue side, and the decision-makers roles on the yellow side. In this way, we get all the fragments you need to address with content.
This approach helps us stay focused, prioritize, and create personalized messages for every market segment.
Content marketing is fundamentally about marketing; no marketing strategy is complete without a funnel. We use a straightforward, classic marketing funnel with four levels.
Five years ago, we referred to these stages as:
Today, we use the following terms:
This classification is essentially the same, but the updated terminology is easier to understand and better implies the focus of the content we're creating for each stage.
Image source: Robert Kaminski
Let's skip information about content formats and content creation for now and get straight to the distribution because this is the part with the biggest shift.
While the channels we use to deliver our client's content to their audiences have remained the same, our approach has changed.
Suppose we have created a blog, an educational video, or a lead magnet. Previously, we would announce this content via a newsletter, on social media, run ads, optimize it for SEO, ask our partners to share it or pay influencers to promote it.
Today, we concentrate on the primary message. If we have long-form content, we break it down into smaller pieces, tailor them for each platform we plan to use, and create a publishing schedule that spans weeks or even months. These small content bites should usually serve the upper level of the funnel.
We do concept repurposing instead of content repurposing. We strongly advise against publishing unadjusted content on different channels, although it might have the same format.
As you've read this far, we can't leave you without a bonus, which can be helpful in thinking about content. Here are the most important trends which have a huge influence on our strategies: