However great a business idea might be, a well- structured marketing plan is essential to make it soar. A million-dollar business idea needs a complementary million- dollar marketing plan too. If you know your content is good, you have the quiet confidence that the conversion rates will be high. But what happens when they aren’t and your quality content lies forgotten in internet oblivion?
Some people are of the opinion that marketing plans are a good back-up for e-business, in case it needs something other than word-of-mouth to access more reach ability. The correction though, is that marketing plan is the absolute backbone of any business that wants to make it big. Some important points to remember while devising your content marketing plan are as follows:
Cover Your Basics
Research is indispensable when it comes to marketing. You need to survey the demographic for the needs and the services most desired and see how your business can cater to them. The collection, organization and implementation of data needs to undertaken in different phases and statistically. The current dynamics in the market and seasonality of the product influence a lot of marketing techniques. Additionally, the competition, benchmarks and suppliers need to be scaled and raked according to the market size and business stature.
Tiered Goals
Without goals, your marketing plan is ineffective. Set tiered goals for a quarter, or for a half year or even for a full year. Let everyone in your team know the goals and work in a synchronization to have a unified result at the end. Make one article per day as the goal, as content serves a huge purpose. The article should be informational and give value to the reader’s time, as it bridges the gap between him and your company.
Your articles should be a part of a long series that everyone waits for. Think of a series like the world is crazy for the TV series because of its amazing and addictive content that glues audiences to their seats. Bring your readers to the edge of their seats, and they will become regular contributors to your business.
It would be better if you stop considering regular traffic in your marketing strategy. Include weekly, monthly, or quarterly traffic stats to execute backup plans, propelling sales in the right direction.
Surmise a Mission Statement
It helps to concentrate your business into one sentence or phrase. Not only does it solidify your intention, but it also serves as a go-to reference for your marketing context. You mission statement should be the crux of your entire marketing campaign. It should be positive, goal-oriented and simple. You can create punchlines and brand logos out of it and even set the tone for your business, which provides it a superior quality.
Quantify ROI
How can you know something is working or not? It’s simple; you measure ROI at the end of a certain time period. Your calculated ROI must show a positive effect, otherwise, the plan simply fails to produce the desired output. Being online gives a huge benefit to the marketers to keep working on ROI through certain online tools. Document your results to prepare better blueprint for the results and to find out which things are working and which are not.
Devise Intelligent Strategies
There are plenty of well-established traditional strategies you can use for marketing. Some of these include networking, direct marketing, advertising, writing articles, press releases, trade shows, etc. The online content, however, is the fastest consumed promotion of your business. Think of creative ways to reach out to your online audience. Out-of-the-box ideas like online campaigns, contests and tie-ins with complementary product brands is a sure-shot way to increase visibility and conversion rates for your business.
Serve Content to Taste
Ask yourself what purpose does your content serve? Is that to influence a huge audience base or is it specifically crafted for niche audiences for loyal brand building? Until you don’t know the purpose, your ways to propose something to the people will produce no better results and will be a burden on your resources. Hence, the content creation must have a precise purpose and a goal. It should have a cause and an effect that further lays down the path for people to reach you.
Evergreen content provides value or a commentary on a topic. It is written with great intellect and takes us to the core of the subject that tells why such proposed theory or idea is valid and can be reasoned by many.
No matter in what year or time period you read a certain piece of content, you will surely get valuable information about the subject. For instance, if you take a great piece of content on ‘why smartphones will replace the desktops in the future‘, you will get the real time information by the industry expert, even if it was written many moons ago. That’s the power of content and you can update the content if you want. Don’t forget to use RSS feed to curate current topics, while pitching evergreen content side-by-side.
Budget Your Expenses
An element that can make or break your marketing strategy is the smartness of not just ‘how much’ you spend on it, but ‘how’. The best use of finances is in investing them where the returns are highest and of a great quality. Marketing in out-of-targeted demography is a wastage of money, whereas if you spend judiciously on your targeted client’s, you can add happy new client’s to your list. Cheaper outsourcing is an option you can explore to distribute your marketing workload.
Hire a team of Writers, Editors and Graphic Designers
Without writers, editors, and graphic designers, your content marketing is destined to fail. Without them, no matter how great your plan may sound, you won’t be achieving anything. How you bring a great team of writers, editors and designers aboard ultimately decides the fate of your content.
While writers and editors make sure the quality of the content has real readership value or not, graphic designers, on the other hand, make sure it’s perfectly presentable and entice readers to read until the end and grasp even the most complex topic through images (thumbnails, infographics) etc.
Influence goes long way in the business and you have to understand the concept fairly well before running your marketing juggernaut to produce real time results.