What is content without a goal?
You’ve probably been bombarded with the same message over and over again – ‘content is king’ and you have to create regular, shareable and remarkable content again and again to attract the right audience. Hey, we even push that message pretty hard in our own content. But rather than just creating great stuff to entertain your readers and followers – an honourable goal in itself – you need to plan your content with clear marketing goals in mind to ensure ROI for your efforts.
Your content, after all, is for marketing your business, right?
This article will show you how to define your marketing goals and plan a content strategy to meet them.
What are Your Goals?
What is great content without a goal? Well, it’s just great content. For its own sake.
“To make content work, you need to understand your marketing and business goals.”
Business blogging and social media is not just about individual creative expression. As valuable as it is pouring your heart and soul into high-quality content, without clear strategy goals, it could all be a waste of time and energy.
“Content marketing is the practice of creating relevant and compelling content in a consistent fashion to a targeted buyer, focusing on all stages of the buying process, from brand awareness through to brand evangelism.”
On its own, content is just content and marketing is just marketing, but together they elevate each other, allowing you to target your online content towards the right people, who might be interested in buying your products or services.
So how to you identify your goals?
Well, first of all, what is the main goal of your marketing? Is it to drive sales of a product? Is it to engage people who might be interested in your services, or are you just interested in captivating a large following who might help promote your cause to new audiences?
Once you have this worked out, you need to plan and create content to meet your goals. To do this you need to ask yourself a few more questions. For example:
- Who is most likely to be interested in my products or services, and how do they consume content? Blogs, video, email?
- Which social network are my target audience most active on?
- Does my content need to be informational or entertaining, or both?
- What are my competitors already doing?
- Does my content help tell my brand story, or does it distract from my core message?
It all comes down to listening to what your audience wants. Ultimately they define your marketing goals.
“Listen to the problems your market asks you about, and use those as a compass to guide your future content.”
Draw an imaginary line between your content, point A, and your marketing goals and what your audience wants, point B, and think about what you need to do to connect A to B.
Planning a Content Strategy
The best way to make sure your content is in line with your marketing goals is to map it out in a clear content strategy. Evaluate each piece of content, and how it contributes to your marketing goals. Is it on message? As great as the idea might sound in your head, or as captivating as it might be as a blog post, video or infographic, if it doesn’t contribute to your brand story and marketing goals, it can’t make the cut. Simple.
Need a little help planning, creating and promoting goals-driven content for your business? Talk to us today, we’ll be happy to share our experience and expertise with you.
