How to Create Effective Digital Content Marketing Strategies

Well-thought digital content marketing strategies help you drive organic traffic to your website, build brand awareness, and connect with the increasing number of potential customers who are using digital tools. But as businesses try to establish their presence on various channels, it can be overwhelming to come up with compelling pieces for each one.

That’s why it’s fundamental to create a digital content marketing plan to guide your actions. So, in this article, we’ll address why digital content is important and walk you through the steps of developing a solid strategy to start attracting leads to your business.

Let’s go!

 

What Are Digital Content Marketing Strategies?

As the name indicates, digital content marketing strategies guide businesses in the creation and distribution of content online. An effective strategy helps unify operations, define workflows, and develop a cohesive document to guide everyone involved in the creation process and make sure all the pieces you share are optimized and according to plan.

While it’s true that coming up with interesting content can be time-consuming, the right strategy can help you plan ahead for the topics you’ll cover, the frequency of publications, and how to reach the right audiences. That way, your company will be able to systematically produce high-quality content that’s attractive to your targets.

 

Why Is Digital Content Important?

The internet is an integral part of buyers’ journeys, as most choose to search for information online before making a purchase decision. Because of that, sharing digital content is fundamental for any business that wishes to attract these potential customers in a natural way.

But a common mistake in content marketing is treating digital pieces the same way we treat print. Unlike analogic content, like magazine ads, digital publications offer you accurate metrics to know who’s watching, where they came from, and a lot more about their online behavior. 

That’s why digital content marketing strategies should be more than just creating and sharing things like blog posts, videos, or infographics. As a matter of fact, they should also be about offering potential buyers seamless user experiences that satisfy them on every interaction with your brand.

 

How to Make a Digital Content Marketing Strategy

Coming up with successful digital content marketing strategies isn’t as hard as it sounds. It simply requires thorough planning, an insightful take on your industry and the most interesting topics to talk about, and a good understanding of the professionals that make up your team.

Alright, that doesn’t sound simple at all 😂. But to address all of this more easily, here’s a list of steps you should follow.

 

1. Research Your Audience

The first rule of any marketing technique is to be audience-oriented. That’s why, when done the right way, a digital content strategy should focus on producing consistent, quality pieces that are attractive and valuable to your specific target audience.

There are various digital marketing tools you can use to research a potential public. Once you find one or more segments you’d like to address, create buyer personas, a fictional and representative description of your potential buyer. They can be an effective way to easily understand your different audience segments in order to produce content that’s compelling to them.

We can’t always know where our pieces of content will land, but it’s important to have an idea of who you want to see them to guide the visuals, tone, and overall vibe of the message.

 

2. Set Your Goals

Digital content marketing strategies are great at attracting potential customers, but that isn’t the only goal you should set for yourself if you want to exploit their full potential. For example, they can also help you gain awareness, position your brand, build a community, increase favorability, and more.

Setting goals is easy, as we all know what we want our business to be. The issue is that unattainable objectives won’t allow you to measure your efforts, and will only end up discouraging your team. For that reason, you need to make your goals SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Measurable. 

An example of a SMART objective could be:

• “Increasing traffic to your website by 30% in a year by sharing content on social media”.

On the other side, what I call an unattainable goal is:

• “Becoming the most followed shoe store in the United States.”

As you can see, the last example isn’t very specific, doesn’t set a measurable objective or time frame, doesn’t seem very achievable, and it’s highly unrealistic 😂. 

Whatever the goal you choose, remember that it’ll determine the type of content you create and where you should distribute it. That’s why you should gauge your business’s situation properly and find an objective that helps you grow the way you need to.

 

3. Conduct a Content Audit

An audit entails going over your existing content marketing efforts to determine the formats, channels, and pieces that have had the best performance so far. By gauging your current actions, you can optimize future pieces so they are even more effective.

The best way to conduct a content audit is to start by deciding what you want to achieve. Do you want to see what resonates better with a specific audience? Are you looking at how to organize your existing pieces into a better system? Do you want to repurpose old content to improve SEO? 

Don’t worry about settling for just one goal, because it’s possible to have multiple ones. This step is only meant to help you focus your audit, guide future actions, and save effort in the long run.

 

4. Do Keyword Research

Keyword research allows for two things: finding out what your target audience is interested in and making your future content findable in an online search.

With a free tool like Google Trends, you can discover what people are searching for and how popular certain topics are. Then, use this information to make a list of keywords that relate to your business, so you can use them later in your content. Being SEO-focused is important because search rankings are essential to improving your content’s visibility and a deciding factor in your website’s organic web traffic.

 

5. Brainstorm Ideas

In order to be practical, digital content marketing strategies have to include potential ideas and topics to address. There are various ways to find easy marketing ideas. For starters, you can stay up-to-date on news and developments in your industry, check out what your competitors are doing, and even ask customers directly for ideas. 

I recommend finding five broad topics to speak about that need more coverage and can be tackled from various perspectives. That way, you can save time on research later, and just focus on the creativity of each of the pieces. 

However, coming up with content ideas must be a constant process. So, make sure to schedule time in your calendar to regularly source ideas.

 

6. Make a Content Calendar

Most content strategies fall short because their intended implementation is interrupted by day-to-day responsibilities. Thus, the best way to stay on track is by creating a detailed calendar that specifies all the actions that need to be done, a specific time frame for each one, and who’ll be responsible for them.

You can start by gauging your existing workflows and improving them. Every company has its bottlenecks, so find aspects where work seems to die down and figure out a new way to tackle those challenges. Additionally, analyze your team’s strengths in order to effectively assign roles based on their skills.

 

7. Measure Results!

A benefit of digital content marketing strategies that analog ones lack is that plans aren’t static. Let me explain this with an example: if you create a television spot, changing it halfway through the campaign can be really difficult. But with digital pieces, it’s as easy as deleting the post and sharing a new one. 

But those actions shouldn’t be random, and they need to be guided by hard data. With constant measurements, you can analyze your performance in real-time and keep refining your strategy. However, the metrics you choose to monitor will depend on the objectives and methods you previously selected for your strategy. 

Once you’ve decided that, make sure to review your metrics on a regular basis— and add it as a fundamental task to your calendar. Even monitoring whether the calendar has been effectively followed or not can be another important factor to keep in mind!

 

Do You Want to Create a Comprehensive Strategy?

Content marketing is about finding the right ways to promote your business. Since you’re here, you were probably wondering, “How should I market my firm?” Well, let me tell you that the answer depends on you, what you have to offer, and above all, who your target audience is and how it behaves.

In our case, we couldn’t find a marketing agency that could effectively answer this question for us, so we made our own from scratch. We’re a team of professional strategists, designers, developers, marketers, and creatives with the goal of assisting you in realizing your brand’s full potential. 

From branding to Web Design and Development to a fully tailored Content Marketing Plan, we work hard to adjust to your needs and objectives.

And following our maxim of connecting brands and people through tailored digital content, we became a digital marketing agency that earned the trust of various brands worldwide.

If you want to learn more, hit us up! We’re always eager to discuss, in order to help you find the best way to market your firm.

 

Wrapping Up

In the past few years, content marketing has become a very popular strategy among brands. But as the internet grows and user behavior changes, new types of digital content emerge, along with new ways to attract and convert potential buyers.

The most effective digital content marketing strategies are those that keep a focus on producing more than just pieces of content but also an attractive interaction for viewers. The ultimate goal is to offer optimized customer journeys to your potential buyers and a seamless experience that makes them feel satisfied with your brand every step of the way.