With all the benefits of undertaking content marketing, you will only realize its full potential when you learn the skills of planning, launching, and managing a profitable content marketing model.
Yes, you need to set the ball rolling if you are to begin seeing organic traffic, leads, and sales in your business. The good thing is you have a ton of tools that can help you every step of the way. You can plan, launch, and manage content for your business in the easiest way possible.
Here is how to do this:
- Niche down to a defined audience
You can waste a ton of your marketing resources by focusing on a broad niche. Content marketing is only profitable if it delivers a positive ROI.
By niching down to a defined audience and offering value, you can reduce your marketing spend and maximize your earnings per customer.
But how do you niche down?
Of course, you can’t sell to people you don’t understand, right? So, the first thing is that you need to undertake intensive research. Data-driven content marketing always wins because it’s defined, relevant, and valuable.
You may be offering services online. Depending on the customers you serve, niche down to a specific audience and aim to help their business improve by leveraging your expertise.
Have a persona, an illustration of your ideal audience.
Give the persona a name to humanize it. List with it their challenges, strength, source of income, title in their organization, and several other factors.
The key to profitable content marketing is having a defined audience.
- Define your metrics
With useful metrics, it’s easy to get a lot done in a short time because it keeps you and the content marketing team on track.
Metrics help to evaluate performance, re-adjust goals, and keep the team focused.
There are several metrics to measure when it comes to content marketing. Traffic is the most yearned for by most marketers. However, it’s not the most essential.
There are also SEPR and page views, among other metrics.
Why is traffic less critical?
Think about it. You are getting 100k visitors to your site monthly, but only about 1% convert into sales. Is that profitable? I guess it isn’t.
That usually happens when you spread too thin and target people who don’t need your services.
The best metric is always the number of leads you are getting. It’s the leads that convert into sales.
High-engagement rates and low bounce rates can also be good indications of valuable content.
- Create a content plan
Plan any activity if you want to make it successful. Without a plan, then you are planning to fail.
Some marketers still find it a stressful task to come up with an effective content marketing strategy. However, once you have it, it will save you time and hasten business growth.
A content plan will answer the following questions:
- Which type of content should I create?
- Who will handle each marketing piece?
- When should I create each piece of content?
Once you have all these questions documented, you are set to begin creating content. You will also have a guideline for your content mix.
- Have a content marketing budget
You will need someone to create content for you. If you are new to this field, you can outsource all your content marketing needs.
This person will conduct a content marketing audit on your site, help you to align your content marketing goals with the needs of your audience, and create a content creation plan.
Some content marketing freelancers charge per hour while others charge per task. Their rates will also vary based on their expertise and add-on services.
As a content marketing specialist, I often charge per task and consider the value content marketing will bring to your business before settling on the price.
With about a $1,000 content marketing budget per month, you should get moving and getting leads.
- Publish and keep promoting your content
The key is not to keep on creating content; you need to promote it, as well. What’s the essence of having content, which you are not pushing to the right audience?
I know you are busy publishing one blog post after another, creating a podcast, and going live on YouTube. You barely have time to promote your existing content.
Boost your posts on Facebook. Go live and direct your customers to your site. Build a targeted and well-segmented email list. Promote your posts in Facebook groups and other social media sites.
You can also try Pininterest, Quora, and LinkedIn; a friend told me he is getting 10k visitors from Quora monthly.
Conclusion
Any business owner in the current digital world needs to understand the ultimate definition of content marketing and its essence in business growth. Content marketing helps to boost your brand recognition, achieve authority status in your niche, and create valuable conversations with your prospects and boost leads.