There can be no doubt about it: In the digital age, content marketing is essential to a brand’s marketing and advertising strategy. Due to the declining popularity of old-school media, traditional forms of advertising are no longer as effective as they once were. While digital marketing has enabled organizations to target their audience with frightful accuracy, consumers are becoming numb to promotions. In fact, an ad blocker is used by a quarter of Americans. This is why, first of all, we are going to discuss how content marketing differs from traditional marketing before diving into content marketing management.
Table of contents
- Content Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing
- What is Content Marketing Management?
- Tips to Establish a Strong Content Marketing Strategy
- Roles and Responsibilities in Content Marketing Management
- Types of Content to Share
- Content Marketing Management Tools
- Content Marketing Challenges
- Content Marketing Management: Importance
Content Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing
The audience approach is the primary distinction. Because you bring in warm leads who are already interested in what you are saying or offering, content marketing is frequently referred to as “inbound marketing.” Your message contacts fewer individuals, yet those individuals are prepared to answer.
Traditional marketing has to work harder to get people to buy because it reaches a much larger audience that may or may not be interested.
Content marketing is being used by businesses to get past the noise and ad blockers and reach new customers.
The job of a content marketer has never been more difficult because of the importance placed on high-quality content. You need to conceptualize a procedure, lead catchphrase research, produce an extraordinary substance, distribute it, advance it, demonstrate a return for capital invested, and deal with each step of this perplexing process.
Still, content marketing is one thing. It’s another thing to actually succeed at it.
Content marketing is already practiced by many creative agencies, but their efforts are not as well-organized as they might like. An overarching strategy and a method for planning and organizing assets might be all that’s missing. Content marketing management, to put it another way.
What is Content Marketing Management?
The management and organization of various digital marketing initiatives are known as content marketing management. These efforts include: content marketing planning, content creation (including blogs, white papers, videos, and others), email marketing, social media management, and any other digital content that helps an organization implement its inbound marketing strategy are all included.
The creation and distribution of useful content with the intention of attracting potential customers by providing them with information or other content that they are interested in receiving is the goal of content marketing. Management skills and the right marketing tools are required to organize these various assets and ensure timely content production.
Now you should know how you can create a solid content marketing management strategy for your business.
Tips to Establish a Strong Content Marketing Strategy
The following tips can help you drive up sales and consider the unique needs of your customers.
Identify Marketing Goals
To begin, you must determine the marketing objectives of your client. These goals may be very specific or very basic, depending on your client’s size and level of maturity. It’s not uncommon to have to guide the client to a goal that is better than what they came in with.
There are a variety of approaches you can take to establish these objectives, but no matter which one you choose, you should not proceed any further until you and the client have agreed on a set of objectives. Because if you miss the most important item for your client, it doesn’t matter how many amazing wins you have.
Pin Down the Content Formats and Distribution Channels
Content can be published in many different ways and in many different formats. The right formats and distribution channels for the client and their target audience are at the center of great content marketing. LinkedIn, for instance, might not be the best place to sell handbags, and Pinterest might not be the best place to go if you need sophisticated business software.)
Research your Target Audience and Create Client Personas
In order to create an ideal client persona (ICP), or possibly several ICPs, the next step is to define your target audience and conduct research on that audience. This is very important, especially for agencies, where clients sometimes mix together and it can be hard to focus on the right people.
Demographics, industry, company size, shared pain points, and shared needs are all factors that go into defining your target audience. You can effectively reach your target audience through content marketing only if you know who they are and what they think, feel, and need.
According to one study, the ability to deeply connect with an audience is a major factor in content marketing success, and fifty percent of businesses cited it as their primary success factor. The first step to doing this right is identifying the right audience.
Audit your Content
You probably won’t start from scratch; your client has existing material on their site and virtual entertainment, and they might have run promotion campaigns with their previous agency. It is essential to audit existing content because you may be able to easily refresh or refocus it for significant content marketing gains.
Create a Distribution Strategy and Content Calendar
Regarding content marketing, a scattershot strategy rarely yields desired results. All things being equal, coordinate your substance endeavors into a substance or publication schedule. You should plan assets months in advance; you won’t finish all the materials that early, but you will know exactly when and where to publish them.
Moving on, we need to discuss what roles are involved in the process of content marketing management.
Roles and Responsibilities in Content Marketing Management
Numerous skills are required to thrive in content marketing. Typically, you will find the following roles in content marketing management:
Content Marketing Manager
Usually the most senior member of the content marketing team, coordinates all components. The content strategy (who creates what, when, and where it is published) is handled by content marketing managers.
Editor
Ensures that content meets brand requirements. There may also be content strategy duties assigned to the editor.
Content Writer
Provides written material for social posts, case studies, blogs, and other outlets. The SEO and content requirements outlined in the project brief are the responsibility of this position.
SEO Specialist
Builds content strategy, gives project briefs SEO direction, and checks to see if SEO strategy is working or not.
Paid Advertising Specialist
Uses content marketing collateral and content made just for ads to plan, research, and carry out paid advertising campaigns.
Demand Generation Manager
Optimizes content for maximum conversion by fine-tuning it to meet the requirements of specific pipelines and channels. Business development tasks like figuring out new markets and planning how to reach them are also part of this job.
Graphic Designer
Supports any content marketing collateral with visual elements (such as infographics, landing page headers, images for email marketing initiatives, etc.).
This is the team that will be at your disposal if you wish to carry on with content marketing management. Below we will discuss what types of content they can produce for your organization. We will also share the tools your team can use.
Types of Content to Share
Social Media Posts
Posts on social media are a great way to keep your brand in front of your loyal fans. Sponsored posts can also target very specific audiences with people who fit your ideal customer persona. Social media is a tool that companies use to stay relevant to their audience. It is also used to present and announce new products, sales, and discounts.
Social posts can likewise direct people to the other content type produced, for instance, your blogs or videos, helping push viewers into the sales funnel.
This comes as no big surprise 95% of B2B advertisers depend on social media posts for creating a content marketing strategy.
Videos
Videos are a very effective content format, but they are costly: When compared to the other types of content. The creation of videos typically entails far more complexity. Additionally, every platform has different formatting requirements. A YouTube-formatted video, for instance, won’t play well on Instagram. Whereas, LinkedIn is a completely different beast.
Depending on the brand, target audience, and promoted product or service, distribution can also be challenging. However, if your company or agency is able to produce high-quality video content, it may be a significant point of differentiation.
Blog Posts
Articles and blogs are medium-to-long-form writing, like the one you’re currently reading. When utilized effectively, they are a significant driver of search engine optimization (SEO) and improved search engine rankings (SERP). Blog posts usually provide information instead of selling products and services aggressively.
Case Studies
Case studies recount genuine accounts of how a product addresses the needs of customers. They can be effective sales tools because any reader who is dealing with a similar issue can immediately associate a brand with finding a solution. Similar to blogs, they can serve as a valuable resource or part of a marketing funnel.
Podcasts
A great way to develop thought leadership is through podcasts. They may not reach as wide a crowd of people, but rather an engaged web recording can have genuine fortitude with your target audience. It can help your brand to establish its authority that people can trust.
Webinars
Webinars are live instructive workshops that can be attended virtually. Typically, webinar attendees have the opportunity to directly interact with the presenter by asking questions. These, as well, are utilized as sales tools to drive viewers into the marketing funnel. This is because the webinar will resolve any problem discussed about a product or service.
Content Marketing Management Tools
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content marketing and research tool with multiple uses. It helps you figure out what kind of content will do best for any subject. For essentially anything, you will actually want to find the top moving points and the sorts of titles creating the most buzz. You can also learn about the major industry influencers and connect with them to expand your business.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a CRM, marketing, sales, and all-in-one suite that gives you everything you need to make actionable content, make it better, and help it reach the right people. Additionally, it is regarded as the industry’s most effective marketing automation platform. The majority of HubSpot’s features are available for free to try. Popup tools, live chat and chatbots, a marketing WordPress plugin, and a powerful form builder are among these. In addition to these features, HubSpot offers a world-class content management system (CMS) that lets you control everything from a free CRM.
WordPress
This tool drives the market with regard to content administration frameworks. WordPress gives marketers an easy-to-use publishing platform in addition to all the tools they need to make a blog or website. Additionally, it offers visitor tracking and a number of plugins to help you streamline your marketing efforts.
Trello
If you plan and collaborate while generating content, Trello is your answer. Its boards are used to represent projects, while cards represent tasks. You can keep track of all the tasks and organize them all in one place. Use its integrations with other tools to market your content.
Ahrefs
In addition to offering comprehensive performance reports, Ahrefs is a potent SEO tool. It assists with following the rankings of your watchwords, investigating rivals’ catchphrases and traffic, and significantly more. On Ahrefs, you can get useful reports like “top pages,” which helps you figure out which pages on a website are the most valuable, and “content gaps,” which show you what keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t.
Moreover, we need to discuss the challenges faced while creating a content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing Challenges
Marketers face the following content marketing challenges when establishing their strategy. However, in order to help you, we have also laid out tips to resolve these challenges.
High-Quality and Relevant Content
One of the best ways to promote a brand or business is through content. However, it needs to be of a quality that buyers want and expect to see.
This means avoiding producing more of the same content that others are already creating and providing readers with something unique and truly valuable.
You can get a good idea of the standard that your content needs to at least match and, ideally, exceed by researching the content of your leading competitors and observing how it performs in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Engagement with the content hosted on these pages is measured by Google using a variety of metrics, including bounce rate, page time, and scroll depth.
Understanding your Audience
Your audience will not be homogenous but rather a complicated group of people who like to consume their content in varied ways. Be that as it may, you can completely see the value in their dissimilar inclinations when you have found the opportunity to go further than simply laying out their age, gender, or interests. Consider developing multiple buyer personas and various content types to reflect this diversity in order to truly connect with individual buyer types.
Simply asking your customers what they want is one of the best ways to comprehend their needs. Your audience, for instance, might be made up of “skimmers,” “waders,” and “deep divers” of content. Some of them might prefer to watch videos rather than listen to podcasts, read short articles rather than long ones, or read at their desks rather than listen to podcasts while they are on their morning commute. Be sure to serve all of them and give them every chance to participate.
Choosing the Correct Medium to Use for Content
It’s important to know that different kinds of content work best on different mediums.
For instance, if you want to publish a recipe on a food blog and share it, a blog post or short video can be an excellent medium. However, for quick recipes, a podcast might not be the best option.
Again, content research can be very helpful in this area.
Additionally, unique content creation techniques like interactive quizzes can help your website stand out from the competition and improve user engagement.
Use a variety of channels and formats to market your content, including YouTube videos, podcasts, blogs, and more, regardless of the medium you choose.
Unrealistic Expectations
Your content may take anywhere from six to nine months, if not years, to truly engage audiences and generate leads.
Building content takes time. You need to put in a lot of effort to generate quality content. Plus, additional time is needed to make that information public via a website.
Additionally, it takes time to establish your brand’s reputation and rank on Google search engine pages. However, it is worth the hard work. Companies will start seeing an increase in traffic as time will pass.
As long as you keep updating your content, you will continue to garner traffic.
When you first start your digital marketing campaign, it’s important to know this and keep going even if you don’t see results right away.
Setting achievable SMART goals for your content marketing campaign is a simple way to change your perspective on digital marketing.
Prioritizing Content Expertise
Generating quality content requires creativity, design, technical, and journalistic capabilities. If you want to produce content internally, you will need to build a team by either moving employees with the necessary skills or finding new talent.
Alternatively, if you lack the internal resources to produce impactful content, you could hire an outside agency to manage the entire process, as more and more businesses are doing.
Not only are they likely to do the job better, but you will also benefit from their knowledge of content marketing best practices and expertise.
Accurate Measurement of Content
There is a growing emphasis on measurement and analytics as investments in data-driven marketing rise. As a result, you won’t know how well your content is working if you don’t monitor and analyze metrics like backlinks from posts, traffic flow to and from your content, your site’s domain authority, the volume of email inquiries, and social media shares.
Measure the number of visits to each piece of content and think about giving each website visitor a monetary value. Give a value to the number of leads generated by downloading lead magnets like white papers. Marketing automation platforms, for example, Pardot, Hubspot, and Marketo will permit start-to-finish following from the initial visit through to buy.
To accurately measure content ROI, you need to have the right analytical tools and make sure they are set up correctly. B2B companies are currently utilizing Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and dashboard visualization software like Databox as the most popular analytical technologies.
Content Marketing Management: Importance
It’s important to have good content marketing management because producing the best content requires more than just skilled employees and contractors; It necessitates leadership with the ability to carry out a carefully planned strategy.
Without effective management, most companies wind up doing content advertising with no recorded procedure or all-encompassing objectives, which quantifiably hurts achievement. While the majority of businesses employ content marketing, only 57% have documented their strategy, according to the State of Content Marketing report from SEMrush. However, that documented strategy is in place for the vast majority (78 percent) of those who believe their efforts are successful.
Featured Image: Assemblo
