Are you an IT enthusiast always looking for ways to take your business one level higher? You’ve come to the right place at Force21. As experts in commercial operations for IT companies, we are here to help you navigate the world of content marketing. But before we start, let’s dwell on the basics: content strategy.
What is content strategy, and why is it important?
Content strategy is the backbone of any successful content marketing campaign. The blueprint determines what content you create, who you create it for, and how you distribute it to achieve your business goals. But why is it so important?
A well-thought-out content strategy ensures that your content is targeted and effective. It helps you deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right people. This results in higher engagement, more leads and ultimately, more customers. In other words, a solid content strategy is the key to successful content marketing.
In this blog post, we will elaborate on how a good content strategy can lead to effective content marketing. We will share tips and tricks to help you create a content strategy that fits your business and goals. So, are you ready to take your content marketing to the next level? Let’s get started, then! If you’re not much of a reader, we also have a Podcast on Digital Content Marketing.
The importance of content strategy for content marketing
Let’s face it: in today’s world, where we are inundated with information, creating valuable content is crucial for any business that wants to reach its target audience. But it’s not enough to create some content, and I hope it works. That’s where content strategy comes in.
Content strategy is the blueprint for your content marketing efforts. It’s what ensures you don’t just create content but good content. And by good content, we mean content that is relevant and interesting to your target audience but also aligns with your brand, business goals and customers’ needs.
Content strategy: more than just creating content
Content marketing is a powerful form of marketing that, if done well, can help increase brand awareness, drive customer engagement and increase leads and sales. But content marketing is not just about creating content but also about making the right content. And that is where content strategy is crucial.
An effective content strategy helps you understand your audience: who they are, what they want, and how best to reach them. It helps you tailor your message to your audience so that your content matches their needs and interests. And it helps you distribute your content in a way that ensures it is seen by the right people at the right time and place.
The power of great content
Great content is more than just lovely text or an attractive image. Great content offers value to your target audience and helps, informs, entertains, or inspires them. It is content that creates a connection between your brand and your audience, builds trust and drives your audience to action.
A strong content strategy ensures that your content is always valuable to your audience and continuously aligned with your business goals. It is what ensures that your content marketing efforts produce results.
In the next chapter, we will look at how to create an effective content strategy. But remember: without a strategy, content marketing is just shooting in the dark. However, with a solid content strategy, you will be able to act with purpose and shine in your marketing efforts.
2. Creating an effective content strategy: roadmap
Having established the importance of content strategy in content marketing, the next step is to create it. But how to do it? Follow our roadmap to develop your content strategy.
Step 1: Know your target audience and their customer journey
An in-depth knowledge of the target audience is the basis of any effective content strategy. It is not just about knowing who they are but also about understanding what they want, their problems, and how your product or service can help them.
But it goes beyond that. You also need to understand their ‘customer journey’ – the path they follow from initial awareness of a need or problem to final purchase and even beyond. By understanding each stage of this journey, you can create content that reaches your audience at the right time with the right message.
This helps you create content that resonates with your audience, effectively guides them through the customer journey, and drives them to action. Knowing your target audience and customer journey is essential for creating an effective content strategy.
Step 2: Set out your goals and measure your success
What exactly do you want to achieve with your content marketing? Want to increase your brand awareness, generate more leads or increase customer loyalty? Clearly defining your objectives is crucial for shaping your content marketing plan.
But setting goals is only half the battle. It would be best if you also established concrete KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the progress and success of your content marketing efforts. You can adjust and improve your strategy where necessary by constantly measuring and analysing.
Step 3: Develop a content calendar
A content calendar is an indispensable tool for any marketer. It gives you an overview of what to publish and when, so you can plan and organise your content creation and publishing.
With a well-structured content calendar, you ensure a consistent flow of quality content and can ensure that you always stay current and relevant to your audience. It also helps you think strategically about your content and ensure that it always matches your objectives and the needs of your target audience.
Step 4: Choose the right content formats and channels
Not all content is created equal, and not all content is suitable for every channel. For example, a blog post works well on your website, e-books are an excellent download, and infographics are better suited for social media.
You would like to know which content formats work best for your target audience and the goals you want to achieve. In addition, you need to know which channels are most effective for reaching your target audience. You can tailor your content to your target audience’s preferences and behaviours by choosing the correct formats and channels.
Step 5: Implement inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting customers by creating and sharing valuable content. Unlike outbound marketing, where you actively seek out customers by placing ads, for example, inbound marketing is about attracting customers to you.
You do this by creating content that helps them on their ‘customer journey’. This can range from educational blog posts and how-to videos to detailed product guides and case studies.
So the big difference between inbound and outbound marketing lies in the approach. In outbound marketing, you actively seek out customers; in inbound marketing, you attract customers by providing valuable content that helps them with their needs or problems. In the world of content marketing, inbound marketing is often the most effective approach.
Step 6: Monitor, learn and optimise your strategy
Last but not least, monitoring and optimising your content strategy constantly is essential. There needs to be more than just creating and sharing content; you must also closely monitor how it performs.
Use your previously established KPIs to measure the performance of your content. Don’t just look at superficial statistics such as the number of views or likes, but also at how your content converts – does it lead to more sign-ups to your newsletter, more downloads of your whitepapers, more purchases of your products?
You can use this information to learn from your successes and failures and adjust your strategy accordingly. You might notice that certain types of content perform better than others or that your target audience is more active at certain times of the day. Use these insights to refine and improve your content strategy.
Creating an effective content strategy can be challenging, but with this roadmap, you will be well-equipped to tackle the task. And remember: a thoughtful and well-implemented content strategy is the key to successful content marketing. Take the time to plan and refine your strategy carefully, and you will reap the rewards of your efforts.
3: Content marketing: implementing your content strategy
Now that you have created a thorough content strategy, it is time to put it into practice. This is where content marketing comes to life – implementing your strategy by creating and sharing valuable content that attracts and engages your target audience.
The first thing to do is to put your content calendar into action. Start planning, creating and publishing content according to the schedule you have set. This ensures a steady stream of relevant and valuable content goes to your target audience, helping and engaging them at every point of their customer journey.
Always keep your target audience’s needs and interests when creating your content. This means not just creating content about your products or services but focusing on solving problems, answering questions and providing value to your audience.
It is also essential to promote your content. It is not enough to create great content – you must also ensure people see it. This means using all available channels – your website, social media, email newsletters, and more – to bring your content to the attention of your target audience.
Finally, don’t forget to measure and analyse your content performance. Use the KPIs you have set to see how your content is performing and gather insights that can help you refine your content strategy.
Implementing your content strategy through content marketing is an ongoing process of creating, sharing, measuring and learning. But with a well-thought-out strategy and consistent approach, you will be able to deliver valuable content that attracts your target audience and drives them to action.
4: Content marketing and SEO
A crucial part of effective content marketing is SEO or search engine optimisation. This is the art of optimising your content so that it performs better in the search results of search engines like Google and Bing. When you combine content marketing and SEO, you can increase the visibility of your content, attract more traffic to your website and ultimately attract more leads and customers.
It all starts with keyword research. You can create content that matches their searches by understanding which search terms and phrases your target audience uses. This will help you attract more traffic to your website and more relevant traffic – people who are interested in what you offer.
But SEO is not just about keywords. It is also about creating quality content. Search engines like Google prefer content that is valuable, relevant and informative. This means focusing on creating content that is truly useful to your audience and helps them with their problems or questions.
In addition, technical SEO also plays a role. This includes factors such as the speed of your website, mobile-friendliness, and the structure of your website and content. By paying attention to these aspects, you can ensure that search engines can easily find and index your content, increasing its visibility in search results.
Combining content marketing with SEO is a powerful way to increase your online visibility, attract more traffic to your website and achieve your business goals. By creating content that is both valuable to your audience and optimised for search engines, you will be able to succeed in the competitive digital landscape.
5: Benefits of content marketing for your leads and sales funnel
Content marketing is a powerful tool that offers many benefits, especially when generating leads and fuelling your sales funnel. By creating valuable and relevant content, you can attract, engage and convince potential customers to engage with your company.
One of the most significant benefits of content marketing is that it allows you to demonstrate your expertise and build trust with your potential customers. Your content – be it blog posts, white papers, videos or other forms of content – can show that you are an expert in your field, that you understand what your customers need and can help them solve their problems. This can convince potential customers to trust you and choose your products or services.
In addition, content marketing can help you build a lasting relationship with your audience. By regularly sharing relevant content, you can engage with your potential customers, answer their questions, address their concerns and offer them value in a way that traditional forms of online marketing cannot.
Moreover, content marketing can help fuel your sales funnel. By creating different types of content for the various stages of the buyer’s journey, you can guide potential customers through the funnel, from awareness to consideration to decision-making. This can ultimately lead to more leads and more sales for your business.
In short, content marketing offers numerous benefits for your leads and sales funnel. Read more about Successful marketing in our blog: Keep generating leads. Creating valuable, relevant and engaging content can increase your online visibility, build trust with your audience, build lasting relationships and ultimately improve your business results.
6. The role of Force21 in your content strategy and marketing
Force21 is not just another marketing agency. We specialise in helping IT companies like yours grow. We understand that marketing is often overlooked in the tech industry, but we believe it plays a crucial role in finding and engaging the right customers. But how exactly do we do that?
At Force21, everything starts with relevance. We know that your message needs to be recognisable to your new customers. That’s why we spend a lot of time understanding your customer’s world. Through a good mix of knowledge about his organisation, technology in his market and human behaviour, we can put together a compelling message that challenges the client to look with us at the opportunities IT can offer.
Services and solutions offered by Force21 in the field of content marketing
We have many services and solutions to help you take your content marketing to the next level. Here are some ways we do that:
- Building your sales funnel:
By following a series of steps, we will help you build a well-rounded sales funnel. - Developing your go-to-market (GTM):
We help you develop your unique go-to-market strategy, including defining your ambition, goals, DNA, identity, USPs, ideal customer, target groups, relevant themes, portfolio, offering, value proposition and validation with customers and in the market. - Growth hacking:
We use a creative, data-driven approach to achieve growth quickly and effectively. We constantly test and compare different ideas to determine what works without spending much money on traditional marketing efforts. - Creating relevant stories:
We create content that resonates by really understanding what matters to your customers. We show that we know their frustrations and problems. We create stories that match customer demands and developments. We show leadership and expertise by highlighting issues from a different perspective. - Implementation:
After preparation, we also carry out the marketing activities for your organisation. Depending on how we can best connect with your target audience, we run lead campaigns. This could be through social media, e-mail, advertising, events or other (combination of) marketing campaigns. We do this with various marketing automation tools based on growth hacking.
Success stories of Force21 clients
We have already helped many IT companies take their content marketing to the next level. One example is Claranet, an ambitious and reputable IT provider. They were looking for a sparring partner to sharply define a new proposition. Force21 was asked to help think through the strategy, provide support during this process and help form a broader picture. After several inspiring sessions, where difficult questions were not avoided, their boundless IT emerged as one of their hidden strengths. This has been further rolled out in their new Borderless IT proposition. The first customers are already on board.
Summary
At Force21, we believe in the power of content marketing to grow your business. We offer a range of services to help you develop and implement your content strategy. Whether you need help defining your ideal customer, developing your go-to-market strategy, running growth hacking experiments, creating relevant stories or implementing your marketing activities, we are here.
Are you ready to take your content marketing to the next level? Then contact Force21 today. Let’s work together to achieve your growth goals and create your success story!
