Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on the creation and dis­tri­bu­tion of high-quality, in­form­at­ive content in order to reach and per­man­ently satisfy a pre­vi­ously defined target group. The aim of campaigns like these is to convince the target group of how good a company or a brand is in order to gain new customers and advocates.

Content marketing differs from tra­di­tion­al marketing methods in its com­mu­nic­a­tion strategies. The focus is not on placing ad­vert­ising messages, but on providing high-quality, relevant content that appeals to the target group and potential customers. The aim is to provide the reader with content with added value, which can be

• In­form­at­ive
• Advisory
• En­ter­tain­ing and/or
• Emo­tion­ally charged

Content marketing regards not only text, but all content presented in media form. This includes images, videos, graphics, audio files, studies, and surveys. These campaigns are then used and dis­trib­uted across a diverse range of online channels, from internal company blogs to social media platforms.

The dis­cip­line of content marketing is in­ter­est­ing for a wide variety of companies and brands, which is due in par­tic­u­lar to the fact that there are hardly any limits to the content that can be dis­sem­in­ated. Therefore, the most different content types can be used for content marketing, for example:

• blog posts
• guides
• in­ter­views
• in­fograph­ics
• in­struc­tions
• reviews
• studies
• polls
• e-books
• software
• games

Even if content marketing campaigns and their goals - sometimes more, sometimes less - differ from each other, a basic pro­ced­ur­al model for the operative im­ple­ment­a­tion of content projects like these has been es­tab­lished. Most important are the five phases of analysis, con­cep­tion, pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­bu­tion, and eval­u­ation, which have to be passed through one after the other.

Analysis

Content marketing always begins with a com­pre­hens­ive analysis. First, you look at the initial situation and also at the goals that you want to achieve with the project. Therefore, the following steps have to be done:

• Defining the goal(s)
• Defining the target group(s)
• Topic research
• Topic weighting
• Keyword research and sub­sequent analysis
• Inventory and eval­u­ation of current content (content audit)

Con­cep­tion

Once the analysis is complete, the basic plan or concept for the content project can be developed. The following tasks have to be mastered:

• Idea de­vel­op­ment
• Content at­tri­bu­tion (de­term­in­a­tion of benefit, format, media type, etc.)
• Preparing content for the target group(s) (content mapping)
• Pri­or­it­isa­tion
• Designing a draft con­sid­er­ing content and user ex­per­i­ence
• Creating an editorial plan
• Preparing briefings

Pro­duc­tion

The next step is the actual pro­duc­tion process in which the content to be marketed is created and prepared for pub­lic­a­tion:

• Creating the content
• Checking and releasing content
• Creating suitable landing pages
• Es­tab­lish­ing tracking mech­an­isms

Dis­tri­bu­tion

The fourth phase of the content marketing process deals with all sub-areas as­so­ci­ated with the pub­lic­a­tion and dis­tri­bu­tion of content:

• Pub­lic­a­tion
• Marketing auto­ma­tion
• Promotion of the content
• Outreach (media co­oper­a­tions, press relations, blogger relations, etc.)

Eval­u­ation

As with other marketing strategies, the campaign is finally evaluated using relevant measures:

• Mon­it­or­ing and op­tim­isa­tion
• Con­trolling
• Lead man­age­ment
• Final eval­u­ation

There are generally two different ap­proaches to de­vel­op­ing a long-term strategy for the con­cep­tion, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­bu­tion of marketing content:

• Models that focuses on the story
• Models in which the focus is on the customer journey

If the focus is on telling a good story, the aim of the content campaign is primarily to establish branding for your own company or brand. The gen­er­a­tion of paying customers does not play an active role in this case, although it is of course a hoped-for side effect in the long run. A fun­da­ment­al dis­tinc­tion must be made between func­tion­al and emotional content, which can be either su­per­fi­cial (short, crisp content) or profound (versatile, long content):

• News/in­form­a­tion (primarily func­tion­al content): Social media posts, press releases, news, in­fograph­ics
• En­ter­tain­ment/fun (primarily emotional content): social media posts, videos, pictures, ex­plan­at­ory videos, apps / games
• Knowledge (in-depth func­tion­al content): blog articles, white­pa­pers, webinars, guides, studies, e-books
• Re­la­tion­ship/purpose (profound emotional content): stories (articles, videos), in­ter­views, re­port­ages, podcasts, back­ground stories

With a func­tion­al, user-ori­ent­ated content marketing approach, the focus is primarily on the target group, the topic and the customer journey. Put simply, it's about finding the perfect way to sys­tem­at­ic­ally design, produce, and publish content along the customer journey of the re­spect­ive target group. The per­form­ance of the campaign is therefore much more relevant to the de­vel­op­ment of the strategy than the story itself.

Defining target groups is one of the first tasks within the content marketing process. Usually, they result auto­mat­ic­ally from the pre­vi­ously set goals, meaning this task is completed quickly. Very popular is the creation of personas, i.e. pro­to­types of a user group, with the help of which the re­spect­ive target groups can be defined down to the smallest detail. Possible contact groups are not only potential new customers, but also, among other things:

• Existing customers
• Customers ready to buy
• Demand customers not (yet) ready to buy
• Employees
• In­flu­en­cers
• Mul­ti­pli­ers (advocates or people who share the content)

The core ob­ject­ives of content marketing are brand po­s­i­tion­ing, customer ac­quis­i­tion, and lead gen­er­a­tion as well as customer retention. Depending on the type and size of the company as well as the type and scope of the campaign, there are of course various other ob­ject­ives to which different priority levels should be assigned during the planning process. In order to plan the content marketing strategy as optimally as possible, it also makes sense to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between short-term and long-term goals when con­sid­er­ing the aims:

The diversity of companies and brands plays an important role in defining goals. In addition, starting positions such as brand awareness, repu­ta­tion, or financial resources are often very different. Although the examples given above provide a good overview of the possible goals, they are not suitable for every content campaign and must be adapted to your own ideas and pos­sib­il­it­ies. An es­tab­lished approach is the SMART approach, which sum­mar­ises five criteria for a good goal:

• S - Specific: Goals must be defined clearly and as precisely as possible. Instead of the desire for “more” visitors, for example, the goal should be “20% more visitors by the end of the last quarter”.
• M - Meas­ur­able: Goals must be meas­ur­able, which is why they should always be linked to specific criteria such as visitor numbers, length of stay, or a certain number of shares on social media.
• A - Ac­cept­able: It is important for selected goals within the company or marketing team to be regarded as desirable. In addition, it is important that they are real­is­able - otherwise dis­ap­point­ment will be in­ev­it­able.
• R - Relevant: In order for content marketing to become a desired success, goals should be pursued that are relevant to the business and that actually promote the company or brand.
• T - Ter­min­ated: For goal-ori­ent­ated campaigns, deadlines are of par­tic­u­lar im­port­ance. Therefore, concrete deadlines should be set for both small and large targets. Ex­cep­tions are, for example, purely financial goals such as adhering to a budget, for which schedul­ing does not play a role.

In order to ensure the meas­ur­ab­il­ity of set targets, concrete key figures - also known as KPIs (Key Per­form­ance Indicators) - are required. In content marketing, there are very different eval­u­ation para­met­ers, which can be at­trib­uted in par­tic­u­lar to the very different in­ten­tions behind the in­di­vidu­al goals. For example, com­pletely different KPIs have to be carefully examined if a goal has to do with the sale of products than if it is about in­creas­ing the reach. In addition, other metrics are decisive when efforts are aimed at retaining customers or building trust, as the following list il­lus­trates:

Example key figures for targets with the intention of “selling”:

• Number of orders
• Turnover
• Profit
• Inventory

Example key figures for goals with the intention of “building trust”:

• Backlinks
• Mentions in media (print, web, TV, radio)
• Search engine ranking
• Lead rate

Example key figures for targets with the intention of “in­creas­ing reach”:

• Traffic
• Social media shares
• Comments/feedback

Example key figures for targets with the intention of “binding customers”:

• Number of returning users
• Bounce rate
• Retention time
• Page views
• Number of new news­let­ter sub­scribers
• Number of new followers, friends, etc. on social media

Getting the right strategy is the found­a­tion for success in any content marketing project. But diving straight in without having first set out some clearly defined goals will prove a waste of time and money, and the efforts will likely prove un­suc­cess­ful. A thor­oughly executed con­cep­tion and plan paves the way for a strong campaign. You should outline the following steps in your content marketing strategy:

• Content marketing goals and buyer personas
• Pro­duc­tion/creation of content
• Seeding and promotion of content
• Mon­it­or­ing and analysis