What is a Content Marketing Plan And Why It’s So Important

When you run a small business, you’re in a tough battle for survival. While two out of three businesses survive for two years, that number goes to 50{83d9acb533c4884914b03d18e206bba7ad1a0dadfc648f48b42e08fbc1fa1e91} in five years, then 33{83d9acb533c4884914b03d18e206bba7ad1a0dadfc648f48b42e08fbc1fa1e91} in 10. This leaves little room for error.

So, when you want to earn sales – and who doesn’t? – you need to have a plan. More specifically, you need a content marketing plan.

Why is this? Well, in this article we’ll show you why a content marketing plan is vital to your business’ success and sales earnings.

What is a Content Marketing Plan?

It is a strategy dedicated to creating and distributing content. The main goal is to gain an audience around your content. This helps with sales, generates leads, and aids branding efforts for your business.

The plan can last as long as a campaign or can be indefinite. With a clear goal for the content marketing plan and a primary target market, this marketing strategy is really efficient for developing raving fans for your products. With content comes a sense of value; when you provide a real value free of charge, people are more inclined to be interested in the products you have for sale.

Why? Because your content has already provided amazing value, your audience can only assume priced products from you can only enhance that value. They’re grateful as it is but they see your product or service as a way to improve their own wellbeing. You generate trust.

And that’s the point of your business anyway, right?

How Does it Help Your Business?

As we mentioned, a content marketing plan helps your business by giving you access to the modern way of marketing.

Instead of buyer personas and sales data, content marketing focuses on audiences in general. With so many people online – social media, forums, etc. – it’s easier and more effective to use platforms to improve branding and sales. The only path to do so while being organic is not obnoxious ads, but clever content.

Seeing as marketing is turning into a subtle art form, it’s best to get in on this now and create content that people already love. This will add to your chances that they stick with you when it comes to buying your products.

So whether it’s social media posts or blog content, you need to have a plan to reach the optimal amount of people, the right type of people and establish trust with the consumer. These are the top things to focus on in today’s marketing world.

How do You Create a Content Marketing Plan?

Here is a step-by-step way to create a simple plan for your content marketing.

1. Define Your Goals

This one is a given. Establish clear, achievable goals for your content marketing plan. Don’t choose a goal that you cannot control; for instance, making X amount from the campaign isn’t up to you, but posting daily on Instagram about our new product line for the month works because that’s entirely up to you and your team.

Be specific, have a timeline, control the outcome. When you have a goal that follows these tenets, you should see some decent results.

2. Know Your Audience

This should also be done and ready to use. Your primary target audience is key to having a successful content marketing plan.

What we mean by “primary target audience” is a group of people who you know has a need for your product. That way, when you provide your audience with your curated content, they’ll cling to every word, see the value, and buy your products.

Do your research, figure out your ideal customer persona, and create content based on their desires or problems.

3. Map the Process and Allocate

Any good content marketing plan has a beginning, middle, and end. Map out how the campaign will run, then decide which team member gets what part. There will be content management, content creation, analytics, engagement, and many more facets of this marketing strategy.

Find everybody on your marketing team a task they can manage with ease. Play to everyone’s strengths. This will ensure the best content plan.

And keep your content map clear and concise. This allows your marketers to remain focused on the goal and path.

4. Theme, Topics, Format, Platforms

Basically, the nitty-gritty specifics:

• What will the voice of the content be?
• Which topics will we focus on?
• How is our copy going to look?
• Which social media platforms are we going to post on?
• How often? When? For how long?

Don’t just choose things to have an answer. Really think about how each question alters the entire content marketing plan.

5. Online Promotion Strategy

This hinges on a single question: Paid or organic?

Whether you want to allocate a budget to reach your target audience or engage with search engine marketing and platforms where your customer persona resides is up to you. Each has their unique benefits.

With paid traffic, your content definitely goes to where you want it to go. However, some potential customers might see it for what it is – an advertisement.

In contrast, organic traffic lets your content appear natural on the platforms. Nevertheless, you might not get as many eyeballs that are genuinely interested in your products. The process is also slower and also relies on an effective link building campaign.

Research which is better for your industry to make sure you don’t have any regrets about your decision.

6. Conversion Tactics

What is your call to action? How will you integrate this into your content?

Once you have your audience loving your content, you need to convert them (your ultimate goal). Get them onto your site, get them to visit your product pages or services. Show them that they need what you offer and then give them easy access to those offerings.

Content conversion funnels are crucial to your content marketing plan. Learn how to effectively convert people into customers.

7. Measure Success and Collect Data

How do you know if your content marketing plan is working? Simple: Metrics and analytics.

Performance indicators are useful tools for determining how successful your strategy is. Decide on a set amount of analysers and use them to tweak your plan. Collect data on what gets the most reach, what gets the highest conversion, what results in the most sales, whether organic or paid does better, and more.

This helps once you have a solid plan and need to stay relevant or change up tactics for any reason.

This is the Single Most Important Factor for Business Profits

A content marketing plan is the end-all, be-all of optimising sales for your business. With small business mortality being what it is, you want to get off on the right foot and stay on that foot; a plan based on content is that right foot. If you follow the advice laid out in this article, you should be able to find consistent success.

If you’re looking for more help in Internet marketing, check out DMD’s amazing services!