1. TIPS FOR CREATING A
CONTENT MARKETING
PLAN
By,
Logeswaran.T
BIM, Trichy
2. 1. Identify Your Purpose
• What do you plan to achieve with content marketing? Are
you aiming to generate more leads? Do you wish to
improve brand loyalty and increase retention rates?
Maybe you want to build more awareness about your
product or establish your brand name. Before you start
drawing up a content marketing plan, you need to
determine the reason driving your need for content.
• Takeaway Tip: Start simple with two or three major goals
that you wish to achieve through your content marketing.
3. 2. Set Your Priorities
• What should you prioritize in your content marketing plan?
Do you wish to tell your brand story? Do you want to
understand your audience better? The Content Marketing
Institute stated that creating more engaging content
seems to be the top priority for B2B marketers. Take time
to establish your priorities so that you can tailor your
content marketing strategies accordingly.
4. 3. Determine Your Organizational
Goals
• Your content marketing plan should be integrated in such
a way that it helps you achieve your overall organizational
goals. Whether it’s to drum up more sales or improve
customer loyalty, your content marketing strategy should
always be in sync with what you want to achieve as a
brand. Lead generation is typically the top organizational
goal for B2B content marketing.
• Takeaway Tip: Draw up short-term content marketing
goals to fulfill your long-term organizational goals.
5. 4. Know Your Audience
• Before you simply churn out content by the hundreds, you
need to determine whether or not your audience will value
the information. Ask yourself questions like which
channels do my potential readers use the most? What do
they normally talk about? What do they need from me?
What sort of content will they find most appealing?
• Understanding your target audience is especially
important for those who are new to the content marketing
field. The idea is to produce relevant content that your
target audience would want to share.
• Takeaway Tip: Conduct thorough research through
analytics, social media, direct conversations, and surveys
to understand your audience.
6. 5. Define Your Audience
• Developing an effective content marketing plan requires
you to clearly define your target audience or “buyer
persona.” It’s important to remember that you’re not
targeting yourself. Once you have a better understanding
of your target audience, you can model them based on
different buyer personas.
7. 6. Choose Your Content Type
• Now that you know what your audience needs and values, you can move on to
picking the type of content you should produce. Your personal strengths are
important to consider here. What are you good at? Are there any fields in which
you have superior knowledge? Are you great at giving instructions? Perhaps you
have a knack for collecting data that your audience could find useful.
• If you’re having trouble determining which content type to produce? Here’s just a
few of the different content types you could use:
• Infographics
• Guides
• Webinars
• Interviews
• Custom illustrations
• How-to articles
• Industry news
• Surveys
• Q&A sessions
• Product updates
• Case studies
8. 7. Optimize Your Content for Search
• According to Imforza, search is the biggest source of
traffic for content sites. Your content marketing plan needs
to include a strategy to optimize your content for both
readers and search engines alike. Many Internet users
conduct searches to find useful content. You need to
make sure that search engines like Google help these
users locate you easily through keyword-optimized
content.