Remington BeggBy now, you already know that great content is necessary for your inbound marketing success. Content is king! So you write some a few good blog posts, make them live, and you’re all set on your path to positive ROI, right? Not so fast! Quality content is crucial, but there’s much more to it. With that in mind, here 
are the five things to consider when planning for your marketing success, besides creating remarkable content:
#1 Buyer Personas
Who do you want to reach with your content? Your marketing efforts will be much more productive if you develop buyer personas and gear it to their interest specifically. You need to know what information they are looking for, what types of content they like, how they like to get it and how they consume content. If you take the time to create these buyer personas and tailor your message to answer their pain points, you’ll see much higher engagement rates, social media sharing, and conversions.
#2 SMART Goals
A SMART goal is defined as one that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. SMART goals are a must for all your business efforts, including your content marketing campaigns. They should be simplistically written and clearly define what you are going to do, that way you can accurately measure afterwards if your content is working or not.
Using this approach will help you determine the areas where you need to focus more so that you can adjust your budget for those aspects.
#3 Key Performance Indicators
A key performance indicator is a measurable indicator of progress. When you begin to define your SMART goals, you will need to come up with a way to measure that goal’s end in order to know if you succeeded or missed the mark. An example of this would be “double the blog views within six month.” Each step within your content creation process from gaining followers to your sales Leads can be measured and scrutinized to make sure everything is fully-functional.
#4 Distribution Channels
After you create your new piece of content, how are people going to hear about it? Without the right distribution channels, no one will ever know how great it is and and your content strategy will fail. There is a variety of distributions channels you could chose from, but the most useful to inbound marketing are:
- email campaigns
- social media networks
- search engines
These channels cannot simply be chosen and instantly reach a huge audience; you need time to build and earn an audience.
Tip: Remember to keep your developed buyer personas in mind when distributing! Don’t run full speed into social media posting as your sole channel if your buyer personas haven’t adopted Twitter yet.
#5 SEO
SEO is one of the most important aspects of content marketing. It’s the only way to reach potential customers who are still at the top of the funnel, unaware of your company and how your services can help them. In order to reach these people and bring them further down in the funnel, subscribing to your blog and following you on social media, you must show up when they’re searching the internet. This is where SEO comes in. With the right keyword strategy and off-page optimization, you’ll be seen during their search queries and you can begin your relationship with them through various stages of the buyer’s journey.
There you have it: five important factors in a successful content marketing strategy beyond the content itself. Content marketing produces three times more Leads per dollar than traditional efforts, so putting the time in the develop your strategy will pay off in the long run. If you’re ready to get started but not sure how, download our free eBook The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing today.
