The Best Time to Update Your Content Marketing Strategy

2021.02.08 12:35 PM By Joshua Taddeo, Principal Consultant

A content marketing strategy is a great way to plan out what pieces of content should be uploaded to your website during a period of time, but it needs to be continuously improved in order to be effective. Your strategy can be simple or complex, depending on the needs of your business, you need to review it and change it up year upon year or even quarter by quarter, regardless of whether your content marketing strategy is 3 months old or 3 years old.

The first thing you need to do is understand the role of your content marketing strategy in setting your business goals. This blog post will talk about the importance of content marketing as well as when you need to improve and update your content on the basis of the strategy you devise for your business.

Importance of content marketing

There is an incredible amount of new content on the internet per day, whether it’s articles, videos, blog posts, or even podcasts. In this age of content that we live in, there are over 500 million active blogs worldwide. These blogs are produced, monitored, and updated by businesses or individuals. But what’s the reason for this shift to content marketing?

Over the years, it has been confirmed that standard marketing just won’t cut it anymore, thus giving rise to content marketing, and as a result, bloggers and social media channels that represent your brand need to find ways to attract new customers.

Content marketing gives companies an incredible opportunity to boost the number of visitors and sales they make in a given timeframe. However, it’s not just about creating and distributing content anymore. When you give your viewers content that is relevant to their needs, you can build a community, enhance your online reputation, and increase your brand’s supporters. Content marketing is a more subtle, sophisticated, and sensitive way to communicate your point of view to potential customers and increase brand awareness. It is superior to other methods of digital marketing, and it has been shown to have higher conversion rates.

People do not like ads anymore because ads are seen as an invasion of privacy; plus, they are viewed too often. Content marketing is a complete strategic approach that allows you to address and maintain a clearly defined audience and ultimately generate profitable customer behavior. An effective strategy for content marketing must strike a balance between the content produced and the scheduling (read: posting) of that content in order to be successful. Learn more about the intricacies of a global content strategy, why it is so important, and how important it is to produce high-quality content.

Elements of a Content Marketing Strategy

High-quality content is at the heart of any good content marketing strategy. Certain elements of your content marketing strategy should remain the same, as should your mission and business goals. Let’s take a look at those elements that are crucial to content marketing and how they can be used to develop a content marketing plan.

We’ll also take a look at questions that you need to ask yourself to get a better understanding of your brand and how you can effectively use these elements to build an effective content marketing plan.

Product positioning

What unique value does your brand offer? How do your competitors market their products?

How can you highlight the personality of your brand better than your competitors?

How does the product, service, and solution you offer fit into your business model?

What is your competitive landscape, and what are some unique values and brands in your market?

Your existing and potential customers will be more interested in your product, service, products, and services with a clear brand and product positioning. Having a clear definition of your brand and product positioning helps provide your audience with a consistent experience. It can set and build the right brand image across all your content and marketing channels.

Define Your Media and Value Offering

How do you stand out from other content creators and offer your audience unique value through your content?

Why should readers choose to follow you across content channels, and what unique content does your product or service offer?

How many resources do you need to invest in your content strategy?

What results do you want to draw from your marketing plan?

To establish your brand as a credible content publisher, you first need to define what you offer through your content. Start by trying to understand what your target audience is looking for, what resources they prefer, and how they access said resources. Most of the time, brands focus on their competitors and do not pay enough attention to other content producers. Make sure that’s part of your research, and then analyze your competitors’ content strategies to find your editorial niche. If you decide to develop your own content, you should also consider publishers in your area. If you’re having trouble developing a strategy on your own, you can always enlist the help of a strategy consulting agency.

Monitor and Document Your Progress

Providing value to your audience is an essential part of any successful content strategy. Come up with the goals that your business needs to achieve and how content marketing can play a part in reaching those goals. Content marketing has the ability to attract new readers and followers and should boost business. Documenting your business case helps you better understand the benefits of implementing a content marketing strategy in your company and convince decision-makers of its value to the company and to yourself.

Develop a Robust Strategy Plan

Your content marketing strategy should focus on the following two aspects:

Your goals for your content marketing campaign
How you’re going to go about achieving those goals

When it comes to the latter, your strategy should help you know what your goals are, how to deliver content to achieve the desired results, and how to measure those results. This helps you think through each phase of the content strategy and plan your next step.

Signs Your Content Needs an Update

Stagnating Traffic and Unknown Source

For your content to be deemed successful, it must attract at least 50% of the audience you’re trying to target. This number is important, because, remember, out of all the people your content reaches, it’s very unlikely that all of them will become your customers. This is why aiming for 50% of your audience is an attainable goal.

You have to keep on top of your content and check the stats and see how much traffic you get. If you want to build an audience, you’re going to need volume. Simply put, if you don’t build your traffic, you won’t reach enough people to achieve your business goals. If you want people to find and consume your content, you need to deliver value, and Google’s algorithms and SEO help people find content that offers real value. If people who read your content are not coming back or if your content is not reaching new people, then you should look into what could be stopping your content from bringing in leads. If you skip this part, it’s highly likely that your effort (and money) will go to waste.

It’s important to remember that growth could be gradual or exponential, but you need to grow. If you are not growing, there’s a good chance your content marketing strategy isn’t working.

Google, as mentioned before, is a search engine that’s all about providing value to its users. As a result, it’s responsible for keeping the traffic network running. However, if your traffic is not coming from Google, then it’s up to you to try and force the issue! When you create your content plan and produce high-quality content, Google will pay attention to you. For this reason, it is extremely important to see where your traffic comes from so that you can determine what aspects of your SEO strategy you should focus on and improve upon.

You need organic traffic to be able to properly execute your content plan. If you don’t have other people to help you and link to your content, it becomes very difficult to convince people that you are creating the best content out there.

Direct traffic is also an important marker of your content strategy but takes time to develop. Direct traffic is basically those people who know exactly who you are and enter your website’s URL in their browser to visit your site. However, it can also come from other sources, such as social media sites, blogs, and other sites. If you produce high-quality content that adds value to a reader’s life, other sites will want to link to your content, which will get more people to visit your site.

Lack of Interaction and Engagement

People normally show some level of reaction when they see good content, and if they think it is helpful, they will share it. Any marketing consulting agency will tell you that an excellent sign that your content is gaining traction and that it is working the way you expect it to is when people share your content with their friends on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or other social networks. When you have enough followers and customers, you can always ask them to share articles they found helpful on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to maximize your content’s visibility and eventually increase traffic to your website.

Sometimes, content can convert itself, or it can be the first step of luring your audience into starting a conversation. The trick to making content work is turning that conversation into a conversion – something that good content is able to do. High-quality content appeals to everyone, regardless of whether or not they have an interest in your product.

If you’re looking for people to engage with your content, you should never forget the comment section of your blog/website. If your content does not spark a conversation, your readers will not realize the value of what you have created. If you see that your blogs and articles are dead zones, you should rethink your content and strategy. On the flip side, if your content is causing people to talk about it, it is a sign that your content is working.

Your content needs to be carefully designed and planned. You have to attract people, start conversations, build relationships, and then turn those relationships into business.

Updating Your Content Strategy

Content marketing is rapidly becoming the primary way that most businesses generate leads. If your content is not converted into business, the main point of creating the content in the first place is defeated. If you find yourself in a position where your content isn’t converting, there’s no need to worry. You just have to rethink your strategy.

It could be a technical or operational problem that is holding you back, or it could be something you didn’t foresee when creating your marketing strategy. It could even have been things that you knew but didn’t do. If you’re looking to develop a content marketing strategy, let’s look at some content marketing trends you should know.

‍Content Marketing Trends You Should Know

Define and Set Clear Goals

As you develop your content marketing strategy, you need to answer one question: What are your goals? When can I expect results from my content marketing strategy, and do I need a little encouragement?

Once you have answers to these questions, you can tailor your content marketing strategy to your audience’s needs and improve your content distribution to ensure that you remain as relevant and efficient as possible.

Review, Repurpose, and Optimize Your Content

When planning future content, you can keep this information in mind and optimize your blog posts and videos. If you have already published content, go through it and see if it’s relevant to your content marketing strategy. If it’s not, optimize it. You should also consider whether you can repurpose content that’s already been published and redirect it to address new readers who prefer a different format. Alternatively, you can even publish it in a new format.

Reevaluate Your Strategy

Do you think you’re missing out on revenue by not evaluating your content marketing strategy to see if it needs a makeover? You don’t need to do full SEO analysis when you update your content marketing strategy, but you can still continue with the necessary tweaks that will improve your contributions from now on. There is no doubt about the value of a paid content marketing strategy if you already know what you are doing. If you don’t know how to make content marketing work without paid ad placements, you’ll have trouble making money.

Compare Content Marketing ROI

Compare the amount you spend on content marketing to the return on investment you get to determine the impact on your business, brand, customer base, and revenue. If you’re getting a good ROI, you’ll know that your content marketing strategy is improving and that it offers your company added value. This gives you a fully-fledged content marketing strategy that creates new perspectives, creates trust in your brand, and ultimately increases sales and revenue.

Test New Strategies

Testing your content marketing strategy is critical because it helps you align your plans with what you want to achieve. Setting expectations before you implement a content marketing strategy gives you a good idea of what goals you should focus on. Once you know what type of content you are creating and where you want to share it, you need to make sure you have everything you need to deliver it.

Track Your Marketing Efforts

One of the best ways to periodically optimize your content marketing strategies is to monitor your progress. Track your content marketing efforts and draw actionable insights to improve them. Understanding what works allows you to update your content marketing strategy regularly and effectively.

Maintain Consistent, High-Quality Content

For your content marketing strategy to be successful, you need to make sure you don’t fall into the trap of simply reacting. Instead of trying to go viral, focus on creating consistently great content and polishing your content marketing strategy. Spend some time brainstorming about what your company wants to achieve by its content marketing strategy and who should oversee it. If you want to create content, stay strategic and stay true to your vision without compromising on quality.

Get out there and start creating the content you need to achieve these goals by equipping yourself with a robust content marketing strategy. Bring your business closer to achieving its goals by working with the best content marketing consulting agency to develop and improve your content marketing strategy. Contact us today for a free consultation and let Universal Creative solutions help you get started.