Chapter 14:

Content strategy –
a key pillar of
success
Digital Marketing Strategy 2e by Simon Kingsnorth
Content strategy
• It is key to know how to build an effective content strategy and how to
create engaging content for your customers.
• This includes how to:
1) measure the value of content .
2) distribute content effectively.
3) use different types of content.
4) use content in an international business.
Content marketing
• Content can take many forms.
• Great content needs to be:
High quality content marketing
• Credible – your audience has to believe the content.
• Shareable – ask ‘Will my audience want to share this?’
• Useful or fun – ask ‘Does it pass the ‘so what?’ test?’
• Interesting – ask ‘Is it worth making a remark about?’
• Relevant – it is crucial that your audience value the content.
• Timely – content is most effective in the right place at the right time
• Different – ask ‘Has this been done before?’
• On brand and authentic - Consumers expect to link content and brand.
Strong content examples
• Live content.
• Immersive experience.
• Spoken words.
• Tools, such as calculators and planners.
• Imagery, such as infographics.
• Written copy.
What is content?
• Content is anything that can help engage the end users of your
product or service.
• Content can be consumed in any medium that is capable of delivering
a message.
• Content can include videos, infographics, imagery, tools, e-books,
blogs, virtual reality experiences, live streaming, podcasts.
Content types
What content types should you
use?
• There are no hard and fast rules as to what types of content you
should use, but there are some general points to consider.
• Target audience.
• Buying cycle.
• Think plural and use more than one type of content.
• Website with content that enables your SEO, social media and e-mail
marketing strategies to deliver traffic to your site.
Why content marketing?
• Content marketing has significantly increased in popularity. Likely due
primarily to these two factors:
a) Changing consumer behavior.
b) Google.
Changing consumer behavior
• The process for selecting which good/service to buy has not changed
much, it still starts with awareness and ends with evaluation/decision.
• How we go about doing this has changed due to the internet.
• Millennials and Generation Z are especially influenced by social media.
• According to Retail Dive, Instagram is the primary influencer for
millennials with 74 per cent saying they had been influenced by
Instagram when making a purchase.
• Snapchat for GenZ more than for any other generation.
Google
• Google now places a greater reliance on content factors in determining
a site’s credentials to rank.
• Changed from keyword-heavy, electronically-spun paragraphs to a
situation where quality, context, relevancy, format, social shares,
bounce rates and time on page are all factors.
• Google algorithm for ranking not completely understood, but a
correlation between high quality content and strong rankings.
Creating content - People
• Content creators should not be in silos, but instead should involve:
1) strategists and analysts to understand the market
2) branding teams to understand the customer psyche.
3) marketers to create the idea.
4) copywriters to produce the content.
5) search marketers to understand the impact on SEO.
6) PR to identify earned media opportunities.
7) IT to make sure that it all works together.
Creating content - Processes
• According to the Content Marketing Institute only 37% of content
marketers have a documented strategy.
• In contrast 62% of the most successful content marketing organizations
have documented strategy.
• The key stages to create content are:
1) Objectives and strategy.
2) Data analysis and target groups.
3) Ideation.
4) Creation and planning.
Objectives and strategy
• Objectives and strategies should start with what a business wants to
achieve.
• Content marketing strategies tend be linked to the sales lifecycle.
• Typical objectives are to create awareness; change perception; create
engagement; drive transactions; increase retention.
• One approach is to classify the objectives into:
1) Brand engagement: thought leadership, improve brand perception,
increase loyalty, create brand advocates.
2) Demand generation: increase traffic, generate leads, nurture leads.
Content - functional, engaging
or both?
• Functional content performs a basic role in that it typically helps sell
products and/or services, for example, product descriptions or user
reviews.
• Engaging content is typically used to communicate information to the
target audience in an interesting and engaging way, to encourage
people to talk about it across the internet and social media) and link to
it.
Data, analysis and target groups
• Analysis is needed to inform the content approach and includes:
1) Target audience.
2) Brand guidelines.
3) Competitor analysis.
4) Customer information/feedback.
5) Analytics.
6) Keyword analysis.
Target groups
• Understanding why people might care about your content needs
knowledge of the challenges people face and how they interact with
brands online.
• This comes down to three key questions:
1) What is your audience’s problem?
2) Where are your audiences digitally active?
3) How do they like to be communicated with?
Pulling it all together
• Ideation can be approached using
brainwriting.
Content opportunities
• Exploit content opportunities from three perspectives:
1) Company
2) Industry
3) The world
• One model for content planning
is The Content Bubble
Creation and planning
• Once decided on the broad content theme(s) plan out the
creation and create a detailed brief.
• Also create a process for reactive content that is needed
occasionally.
• Also construct a content calendar as part of proactive
planning.
Content calendar
• The core elements of a content calendar are:
1) Publish date.
2) Location/media/channel.
3) Author.
4) Designer.
5) Audience/target persona.
6) Title.
7) Synopsis.
8) Assets required.
9) Dependencies.
Distribution
• Distribute content via a mix of three channel types:
1) Owned.
2) Earned.
3) Paid.
Measuring the value of content
• There is no one standard measurement approach or tool set, but a
common set of metrics are used:
1) Volume and reach.
2) Engagement and consumption.
3) Acquisition and value metrics.
4) Failure.
International content
• Although the processes remain the same, regardless of the market, there are
some key considerations for international content marketing that need to
form part of content briefs. Differences can include:
• Personas.
• Platforms.
• Cultural differences.
• Legal systems.
• Seasonal events.
• Local content review.
• Mobile electronic systems.