How to develop your content plan

Content Marketing

No matter how effective Content Marketing has proven to be, structuring your efforts can undeniably seem overwhelming. First and foremost, it’s a good idea to start with a documented plan and not just a verbal agreement. This gives you a much better chance of being successful with your content and thus your Inbound Marketing.

To make it easy for you, we have written about how you can go about it.

Buyer personas are the recipient

Your content plan is created in order to take a more structured and purposeful approach to content development. But at the end of the day, you have to remember that your buyer personas are the ones who will see/read the content. For this reason, you need to keep them in mind at all times. Therefore, it’s necessary to understand your buyer personas before you can get started.

The current situation

Once you have your buyer personas in place, the next step is to develop a documented content plan and – with so much else – take a look at where your business is now. While you might be getting a little tired of hearing about those four letters, a SWOT analysis is a great tool – also in this context. A SWOT analysis for your current content marketing gives you the prerequisites for creating a plan that is action-oriented. You ensure that you are not based on personal interests or gut feelings, but on what you need to do in the given market situation. The result of your Content Marketing SWOT analysis will give you an overview of where you can improve and where to focus your efforts. Remember to think about your buyer personas when developing your SWOT analysis. What strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats do they present?

From your SWOT analysis, it’s time to create your content action plan. It should be based on your strengths and weaknesses and capitalize on potential opportunities in the market – while avoiding the threats that may be out there.

Goals set direction

Once you have your overall plan, it’s time to set your objectives in the form of SMART goals. At the same time, identify KPIs such as conversion rates, views and other performance measures that are relevant to the specific goals. Not only does this result in being able to see how you’re doing, it also ensures overall direction.

Plan content and get brand ambassadors

To get the most out of your content plan, it’s beneficial to structure your goals based on the inbound model – that is, according to where customers are in the process and thus what content is relevant to them.

Attract: In this stage, you need to focus on engaging with potential customers once they have started to become aware of a problem/opportunity. Your content should generate visits to your website or other platforms.

Convert: Here, content should target people who are considering what options are available to fulfill an opportunity or solve a problem. The goal here will be to increase interactions with your business and convert visitors into leads.

Sales: In this stage, the focus is on creating content that helps to close the sale to those in the decision-making phase.

Development: This part of the process is all about building strong customer relationships and turning customers into ambassadors for your business. Your content should focus on what your customers are interested in and value.