The importance of content marketing is a topic that has been discussed time and time again by marketers and brands. It is a challenging and time-consuming process that that requires planning, research, producing, curating and publishing – ideally done by a team of content marketers.
JBH marketing recently released an infographic on content marketing in the United Kingdom based on research carried out by the Content Marketing Institute. The research highlighted a severe lack of importance placed on content marketing in terms of allocation of budget, developing a solid content strategy and most importantly, delegating content marketing to a team of experienced and skilled professionals.
From this infographic, there are 4 important areas that all marketing teams should look into developing for a successful content marketing:
Budget
Only 31% have a budget allocated to content marketing and already 38% of these teams are facing a lack of budget allocated. Budgeting is most commonly set aside for creation of content but it also needs to be available for advertising it as well. Especially since Facebook has made it harder to gain visibility among your audiences, it is a necessity that your content marketing tactics have a budget in place for that as well.
Define Your Content Strategy
Only 42% of marketers in the UK have developed a content strategy. The remaining 58% of marketers are turning a blind eye towards developing a strategy which in turn, decreases their effectiveness tremendously. These are the basic elements that you should have mapped out in your strategy:
- What are you goals and objectives in content marketing? Once you’ve got this figured out, the following steps should all align to meet these goals.
- Who is your target audience? Understanding your target market in terms of interest, presence on social media platforms, type of content they prefer consuming and what topics they are interested in will provide you a better understanding of what content topics you should be covering, what types of content you should be creating and which mediums you should be sharing your content on.
- Create a content calendar: It should contain topics your audience will want to read, watch or listen. The best practice would be to plan at least 3 to 4 weeks ahead to get all your content mapped out. Try using different tools online to make it a more efficient and organized process.
- Choose the correct mediums to share your content: Your brand doesn\’t have to present on every single social media platform nor is it a necessity for your brand to own blog. It would all boil down to where the majority of your target audience is present and which mediums are the most effective in encouraging engagement from them
- Evaluation & Analysis: Map out a regular evaluation processes to determine the effectiveness of your strategy – this could be after every month or two. You also need to be constantly updated about your target audience because their interests and habits will change overtime.
Form a Content Marketing Team
Depending on the size of your business and the content strategy of your team, it is important to have a team that is dedicated to content marketing. It could even be as small as a team of three people that is planning, producing and designing your content. Picking a team of skilled and professional content marketers would garner greater returns on investment rather than spreading your marketers thin.
Content Quality vs Content Quantity
While 46% of marketers are facing a lack in content, we have reached a place in social media where there is currently too much content that is being pushed out to the public each minute. Instead of producing more content and spending more of your budget on writers or graphic designers, brands should instead focus on producing a smaller amount of content that has been well thought out and planned and would have a stronger quality overall. Your audience is already exposed to so much content that they tend to only give their attention to those of higher quality, so that is what marketers should be vying for instead.
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