How to Create a Content Strategy That Works With Contility

Content strategies are an integral part of digital marketing and the future success of your marketing campaigns. They build the foundations for success, enabling your content to shine to its fullest potential and, in the process, establishing true connections with your audience. 

In this article, we explore the relationship between content strategies and success, advice for content marketing campaigns and how Contility can guide you through the entire process.

What is content marketing?

There are many facets to marketing that work simultaneously to deliver a set of goals established by the business, typically to improve awareness or generate leads. 

Content marketing is a specific aspect of marketing that focuses on creating and distributing content, which aims to engage with your target audience or attract new customers. The operative word here is ‘engage’. The content must provide value for both existing and prospective customers.

Find your niche

The key to your success is to create bespoke content for your target market. Finding a niche within your audience is an incredibly valuable asset to your strategy, one that allows you to not only target the right audience but also an audience that will engage with and boost your content, thus organically promoting your content and further enhancing your online visibility.

What is a content strategy?

A content strategy is, in simple terms, a comprehensive plan for your content. It directs the efforts of your team towards the planning, creation and execution of all forms of content, all whilst meeting your business objectives. This could include blogs, podcast episodes, social media posts, infographics, newsletters and any other content forms that feel authentic to your brand. 

Contility allows you to analyse the gaps you may have in your existing content strategy, enabling you to target the areas that need more attention. Our software visually displays each of your content pillars, so that you can easily evaluate any areas for improvement. 

Contility also boasts both a continuous content planner and the ability to see this presented month-by-month, as well as enabling you to suggest new content ideas or title changes in the comments section. This interactive element of our platform is user-centric and is designed to elevate each part of your content strategy, from formulation to live content.

Approval is an integral component of any content strategy. Content evolves throughout its life cycle, changing according to new feedback, optimisation for SEO or creative decision-making. Contility enables you to submit each month’s strategy for approval, streamlining the entire process. Once this content is approved, Contility will create a node for each piece of content for you, including across blogs and social media.

How to build your content strategy

When creating a content marketing strategy, it’s important to establish a set of frameworks that will guide you through the entire process, from identifying your audience to the measurement and analysis of your campaign.

Creating customer personas

In an age where the average customer is bombarded with content across multiple digital channels daily, cutting through the noise is crucial to connecting with your target customer and encouraging conversions.

Marketers are struggling

According to HubSpot, only 35% of marketers say that their customers feel like they receive a personalised experience from their brand. This indicates that marketers lack important information about their customers, and therefore struggle to create content that feels authentic and relatable to their audience.

Personalisation is the name of the game

Additionally, customers are making it very clear that, in 2024, companies will fail to establish connections with their audience with generalised, irrelevant content. 

Curating a strategy that delivers on providing value to your customers, capitalising on their interests, and adopting a tone that they will resonate with, in addition to imagery they will engage with, will be your golden ticket to success. All of this can be achieved through a detailed understanding of the specific customer you are targeting.

Knowledge is power

The answer is to create customer personas. Although it may seem strange to conjure a semi-fictional person who might use your products or services, this is an essential step in the process of creating a content strategy. This approach creates a clear vision of a potential customer, one that feels tangible, and, as a result, more achievable to target.

Choosing content formats

At this stage, you will need to diversify your strategy beyond social media. Through the compilation of data, consider whether your audience listens to podcasts or consumes blog articles about their interests. 

Although most of the research stage in the customer journey now takes place on social media, during the consideration stage, or even post-purchase when they are progressing towards becoming an advocate for your brand, they will want to conduct a deeper dive into your value proposition.

Some examples…

Say, for example, that you know your ideal customer can only be reached during the break they take every day at 1:45 pm, you can schedule your content, including email marketing, social media posts and paid social ads, to target this particular representation of your ideal customer at the time when they will be the most attentive and engaged. 

Alternatively, your ideal customer could be completely disconnected from social media, and the only platform they use is LinkedIn for their professional growth. As a result, your content strategy should focus solely on this particular social platform and other channels they also use for this purpose.

Data-driven approach

Utilising the data you can gather from website traffic analytics, your brand’s contact databases and contact submission forms, you can begin to identify patterns that will qualify your customer persona, building a data-driven, only semi-fictional profile. 

For example, your brand should consider the persona’s job title, schedule and therefore the times they are most likely to be active on social media, as well as any pain points your messaging and visual content can aim to alleviate. 

The balance between creativity and data-driven confidence will set your brand up for success.

Setting SMART objectives

SMART objectives are an incredibly useful tactic to ensure that your campaign is valuable for your business, achieving one of your many business KPIs.

Adapting your strategy

It’s important to remember that content strategies are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Customers require different messaging for each customer journey stage to encourage brand awareness or conversion. The same messaging will not be appropriate for both. Therefore you will need a new set of SMART objectives per campaign and strategy you plan to implement.

Why is a content strategy important?

Content strategies are essential to your business’s success. Whilst previously, marketing strategies have relied heavily on minimal data and aimless distribution, we now have a wealth of data at our fingertips, and therefore comprehensive strategies that deliver results are achievable. It is more attainable than ever to connect with your customers through personalised content and to be able to encourage engagement and commitment to purchase.

Optimising resources

Content strategies can also assist in aligning the team across your marketing goals and objectives, as well as optimising your resources, enabled with an A/B testing framework. 

Marketers no longer need to spread their resources thinly across every channel that their customers might interact with, they can maximise results by investing more in the platforms that connect with prospective consumers.

Improving online visibility

An engaging strategy primarily improves online visibility, building a level of authority for your brand and encouraging consumers to invest trust in your message and the services that you provide. Prioritising meaningful content is the key to establishing this relationship. 

Contility’s keyword feature also helps you to build the visibility of your online presence. You can search using the feature and find appropriate keywords based on your content and analyse their relevance and reach for your brand.

Contility supports meaningful content

Contility allows you to create, manage and grow meaningful content, enabling you to visualise your content strategy all in one place. 

With around 90% of the world’s data being created in the last two years alone, managing the connections of your content has become an integral part of marketing strategies.

Create your content strategy with Contility

Contility is a market-leading tool that will enable you to comprehensively plan your content, with the ability to schedule and upload imagery and copy with its range of integrations. 

This proficient platform also has the functionality for users to be able to submit blogs and social posts for approval so that both clients and internal colleagues can review and check that the content is authentic to the brand’s language and online presence.

Enquire today

Contility gives your business full visibility of the performance and value of your content. Enquire today to find out more.