7 Steps for a Successful Content Marketing

A successful content marketing should have the following features: 

1.Audience-oriented, provide valuable and relevant content
2.Stay relevant on the purchasing of TA, look into the specific purchasing phases
3.Tell a story that can reflect the whole customer experience process 
4.Have specific behavior incentives to guide the audience actions
5.Prepare corresponding structures and expressions as per different channels
6.Set a specific marketing target
7.Realize measurable marketing effects through strategic design
8.Create efficient and effective production while guaranteeing high quality content 

By providing valuable and relevant content to address users’ concerns, you can activate a viral marketing and gradually foster the audience’s trust and loyalty towards the brands.

The 7 steps below are for your reference:

I.User Profile

User profiles are collected info of average users extracted from a vast audience. In the process of analyzing and summarizing the customer data, you will be able to have a deeper understanding of your customers, identify the focus of audiences’ attention, as well as their purchasing preferences and targets, in a bid to facilitate your marketing activities.

In this case, the following aspects are what marketers should never skip while profiling their customers.

1.Background: basic info of TA, including company, title, interests, etc.
2.Occupational Info: responsibility and duties, job satisfaction.
3.Info source: channels for TA to acquire info
4.Challenges and pain points: problems they are facing and their responses.
5.Content preference: the content and style that will attract them or further drive them to interact.
6.Roles they play during the purchasing process: how TA will influence others’ purchasing decisions.
7.Marketing message: brand the message you intend to deliver to TA

II.Describe the Purchasing Process

Different industries have distinct features regarding the purchasing process, such as the APA model proposed by Market Profs, which mainly consists of 3 parts: Awareness, Purchase and Advocate.

In the Awareness phase, potential buyers look to know about the detailed info of the products; the next phase Purchase is aimed at cultivating customers’ trust in the brand, with their purchasing experience showing a vital effect on the process. When it comes to Advocate phase, your customers have been quite familiar with your products, which means that, under this circumstance, more creative info is urgently needed to stimulate customers.

III.Establish the Brand Image

It’s critical to sustain a brand influence via various channels; therefore, marketers are required to define the brand in a precise manner.

Brand image can be broken down into several parts, including personality, tone, language and intention.

After the image is positioned, you need to keep the same style on different platforms and 2 tips are hereby given:

(1)Keep being consistent in terms of author’s written style and written content
(2)Engage more people engage when it comes to check  the content

IV.Brainstorming

It is recommended to adopt methods like free writing, free lecture, key words association, “Outsider” brainstorming, or brainstorming on the issue itself, etc.

V.Select Appropriate Content Carrier
Common content carriers include videos, e-books, infographics, files, reports, slide page (H5 or PPT), etc.

VI.Content Recipe
What we upload on social media platforms is supposed to be a content feast, so the delicacy we approach customers is expected to be diversified and tasty.

Breakfast: it refers to content delivered on a daily base, featuring a simple style and being reader-friendly.

Dinner: it should be related to your brand values and take a large share of your total content issued on the page.

Vegetables:deliver info that holds high value to customers, such as industry report, business insights, etc., only from time to time
 

Dessert: it takes more than meals and dinners to expose your brand under the spotlight, as sometimes a couple of desserts will make your dish more diversified and attractive for “foodie” to try.

VII.Delivering Schedule

In general, a good-arranged schedule for delivering posts can be of great help to achieve your goals. For example, the whole agenda can be visualized and become transparent enough to guide team members about steps they should take at each stage.