7 Essential Goals to Consider to Develop a Content Marketing Plan

If you’re in a place reviewing how the year has performed for you and/or your company, or setting new goals — content marketing is worth taking a look at.

Content marketing isn’t just about churning out as much content as possible and putting it out wherever possible for the world to see. Given that we live in a world governed by our limitations of resources (time, money, skill), it is a strategic way to figure the best way to get your brand’s marketing going despite the limitations.

Why am I focusing on limitations?

We can all dream big — and I highly encourage you to dream big about what your brand can and should do… eventually. We often start from a place of scarcity, whether it is if we currently have a marketing or content creator on our team, or if we have the right software, etc.

Your limitations dictate how feasible and realistic your content marketing goals will be when executed. For example, if I am under-staffed, there is no way I can produce one podcast episode per week, send out one newsletter per week, and publish one blog post on top of updating all social media channels with one post a day. That is unless I am willing to outsource some things and have the means to do so.

Now, after you have taken stock of the resources you have on hand (this will help you allocate resources wisely) plus your business goals, consider which of the following would do well to help you achieve your business goals.

Brand Awareness

This is where discovery happens for your brand. If you are a new company — you need to put your company in front of as many people as possible to get them to be aware that you exist and get acquainted with the nature of your business. If you are an older company, brand awareness is an essential part of acquiring new customers.

You can’t sell your product or services to people who don’t know you enough to trust you. All new potential customers don’t know your company enough to want to be your customers. Get them acquainted with your presence enough to get them warmed up to the idea of wanting to explore your brand. If you’re at the top of their mind when they’re making a purchasing decision, chances are they might pick your brand.

Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty works to retain customers and keep them coming back to you. In other words, they’ve already purchased from you — they know you. But give them reasons to get them to keep coming back to you.

This helps you increase customer lifetime value. Instead of them making a one time purchase of a $20-$500, they keep coming back to spend at least 2 or 3 times more than you imagined they would spend.

Customer Education/ Thought Leadership

You might have a service or product that is either new or not known enough that it requires some customer education. Perhaps you work in the training & education space, or there is an added value to customers to have an understanding of certain concepts when they are interacting with your brand leading them to trust your brand more.

For example, if your brand is in the fashion space, your customers could benefit from fashion styling advice. If you are a creative professional, you could either teach the skills (B2C) or educate companies on how the types of creative services you offer help their businesses (B2B).

Your customers will trust you as the expert in your domain and will begin to be your brand advocate if they like your content. Even better, this converts to sales over a period of time because people tend to buy from trusted experts.

Customer Engagement

You might have the best content in the world, but if your customers are not engaging with it — chances are they might not necessarily always be choosing your brand.

In a world where there is an overwhelming number of choices for customers to pick from — engagement tells you how often they might like to pick your brand because of the affinity they have shown towards your brand through their engagement.

Customer engagement also is your key to understanding them — what they like & what they dislike. By being able to zone in on what drives customer engagement, your brand can do more in this area to keep them engaged and be visible despite all the noise in the market.

Lead Generation

Good content often leads to your business getting new leads. People express interest in what your brand has to offer if they like what they’re seeing. Or if you give them something of value to them in exchange for their information for you to contact them at a later time.

This is where you’re selling without really selling. They haven’t purchased a product or service yet, but they have already bought into the brand and kickstarts your relationship with them. They trust you enough to be willing to give you their information because your content is something they value.

Sales

Product promotions, and showcasing offerings reminds your customers what is available. The way you do it can be really subtle or really obvious. That’s the beauty of doing sales using content marketing. You can experiment with showing it differently — see what is the best way to show your products & services without sabotaging your brand’s relationship with them or driving them away.

When they have a good experience, they are likely to recommend your brand to someone else or keep coming back for more themselves. This helps you generate more revenue.

Community Building

Having an audience is one of the largest assets for brands now — it is a ready group of people who can buy your products or services when you launch something new or follow you to a new venture without having to start from scratch. These people are also rooting for you and/or your brand’s cause and truly believe in your brand promise.

Content marketing helps to build a consistent group of people who look forward to knowing more about the brand and grow with you despite whatever setbacks your brands might face during any crisis.

A good content marketing plan is often built with one primary goal in mind and some secondary goals supporting it where relevant. Focus is important to build the plan to achieve the business goals otherwise it ends up being ineffective.