Successful content marketing campaigns are the result of careful planning, and there are five main ingredients to it:

1. The audience

The audience are the people you are marketing to. Before a word is written, you need to know who they are, their demographic, where they live and how they behave. Consider what they love to do, and what their lifestyle is.

The ultimate goal of content marketing is to sell a product or service that solves a problem. The crucial question to ask is ‘what is the problem that your audience needs solving?’

2. Content

After an audience profile has been created, the next stage is to create content for them. Content can take many forms, from text and images, to videos and podcasts. Whatever the medium, it needs to address the audience’s interests and concerns.

3. The offer

Content needs to lead to an offer. This is usually something that is free and is designed to capture email or other contact details in order to develop a relationship with the audience. The offer can be in the form of a free eBook, report or consultation.

4. Promotion and distribution

After content is uploaded,it may not be visible. To make it visible requires promotion and distribution.

Promotion can be through search engine ads, or social media ads. Content can be distributed to influential bloggers and journalists or shared on social media.

5. Follow up

After getting contact details, a follow-up campaign needs to provide further information to the audience, and include other offers that will lead to sales.

Many content marketing campaigns are haphazard. By paying attention to these five key ingredients, the chances are that your content marketing strategy will be successful.

For further help on successful content marketing, talk to us at Pressroom.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.