How do you plan the best content marketing strategy for your business? -[ My experience]

A Perfect Website Needs A Perfect Content Marketing plan.

Content Marketing is all about letting your customer know about you and your business, Making him understand that you are available just for him to help.

Content Marketing can help you in four major aspects of marketing

You do content marketing by publishing on one or two social media platforms. You do it regularly. But, you will not find any leads out of it. You find zero engagement. 

This is because you need to understand the road map of content marketing. The content marketing should actually be laid parallel to the buyer's journey.

How do you plan content marketing for your Business?

Allow me to explain through an example.

I have worked previously with a CME Event promotions & online marketing company called eMedEents. This is a company which specifically provides information about medical conference, Continuous media education events to Healthcare professionals happening worldwide.

They are good at their doctor's database. As it the clinician focused website searched by doctors across the globe covering 147+ countries.

It provides medical conferences conducting on around 207+ medical specialties. They have direct connections with medical bodies who conduct CME events, so the information is shared with the company as the first preference for online promotions. They are most trusted partners for medical bodies for their event marketing & promotions

Now, they have a website which is SEO focused. They have huge traffic flowing on daily basis. The social media followers are good in number.  So, they give digital marketing services like Banner Ads, Email Campaigns, Social Media Campaigns to the CME event organizers.

Okay! You got the first step: Understanding the Business. 

Now, let's do the Content Marketing plan for them.

#Step-1:  Buyer Persona Definition:

A buyer persona is a script written by the content marketers thinking that the business end user/ target customers would be. Their education to the buying process a frictional screenplay is written thinking that the customer would likely to act.

Let me give you the characteristics of a Buyer persona:

1. Industry: To which industry he may belong to?
2. Company: What type of companies/ organizations he would be from?
3. Designation: What is his most likely designation in that organization?
4. Department: To which department does he belong to?
5. Income: What would be his salary to be?  
6. Education: What is his educational background? This is important to decide on the content marketing pitch we can generate on him. Can he understand the digital marketing platform or do you need to educate him on the basis? 
7. Age: What would be his age?
8. Needs and Goals: What exactly the output he is expecting from digital marketing? What are his goals for marketing? Was that to get reach the CME event to many people? Was that to get registrations?  etc.,

# Step-2: Outline The Basic Objectives and Obstacles of The Ideal Customer.

This analysis gives you an idea of your customer's trigger points which attracts them to buy yours or become your customer.

#Step-3: What Are The Most Common Buying Habits Of The ideal customer?

This gives you an idea where your ideal customer is available online. Where you can find him?. 

#Step-4: Most Common Questions He Would Raise For Himself About Buying A Service?

#Step-5: Max No.Of Days Taken By Ideal Customer To Decide To Move Further

#Step-6: The Content Generation Framework

#Step-5: Content Mapping the Strategy By Defining The Working Titles To The Topics

#Step-7: Social Media Marketing Content Generation Mapping The Title.

#Step-8: Content Distribution Strategy

You need a content distribution plan to distribute your content on your own blog and also on the different social media platforms available.

• Blogging Strategy for your blog:

You need to post the blogs as per your buyer's buying journey.  Remember, there should be a connection from one post to another so as to interlink with each other. 

• Social Media Marketing on Social Platforms in-general:

The most general social media platforms we all follow in general would be LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. These 4 major platforms follow different style guides for posting the content. Their platform viewers follow different timings to view the content published on them. Keeping on this in mind and analyzing your industry, you need to prepare a plan of action for social media marketing.

• Image Marketing

I call it as image marketing separately because of the platforms evolved these years for sharing images.  The most image sharing platforms we have today are Instagram, Snap chat, Pinterest, and WhatsApp. Again, each of them is known with different styles to publish content. 

• Video Marketing

Video Marketing is the hot trend. Now and before, a video attracts the view more than any other format of content.

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The doctor's behavior on the usage of online networking platforms has carved them out to get into the path of Digital & Multichannel marketing basis their customer behavior. 

The communication customized as per doctor-patient preference and doctor-medical societies. They are walking through a strategical therapy pathway in virtual communication channels. It's no more a world of standardization but now a world of virtual customization. We are in a need to set up such a framework to get into digital channels can be a great start for your business promotions. I hope, this information is useful to prepare your content marketing strategy for your website. And I am helping to the same. 

Next Article: Guest Posting Strategy.

Have you ever created a performance funnel for your website?-[My experience]

Many people concentrate on design and functionality of the website and forget about relevant content. The website is a primary vehicle for delivering the business objectives, purposes. When you treat content as an afterthought, your ability to make a useful website fail. 

It is a constant challenge for a content strategist like me, wrestling for years to convince the management to push content as the primary heart of user experience.  This post shares one of my experience involved in building and implementing the content strategy for a company website  I worked earlier. 

I hope after this, you ( maybe as management or a business person) start thinking:"Content -First For Better Website Results" 

A Content Strategy requires the team effort from all peer disciplines.

The team involved in the building the content strategy are as follows:

1. BDE & Sales: They collect the big problems of the ideal customer and points they mainly look for. 
2. Content Strategists: They prepare the answers to the questions like what to write, where to write and how to write 
3. Website Architects & Developers- They take care of technical issues involved in developing the website at the server side.
4. UX & Visual Designers - They take care of look and feel of the content. They create the webpage with a dummy content. 
5. Content Writers: Create the content as per the design and satisfying the content strategy.
6. SEO- They take care of search engines. 

Content Generation Ideas for the website.

The content generating for the website should address the problem and solutions provided by the business to the ideal buyer without neglecting the purpose of business.  You create a smarter content focusing on design for better user experience.  The main goal of the website content is :

" To produce more useful and more usable content to online audiences, meeting the business objectives."

There are two components to consider- People Components and Content Components.

                                                                             By Deepika Rallapalli

• The substance is all about tone, style, topics, working titles, subheadings etc.,
• The structure is about content breakups, the building blocks etc.,

These two components are considered as content components as they only deal with content. 

• Workflow is about the process & procedure of resources involving in the entire process, best content management tools and website building platforms a company can use.
• Governance is to figure out the maintenance and consistency of changes happening to the content or design. The website needs continuous monitoring of its performing. 

These two components are considered as people components as it involves human resources and their activities.



Allow me to give an example to explain above two component. SmartSocialBrand is an Inbound marketing company that provides marketing services to the clients and training to experienced and non-experienced marketers. Their homepage looks like this:

The content components involved here are the main menu and internal pages. The images and background colors used, content and its position. The call-to-actions and landing pages. etc. 

Once these things are done. Now, it's time to inform the Google about the website.  My SEO team has done all the required on-page and off-page SEO activities required. 

Finally, It is time to promote the website. 

The winning hook of Content Marketing Strategy.

This requires 5 W and 1 H mapping.  The 5 W's would be : 

• Why – Why are you providing for this service/business/product?

• What – What is that you want to deliver? What is the message?

• Who – Who is the ideal audience?

• Where – Where will the message be read by the audience (which location, on what device, situation/context)?

• When – Time required for creating the process and publish.

The single H will be: 

• How – How should you present the website and structure the content?

You can answer these questions by drawing a simple website content planning worksheet. 

            The Web Content Strategy Planning template is also available to download

The Fruits of the Website Strategy are the sweater with proper marketing.

Once you get the answers and all the people, content components, it is easy for you to follow the process and develop the content. Once, you publish the website the actual process of Content Marketing begins.

Only after the proper implementation of content marketing techniques, you will enjoy the beauty of online marketing. 

Remember one thing- there is no shortcut to success other than hard work with smart move. Similarly, content marketing requires a lot of planning and strategic approach and it takes time to get ROI/ results.

Time Involved In Practical Implementation

Time Involved in planning the strategy: mini 3 months ( preparing Buyer personas, content mapping, topics and working titles, and editorial calendar ) 

During this process, you need to have complete co-operation of your sales & marketing team. You need to maintain documentation of each process involved. A lot of companies neglect documentation. But, they are important to keep yourself tracked on the work done on daily basis and help you follow the procedure one after the other. 

The Time required to seeing the ROI: mini ( 8-12 ) months after implementing the content marketing plan without any obstacles and deviation.

In content marketing, there is a formula called HER formula. It states that the online customer need to get habituate with reading relevant content provided by you. They need to start engaging  with you and discuss the issues they have so that there is a bond/relationship is built. Finally, they react with an action desired or required like contacting you for business. 

Unreal Expectations from Content Marketing 

I would like to discuss this point because, during my professional working with clients, I come across these unreal expectations from management making the weather hotter. 

         #1 Myth: If a blog is maintained which is non-relevant content and stuff with keywords and do SEO, you get ample of visitors. 

Have you observed anytime about the bounce rate? People leave your website within no time if your content is not relevant.  For example refer the blog post on The 10 Best Apps For Medical Conference.  This blog shares a title as which conveys to that it is going to provide information about those mobile apps which share information about Medical Conferences. When you observe the body , it gives general mobile apps that are helpful when you plan a trip abroad. 

It is not relevant to the Title given. It is expected to give information about those mobile Apps that give details about Medical Conferences.  Refer: the blog post about same topic you will observe the difference.

        #2 Myth: My Facebook posts are seen by many and I am getting views. 

Increase in the number of views for the post you published on social media doesn't mean that your post is liked by them. They just saw it. 

      #3 Myth: My marketing people and sales executives manage the customers and get the sale. We don't need emails and sales pitch for them.  And they give price quotes on spot.

This is the most common dialogue the management uses. But, let me tell you, the sales and marketing executives are your brand ambassadors.  You need them to represent your company not only professional but also need to handle the clients carefully even at rejections and objections. Your email represents your standards. So, email marketing should never be neglected. 

       #4 Myth: I don't need landing pages and content offers on my website. Why does someone need to download my content and info-graphics?

Well! they store them and refer to them whenever needed. And when they are storing an information provided by you that means you are providing helpful content and thus helping them to solve their problems.  Moreover, there is a possibility of distributing the content offer to others. Thus, your company is mouth spread and hence helps in branding, promoting. 

      #5 Myth: We don't need buyer personas. We know everything about our leads.

This is the biggest myth the management have. Online shopping trends are so volatile in nature. Their change in inevitable and unpredictable. You need to constantly upgrade your marketing and sales approach as per the changing trends of online shopping. 

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• People who generate the most revenue
• People who get along with your team
• People whose projects challenge you
• People who share your beliefs or convictions
• People who are passionate about what you do 
• Are the people who take every step wisely and use Inbound Marketing Approach.