4 Ways How CIOs Strategize Content Marketing

CIOs need an effective content marketing strategy to address the current market demands, and these 4 ways are sure to help.

FREMONT, CA: In the past few years, marketing strategies have evolved owing to the internet and digitization of the marketing platforms. Traditionally, brands used broadcasting media such as television and magazines to advertise their content. After the internet paved the way for online platforms, marketers realize the potential of connecting with their audiences via social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and others. The major advantage of online platforms is that they help in bringing the audience to the driver's seat while providing an accurate assessment of a brand's performance. The rise in the digitization of modern marketing platforms demands CIOs' to develop a result-driven content marketing plan.

The main challenge that lies ahead of IT and marketing is to design an effective content marketing strategy. A documented content marketing strategy is a great asset to a company. A sound marketing strategy enables the management of any tangible media content: visual or written. 64 percent of the businesses consider building a content strategy as one of their primary business needs. Here are some of the ways that can pave the way for an effective content marketing strategy:

Setting-Up a Content Strategy Plan

The CIO needs to design a content strategy plan as the first step. Clear objectives will not only provide clarity in decision-making but also reduce the chances of conflict between the IT and the marketing teams in the longer run. From the customer’s viewpoint, the marketing strategy plan must include the targeted audience, content to attract potential customers, and the customer-centric offerings that the contents will aim toward. While customer viewpoint is an important consideration, it’s also important to consider the business perspective. Here are some of the primary business considerations while framing the content strategy plan:

• Fostering Sales along with the high-quality leads that will further assist in meeting revenue goals

• Strengthening brand image often rewards a business with loyal customers and may also establish the brand as a trusted entity in the market.

• Social media activities for brand awareness as well as for lead generation.

Once the objectives are clear, setting up key performance indicators (KPIs) is the next step.

Establishing KPIs

Determining a way to measure short term goals of a content marketing strategy lies at the core of a KPI. CIO can assist CMO with tracking software that will keep track of sales, revenues, traffic, SEO, and various aspects of digital marketing efforts. Generally, the KPIs revolves around the number and can provide insights into:

• What extent of a certain revenue target has been hit within a quarter, month, or year?

• The number of registrations to estimate how many high-quality leads are being generated.

• Search ranking of the key pages and the ways to increase those numbers.

• The number of new subscribers.

• Measure the site traffic and the engagement of the onsite content.

Apart from the above, KPIs also enable dealing with the marketing expenses, understanding the effectiveness of individual campaigns, and making sales. 

 

Knowing the Audience

For any content marketing strategy to be a success, it’s essential to know about the targeted audience. CIO can assist the marketing personnel to collect information about the targeted audience systematically. A comprehensive analysis of the major demographics of the audience, such as gender, age, education, religion, preferences, personality, and other such factors can offer significant insight before the preparation of the marketing campaigns. Here are the primary approaches via which demographics data can be collected:

• Collecting data of the visitors, subscribers, and social media followers.

• Social media analytics, web analytics, and email subscriber analytics will provide personalized user data such as gender, age, income, education, and others.

• Key interests of the audience can also be gathered with the help of Google Analytics.

Customer feedback further helps a business to learn more about its audiences. Customer feedback can enable a brand to:

• Understand its customer’s expectations to a better extent.

• Alter the marketing strategies to match with their targeted audience.

• It can provide valuable contribution during the creation of buyer personas, or customer avatars.

Developing customer personas or avatars based on their traits collected from various sources enable better targeting of the audience. The personas can be used for keyword research efforts. They can also be used as a reference while crafting copy. Personas can also assist the sales team in building a rapport with the customers. 

Assessing Current Standing and Determining Best Marketing Channels

Everyday brands are releasing various marketing contents with the hope of getting the attention of their audiences. However, only a few succeed in impacting the targeted consumers. Content auditing can provide insights into the performance of the individual contents while also assisting in identifying the gaps and bridging them for better results in the future. CIO can collaborate with the CMO and the marketing teams and develop content auditing software that covers the business-specific aspects of a brand. Such software can help with:

• Determination of the keywords related to the niche that might have been overlooked while targeting the audience.

• Questions from the targeted0 audience that haven’t been answered.

• Such steps will automatically enable ascertaining where a brand stands and which of the channels are contributing the most to the cause.