In today's digital age, content marketing has become a crucial component of any successful marketing strategy.
In our Agency Marketing Report: Practice What you Preach, we scored over 100 agencies based in the UK on their content marketing strategy. Would you believe us if we told you that almost 50% of these agencies don’t have a clear and coherent content strategy?
From reviewing agencies' published content, content variation, distribution channels and so on, we’ve discovered that agencies generally understand the principle of communication, but aren’t doing it consistently, or with enough of a plan.
Agencies are excellent at servicing their clients needs but they don’t prioritise themselves. Often in the case of smaller agencies, they find it challenging to balance their marketing efforts alongside their client work, leaving them with less time and resources to devote to promoting their own brand.
If you’re wanting to learn more about a content strategy, let’s dive right in.
What is a Marketing Content Strategy?
A marketing content strategy is a plan that outlines how to create, publish, and distribute content to attract and retain customers.
A good content strategy will guide you on what content to create, how to distribute it, and how to measure its effectiveness, all while linking it to your agency’s marketing goals, target audience, and brand identity.
Remember, this doesn’t need to be a complicated process, however, it does require the right level of effort to effectively execute the strategy from the very start.
To begin with, you’ll need to consider the following:
Who is the content for?
Before you create any content, you need to know who your target audience is. This is crucially important as our research reveals that only 44% of agencies produce content without a clear audience in mind. Determining who content is aimed at will help you to create content that resonates with your audience to truely drive engagement.
What is the goal?
This could be increasing website traffic, generating leads, or increasing sales from current clients. But make sure your content actually has a goal assigned to it so you can measure its success.
How do you plan on staying on top?
Create a content calendar that outlines the topics you want to cover, when you will publish your content, and how you will promote it. These should always ladder back to your wider agency positioning.
Including a variety of content topics is key, be sure to keep it diverse as our research states that agencies tend to lack diverse content, with 39% not utilising industry trends or insights to back up their content.
What sort of content will you create?
You’ll need to consider what types of content you want to create, whether that be blog posts, videos, social media posts, podcasts, or infographics. A variety of content formats are required, our report research indicates that only 41% of agencies utilise different media types across paid, earned and owned channels.
How do you want to spread the word?
Decide which channels you want to use to distribute your content, crucially where your target audience are. This could include social media platforms, your website, email marketing, hosting events, gaining media coverage or guest posting on other websites.
How will you measure success?
Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics (soon to be GA4) and native social analytics to track the performance of your content. This will help you determine what's working and what's not. Use your analytics data to continuously improve your content marketing strategy, making adjustments as necessary to better meet the needs of your audience.
Benefits of Using a Marketing Content Strategy
Using a marketing content strategy has several benefits for agency's. Here are some of the most significant advantages:
1. Increases Brand Awareness
One of the primary benefits of developing a marketing content strategy is that it can help increase brand awareness. By consistently producing and sharing high-quality content that aligns with your brand messaging, you can attract new customers and build trust with existing ones. As your content gets shared and engaged with on social media and other channels, your agency brand will become more visible and recognisable to potential customers. This is especially important for smaller, less established agencies.
2. Become a Thought Leader
Creating content that provides value to your audience can help establish you and your agency as a thought leader in your industry. This can help build trust with your audience, to ultimately, drive more leads and sales.
3. Improves SEO
Search engines love fresh, relevant, and high-quality content. This content should be informative, engaging, and provide value to your target audience. It must be balanced to ensure it also explores the value that your agency can bring, using the keywords identified.
In turn, you can improve your website's search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic to your site.
4. Increase Engagement
Increase customer engagement with your brand through your content. When you provide value to your audience, they are more likely to share your content, comment on it, and engage with your brand on social media. This not only helps increase brand awareness but can also help build a community around your brand.
5. Drives Conversions
By creating and sharing content that aligns with your agency’s business goals, you can attract potential customers and move them through the sales funnel. Whether your goal is to drive more leads or increase sales, a well-executed marketing content strategy can help you achieve it.
A marketing content strategy is a vital part of any business's marketing efforts. However, as agencies, we need to go back to basics, as the rewards of doing it well will serve us better, longer into the future.
Download our Practice What You Preach report
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