Successful content marketing campaigns — whether for consumers or B2B — get a lot of attention and impressive results. They can appear to be pretty seamlessly executed at first glance; however, the devil is in the details. To build a successful content marketing campaign, you need to take it step by step and understand the fine points. When you get the details right in advance by following a content campaign marketing guide, you’ll save yourself and your brand valuable time, effort, resources and money.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is when brands and companies give consumers valuable information to help drive things like brand awareness, brand loyalty, website traffic, social media engagement, leads and sales. However, the content is not necessarily about the brand’s products or services, but instead it’s information about something that the consumer is interested in that’s related to those services or products.
A content marketing campaign is helpful information a brand or its agency delivers to consumers through different platforms like social media and websites in a coordinated, focused way. The goal is engagement and relationship-building with consumers, brand awareness and, ultimately, leads, sales and brand loyalty.
Here’s an example of content marketing: If a real-estate company features guides with tips about where to eat and fun activities to do in different neighborhoods on its website, it’s giving consumers information that they need or want about areas they might be moving to. These will, of course, be neighborhoods where the real-estate company rents or sells properties, but the content itself is not an overt push to rent or buy from the company.
What Is a Content Marketing Campaign?
A content marketing campaign is both different from and similar to an ad campaign. Both often revolve around common themes and goals. In the above case of the real-estate agency, the content marketing campaign strives to make consumers more aware of and interested in the neighborhoods where it sells and rents apartments and houses. However, an ad campaign is more likely to sell consumers on the benefits of working with the real-estate company and its agents and include any special offers.
It’s important to have a fully planned content marketing campaign because a clear, cohesive, consistent campaign is one that builds trust with consumers and sticks with them. It tells them who the company is and the values they represent, and it builds appreciation for the brand with consumers for addressing their information needs.
How to Put Together the Perfect Content Marketing Campaign
To put together a killer content marketing campaign, approach it from the ground up. Don’t get ahead of yourself. First step? Putting the people in place that will make it happen.
Create a Content Team
Creating a content team is essential to building a content marketing campaign. The members of content teams have important responsibilities like ideation (coming up with ideas for content), assigning, writing, designing, editing/reviewing, posting and updating content, as well as creating videos and photography. They’ll be creating different types of content, from infographics and social media posts to blog posts, memes and videos.
You’ll need a leader to spearhead the content creation team. Designate a detail-oriented team leader who has excellent writing and editing chops as well as a good eye for visuals and people skills. That person serves as the managing editor, content lead or head of content.
The content lead is in charge of overseeing the team and running things day to day. This person also has the responsibility of putting together a content creation schedule, also known as an editorial calendar that should flow smoothly, logically and realistically for the team.
Choosing content creators and writers with both excellent journalistic credentials and a solid understanding of SEO will help avoid issues like plagiarism, poor content quality and content that is difficult to find online.
As with wordsmiths, choose designers, graphic artists and other creative team members who know graphic design and work well both with others and independently, especially if some will be working remotely. So much of a content creation team’s work is done online that you’ll need team members who can communicate effectively.
Put a Content Creation Schedule in Place
Once you have a content strategy and a content team, you need to put a content creation schedule in place. A content marketing campaign usually has a lot of moving parts, so it’s important to have a shareable content creation schedule, complete with deadlines to keep it all organized, consistent, on time, on brand and everyone on the same page.
A content creation schedule helps you plan with a long view. An overview is crucial when there are so many moving pieces, so you don’t get overwhelmed or lost. You can figure out the important events or dates for the coming year that you need to create content for and schedule in the time necessary to do it. You can also update it as needed and keep everyone aware of changes.
Identify Possible Calls to Action
Calls to action (CTAs) are crucial to content marketing campaigns because they get consumers to click on the links or buttons that lead to sales. They are the words and graphics that lead the interested consumer to take the next step in the sales process. They’re on most company websites and can deliver results on social media platforms like Facebook too.
CTAs are usually brief, straightforward and compelling phrases that use action words and imperatives. They can be as simple as Salesforce’s “Try For Free” CTA on its homepage or “Click Here for All the Details” or “Join Now.”
Identify possible calls to action plus the best designs for them and the best places to put them while you’re building your content campaign. It gives you time to test them and get them right before your campaign goes live.
Organize Your Social Media
The content creation schedule and budget should include social media, if it’s part of your content strategy. Make sure your social media content and team sync well with your brand’s goals. You’ll need a savvy social media manager to help plan the social media content, such as what channels work best, what you’ll post and how often.
Social media content and platforms can seem like a bit of a hydra, with a lot of different arms going in many directions. Whether it’s on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube or on apps like WhatsApp or Snapchat, different platforms require different tweaks to content for the best results. But an ace social media team can organize content, tweak it, collaborate on it and keep it on schedule much more easily with platforms like HootSuite and calendars like ContentCal.
Track and Measure Your ROI
It’s not enough for you and your content marketing team to love your content marketing campaign. Consumers have to love it too. You’ll want to assess how your campaign is doing with important metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, leads, and sales to see what kind of ROI you’re getting.