Most businesses understand the power of content marketing, and why it’s become so popular over the last few years, but many are averse to getting involved themselves. Why? In my experience, there are three reasons.
First, they think they don’t have the budget for it, not realizing that it’s possible to get started on a campaign for next to nothing. Second, they’re intimidated by the length of time it generally takes to start seeing results from content marketing. Third, and most commonly, they simply don’t understand the strategy or know where to begin.
I can’t do much for your budget, and I can’t turn content marketing into a short-term ROI strategy, but I can help clarify the purpose, function, and elements of success demanded by content marketing. If you’re having trouble grasping the fundamentals, think of content marketing as a game—like a board game or a video game—and approach it with a similar strategic course you would any game.
Step 1. Know the Rules
Your first job is to learn the rules of the game. After all, if you break a rule in a game, there are usually consequences, including possible disqualification as a player. Content marketing functions somewhat the same way; if you break the basic rules, or try to cheat in any way, your strategy could backfire entirely, or have a negligible effect. For example, if you focus on quantity over quality, effectively producing spam instead of high-quality material, you could earn a penalty from Google and damage your brand’s reputation before you even begin to grow. Start with best practices, and don’t worry about the details yet.
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Step 2. Know Your Opponents
Next, you need to know who you’re playing against. Content marketing is a competitive game, after all, and you’ve invariably got at least a few competitors trying to attract the same audience segments. In a game, you need to know who your opponents are if you want to win; you need to know how experienced they are, what their playing style is like, and what tactics they’re likely to use. You can learn from some of them, adopting them into your own approach, but more importantly, you need to learn their weaknesses and how to exploit them.
Step 3. Know Your Objectives
If you’re playing the game, you need to know how to win. Are you supposed to reach a certain destination? Are you trying to destroy your opponents? Are you merely trying to stay alive for a certain period of time? Content marketing has many functions, including increasing traffic, increasing conversions, improving brand reputation, and improving customer retention (just to name a few). You may be targeting one or more of these as objectives—but you need to know which if you’re going to plan a strategy properly.
Step 4. Examine the Greats
Just as a new chess player can learn by watching old matches from greats like Gary Kasparov, you too can learn about content marketing simply by watching the pros do it. You’ll learn tips and strategies from their actual campaigns, and on a secondary level, you’ll get to evaluate how they format and publish that content. Hubspot, Buffer, and Moz are fantastic examples here, but I outlined them as well as more companies in far more detail about exactly what they’re doing right in my eBook-style post, The All-in-One Guide to Planning and Launching a Content Marketing Strategy.
Step 5. Think Several Moves Ahead
You can’t win a game of strategy by merely reacting to what your opponents do; instead, you need to think several moves down the line. What kinds of updates is Google likely to make to its algorithm? What new social media platforms are gaining popularity? What types of media are on the rise or decline? How are your customer behaviors and target markets going to change? You need to plan your content strategy for tomorrow, rather than just today, and prepare for anything and everything to change at a moment’s notice. Content marketing is a quickly shifting world.
Step 6. Dive in, and Expect to Lose Your First Round
Did you win the first game of checkers you ever played? You may not remember, but I’m guessing you didn’t. How could you? In content marketing, you’re literally playing with zero experience against someone who’s known the game far longer than you have. Similarly, you can’t expect your content marketing strategy to be perfect upon launch. No matter how much research you’ve done, how much effort you’ve put into your content, or how brilliant you think your tactics are, you’re probably going to see lukewarm to poor results when you first put your feet in the water. Only through measurement, analysis, adjustments, and refinement will you start to see the results you want.
Step 7. Attempt Novel Tactics
As you gain more experience in a game, you start to learn the conventional strategies, and you can switch between them to address different opponents. However, the true mavericks of a game are the ones who create their own novel strategies. In content marketing, this is also true—some of the best viral content pieces of all time were ones that completely broke free of industry norms and surprised and challenged readers with something they’d never seen before. For example, take the now-famous Old Spice commercial, incorporating a humor style that nobody had ever attempted in an ad campaign, or the Gangnam Style video that now has 2.5 billion views. Don’t be afraid to break the mold; seize the opportunity.
These considerations are illustrative, and part of my game metaphor, so be wary not to take them too literally. Still, they should help you see content marketing from a higher-level perspective, and give you enough information and strategic considerations to begin outlining your own campaign. Just like a complex board game, you can read the instructions as many times as you like, but the best way to learn is to get out there and play the game. Trust me, if you pay attention to your surroundings and watch the players around you, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
