The world of digital marketing can sometimes seem foreign to brands working to establish themselves in a particular industry.

In a post-COVID world, businesses have suddenly shifted from deciding on budgets for in-person event booths at trade shows to trying to maximize leads from webinars and social media.

Digital marketing can span several different categories such as Content Marketing, Email Marketing and Influencer Marketing. But, without a proper content strategy in place to determine the optimum channels and actions to take for your business, elevating above the noise can be frustrating.

What Is Content Strategy?

A content strategy determines the planning, creation, publication and governance of useful content.

It’s one of the most important things that needs to be established before beginning any content or digital marketing campaign – and with good reason too. “Content Marketing Strategy” is the most searched query related to content marketing.

Knowing what to do for a content strategy can make the difference between wasted marketing dollars and producing consistently great content that builds your brand, drives engagement and converts visitors into customers.

Why Do You Need a Content Strategy for Digital Marketing?

Think of a content strategy as a roadmap to where your brand wants to go. Not only does it tell you your targets, such as overall company goals and the KPIs that help to determine strategic effectiveness, but it also outlines how you can go about reaching that target.

A content strategy helps put the focus on your customers and determines the best ways you can serve them.

At its core, a content strategy helps you to decide which digital marketing tactics and channels match your company’s goal. SEO, PPC and Social Media strategies can eventually be implemented once the content strategy is established.

Establishing A Content Strategy for Digital Marketing

Here are a few steps to quickly establish a digital marketing content strategy for your brand.

1. Determine your audience. Your audience or your ideal customer persona will be the ones to consume the content that you create on a regular basis.

Knowing who your target audience is, allows you to cater your content to their needs and then pinpoint their problems. This way you can solve their problems with content that educates and engages your audience

2. Pick your content strengths. If the members of your marketing team are great writers then creating blog content may be the way to go.

However, members of the C-Suite may be comfortable getting on video and promoting the brand. In this case, educating your audience about different topics through a video marketing strategy could be ideal.

3. Decide your content channels. Once you know the strengths of your team when it comes to creating content then you can choose the right channels to get the most out of that content.

Written content may go on a blog or social media channel like Twitter or LinkedIn. Video content can be published to YouTube and repurposed to other social media channels like Facebook.

Content strategy plays a critical role in every brand’s overall digital marketing campaigns and getting it right can determine the level of success or failure.