In an ideal world you want prospective customers to complete the journey from start to finish. But buyer behaviour doesn't work like that. There are stops, starts, revisits, and procrastinating ‘umming and arghing’.

To try to accommodate this, you need to pre-empt eventualities along the user journey and produce relevant digital content that’ll gently nudge people along the path to conversion.

Great content that is impeccably timed makes your job easier in getting prospects down the funnel. Identifying those macro and micro moments and backing them up with a robust content marketing strategy makes a huge difference.

But remember, every conversion point needs great execution. Writing content, using media assets, internal processes etc. goes a long way to streamlining the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

Stages of the content marketing lifecycle

1. Define your audience, goals & KPIs

2. Plan and create engaging content

3. Engage with your audience

4. Analyse results

5. Re-optimise

1. Define your audience, goals & KPIs

Who are you targeting? Are you talking to your persona segments? Are you targeting those in a specific stage of the funnel? Whoever it is you need to have a clear picture of who they are and what solutions they’re looking for.

What are you trying to achieve? Without defining your goals and KPIs you really have no destination. It's imperative you align them with your business objectives. Whether it's lead generation or making a sale, establishing goals and KPIs are essential to effective content marketing.

2. Plan your strategy and create engaging content

Content distribution needs to be planned and delivered in a timely way. Which channels are the most effective in driving traffic and conversions? Look at your analytics and past performance for great insights.

Is Google Ads right for your offering? What about social media? Whichever channels you use, you need to plan effectively within your budget.

You know which channels you’re hitting, and you’ve created your content calendar. Now you need to produce pieces of content that make a difference.

Are you going to create blog posts? Case studies? PDFs? Whatever you opt for, your marketing team needs to be up to speed to deliver your strategy.

The messaging and the creatives are in place, but what about curating your media assets? They’re part of the content creation process too. Images, videos, files etc. need to be sourced and stored in a powerful and reliable system like an experience platform (like Sitecore XP) and/or in a Digital Asset Management platform.

3. Engage with your audience

When the campaign is up and running, don’t just sit around waiting for things to happen. You need to stay on top of the customer experience and actively engage with your audience.

Monitor your social media and respond to comments quickly. Use automation to nurture your leads. Follow-up all enquiries and handle complaints swiftly.

4. Analyse results

It’s okay to adapt your content marketing strategy if you need to. Measure your strategy. Periodically evaluate campaign performance against your goals and KPIs. This gives you insights as to whether you’re on the right track or if you need to make tweaks to things like channels, messaging etc.

5. Re-optimise

If the campaign was a success you might want to re-run it in the future - with some improvements. If however, it didn’t go as smoothly as you wanted, you might ditch it and go back to the drawing board. Either way, a re-optimisation will need new and existing assets - so keep them all safe.

Working with Codehouse

We've been building digital experiences that make a difference for over 15 years.

Our experienced teams have worked with customers on content strategies that have generated positive results. If you have a digital marketing project you want to talk to us about, get in touch when you're ready.