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Event recap: Six elements of a content marketing playbook

February 03, 2018 11:06AM

Scott Severson, President of Brandpoint, a content marketing and distribution agency, shared how to create a toolbox to build a content marketing strategy that fits the needs of your organization and audience. A healthy content marketing plan is a sum of six components: team, tools, audience, strategy, data and content.

1. Team
First, you need the right people in the right roles, and all accountabilities covered:

  • Project manager
  • Strategist
  • Content creator
  • SEO/PPC manager
  • Email marketing/marketing automation specialist/strategist

​2. Tools
Make sure any marketing content tools you use serve a purpose and align with your marketing goals. Your toolbox may include:

  • Content management system (CMS): Main web property - hosts 90% of
    published content.
  • Customer relationship manager (CRM): A customer interaction and lifecycle platform that tracks all customer touchpoints.
  • Content Marketing Platform (CMP): A single environment for teams to create and collaborate on content creation.
  • Social Media Management (SMM): A place to manage social content platforms and conversations.
  • Marketing automation and email: A platform to help you create, send and track marketing emails and manage multiple email campaigns.

​3. Audience
Know what type of content your audience needs in each stage of their customer journey.

  • What questions do they need answered?
  • Who’s involved in their decision-making process?
  • How and where will you connect to them?

4. Strategy statement
A strong content marketing strategy statement will draw a clear path from your business/marketing goals to the content you create.

  • Develop a content marketing strategy statement - include business goals, how you're going to deliver goals, your audience and their needs.

5. Data
Content marketing can impact time on site, bounce rate, click-through rate, social referrals and engagement. There are simple things you can do to measure the impact of your content marketing efforts:

  • Look at organic traffic increase
  • Measure against paid tactics

6. Content
Create content that matters to your audience – quality over quantity.

  • Identify themes valuable to your readers
  • How can your content add unique perspective?

Don’t feel pressured to commit to a content type or channel that doesn’t align well with your strategy.