Tons of different content marketing strategies exist today.
In the beginning of the content marketing world, that wasn’t the case. At one time, marketers had few options. They essentially only had bandit signs, magazines, and newspaper ads.
Even in those days, however, they had a variety of different custom choices.
They could play with the words in their advertisements, the picture they showed, the placement of it, and the CTA.
In other words, although there were few content marketing methods, the options were still remarkably vast.
Today, more content marketing mediums and methods exist than ever before in the history of the world. That means that the number of strategies is even greater.
One online publication suggests using the “3D Content” model, for instance.
Basically, it’s three individual steps.
- Map the content to the pain point.
- Then use the right type of content for that problem.
- Finally, map the content to the buying cycle of the people who have that problem.
This strategy is a way to move the focus away from the marketer and to the person that the marketer is trying to reach.
That, after all, is an incredibly important step to take in your own content marketing strategy.
If your content doesn’t cater to the right people with the right problem that your product solves, then your content marketing efforts are all for not.
Of course, you’ll probably want to adapt this to fit your own audience and marketing theories.
Whatever the case, though, you should always start with your audience.
You must create content for that audience. Then, and only then, will the right people pay attention to you.
According to the source itself — Content Marketing Institute— here are the tips you should follow when creating a content marketing strategy.
Notice, in particular, this tip: “Your strategy should outline your key business and customer needs, and how your content efforts will address them.”
What does that mean?
It means that you need to understand your customers, prospects, and audience. Once you do, you can then create content that solves their problems and grows your business.
The ultimate goal of content marketing, of course, is to grow your business.
But again, you can’t do that unless you first attract paying customers.
In a world with social media, endless Internet space, self-publishing companies, and free graphic design tools, the strategies you can use to attract paying customers are as varied as the fish in the sea.
Here’s one list, for example, that Hubspot put together. It shows you just a few of the content marketing formats you can use.
There are a ton of options, but don’t get overwhelmed.
You’re here to learn about the benefits of each option and when to use which one. While there’s only one goal of content marketing (to increase business revenue), there are many ways to do that.
But before we can jump in and see how you can create your own strategy, you should first understand a bit of content marketing’s history.
Where did it come from? Why has it lingered? And why is it so popular today?
We’ll turn to those questions next.