Whether you are an expert or not, if you own or run a brand, you are in the business of communication. What this means is that your brand is only as good as you portray it to be. From this notion, the conclusion is obvious — if you’re not consistently communicating clear and specific messages to your audience, your brand may as well not exist.
This is where campaigns and content marketing initiatives come in. Your audience is malleable, and whenever you communicate with them, their perspective on your brand and products is being moulded and shaped. So why not actively do the shaping — as opposed to leaving them in the dark — through a consistent presence. And not just when you have specific items, events or services to sell.
But what’s the best way to go about creating a content-based campaign? And what exactly goes into it? As professionals in content marketing in Cape Town, we are here to help you implement an effective campaign that will get you the results you need:
1. What is Your Goal?
When starting any project, big or small, it is crucial to know and understand exactly what you’re setting out to do. And ultimately, the results you’re expecting to produce.
There are a few factors that will shape your goal — these include: Identifying Your Target Audience and the Media They Interact With Most Frequently; How They Will Benefit From Your Brand and Campaign.
Don’t have a goal in mind? These are a few to consider:
- SEO Success
- Social Media Engagement
- Gaining Online Authority
The above goals are just a few examples of how you can optimise your campaign strategy to receive high traffic and give your business an authoritative online presence.
2. Establish Some KPI’s
‘KPI’ stands for ‘key performance indicators’, you can consider this as your checklist for observing how you have achieved the goals you set out for your marketing strategy.
It is how you can specify what you plan on achieving in terms of things like:
- Revenue
- Traffic
- Social Media Metrics
- Email Marketing
The items in your checklist should measure things like the number of news letter sign-ups you gained in over a set period. And in comparison to your anticipated goal, is this total higher or lower?
3. Who is Your Audience?
We probably mention this in most of our articles, mostly because many marketers still don’t understand the importance of identifying a target market. How are you going to create content if you don’t know who the content is for?
You need to have a clear understanding of who you want to think about your business. Who do you want to walk in and use the services you provide? You can answer these questions by collecting demographic data.
It means considering the age, gender, education and even income of people who may be interested in what you sell. You must identify their key interests and create content according to your findings. It’s also something that continually needs revision as peoples needs will change over time.
4. What’s Your Current Position in the Market?
Content marketing in Cape Town is the new buzz, so we’re guessing your business already has a social media presence. If so, you must then analyse whether your current content is helping you achieve your goals.
There are different tools and methods you can to analyse your content, including:
- Logging Your Content – Using your content URLs to analyse page titles and descriptions to find duplicate pages
- Content Analysis – Checking for the number of inbound links and shares you’ve received, as well as the search engine ranking for keywords used.
These two methods will help you to identify how you can improve the content you produce and how to best optimise it.
5. Identify the Best Marketing Channels
By this stage, you should have a good idea of your target audience and therefore, on which platforms they interact the most. It will be a good indication of where to post your content, especially for businesses who have never put content out there before.
If you already have a social media presence, it’s best to build from the channel(s) you’re on and see how effective it is. However, some things will be more evident than others. If you’re targeting an audience under the age of 18, Facebook may not be the best way to reach them.
As versatile as social media has become, people still prefer certain platforms over others. It has a lot to do with relevance and the content associated with a specific content channel. Keep in mind that Instagram and Facebook are the most commonly used platforms for content marketing in Cape Town.
6. Choose Your Media
There are different forms of content; a few examples are things like:
- Blogs
- Images
- Videos
- Infographics
You must identify which kind of content you want to put out and how effective it will be for your business. Each form of content is useful in their own way, but what will be best in terms of what you want to portray online?
You must establish a ‘central core’ of the content appearing on your main channel or website that you can share to other platforms. Most businesses opt for blog articles, are known to deliver strong results. You can also mix your content on your social media pages with images and videos.
7. Create a Content Calendar
Once you’ve decided on the type of content you want to put out, you need to plan how you will go about posting. Here you will choose how often you will post and what days and times content will go out.
There are different tools you can use to create a posting calendar or schedule, but if you’re just starting out, Google Sheets is your best friend.
If you plan on posting a lot of content, you’ll need to make use of a tool that will help you allocate different posting responsibilities and keep track of who has posted what. Planning is always crucial to maintaining a productive workflow and keeping track of your goals.
8. Content Distribution
The success of your distribution will depend on how much research and effort you have put into your strategy. Here, you must focus on broadening your reach and making sure your content reaches your desired audience.
Email marketing is a great way to let people know you have posted new content. Tagging relevant influencers is also an excellent method of having your message spread to people whom of which you may not have access.
You can also use paid ads on Facebook and Instagram to optimise the number of people who will see your content. These ads can direct your audience to the most important part of your business’s website or provide a special that could interest them.
Are You Ready?
Mapping out the right campaign strategy for your business becomes a lot easier when you take the process step by step. Good things take time, and you want to make sure you’re creating content that not only interests your target market but represents your brand’s personality. Content marketing in Cape Town gives you an advantage because there are so many local cultures you can implement into your strategy.
Identify what your goals are and what you want to get out of creating a social media presence. The transition from planning to execution will be much smoother when you know what the results should be. Remember that consistency is key, but you can only achieve this through strategising and planning.
Are you ready to plan your content campaign? Contact us today for all your content marketing needs. Drop us an email to info@theagncy.co.za
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