What Exactly Is a Content plan?
A content plan identifies the kind of content you want to publish and establishes guidelines for its creation. Your content plan will specify who is accountable for creating the content, what the content’s objective is, and how the content will contribute to your overall content strategy.
Content strategies bolster your marketing efforts and enable you to reach out to prospective clients at every step of their buyer journey.
On get a better understanding of your customer’s buyer journey, read our guide to content marketing funnels. You’ll benefit from creating your own content marketing funnel as you work with the content plan template included in this article.
Why Do You Need a Content plan?
Creating continuously engaging content is a necessary component of effective marketing. Content planning enables your teams to work on, develop, and share content more easily.
A well-thought-out content plan enables you to develop content that generates traffic and revenues. A single popular piece of content — regardless of its genre — may continue to generate talk long after it is generated.
Additionally, content planning assist you in implementing critical business strategies, such as developing a budget or seeking resources. You’ll be aware of the resources required to create and distribute your content, allowing you to quickly prevent needless expenses or delays.
What Is the Distinction Between a Content Strategy and a Content Plan?
If you’ve already developed a content strategy, you may believe you’re set. Content strategy and content planning are, in fact, two distinct notions.
Your content strategy dictates the placement of your content across all of your marketing platforms. This is the section in which you define all of your marketing objectives and the strategies you plan to use to accomplish them.
When your strategy is complete, you’ll move on to content planning to establish how you’ll carry it out. Your content plan will include all of the assets and data necessary to accomplish the objectives outlined in your strategy.
Your content plan will be used to do research, produce, publish, and monitor your content. Your content plan should handle each stage of the content generation process.
How to Create a Content Plan That Produces Results
According to data from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, businesses that have a content plan are more likely than those who do not to believe their content is effective.
While each company’s content strategy may appear and operate uniquely, your strategy should have certain key characteristics.
A Content Strategy Template That Is Effective
To design a content plan that generates results, you’ll need to address the following six questions:
- For whom is your content intended?
- How will you distribute your content?
- How does your content address a problem?
- What makes your company unique?
- How are you going to communicate your message?
- How are you going to generate content?
- For Whom Is Your Content Intended?
Whatever medium you choose, your content must connect with your audience in order to be effective. The greatest place to start is by determining who is currently consuming your content.
Collect as much data as possible about your consumers in order to have a better understanding of who they are, what they expect to see, and how to engage them. Customer data may be gathered in a variety of methods, including via market research or by using web analytics tools such as Google Analytics.
To get audience data in your Google Analytics dashboard, Go to the left navigation panel and choose “Audience.” The Audience report provides information on your audience’s age, gender, level of education, and even their hobbies.
Understanding your customer’s interests enables you to predict the content they’re interested in seeing. If your clients have an affinity for “affinity categories” such as pets and dogs, you may plan to create content that contains or highlights dogs.
Bear in mind that not all types of content will function on all platforms. While a post about a dog may be OK for social media, it may not be appropriate for an email.
If you distribute your content through numerous channels, such as email, social media, and your blog, your content plan may need to cater to several types of audiences.
- Where Are You Going to Publish?
You must post your content in a location where your intended audience will see it. Even the most intriguing content will fall flat if it is not easily accessible to your readers.
Consider your audience’s preferred locations. You now have client data, which enables you to understand your audience’s interests and demographics, but even this information is insufficient to determine the routes via which your consumers discover you.
You may get this information by using the Traffic Analytics tool. Select “Traffic Analytics” from the left panel’s main toolbar. Enter your domain in the text area to see your own analytics.
The program produces a plethora of data, which can be simply arranged using the report tabs. You’ll get visibility into the number of monthly visitors your website receives, the marketing methods that drive visitors to your website, and the countries from which your traffic originates.
Additionally, you’ll be able to monitor which websites customers visit after leaving your website, which may help you determine whether you’re losing any traffic to your competition.
What traffic statistics does not reveal is the stage of the buyer journey at which those visitors are. While one consumer who finds you via an organic search may be acquainted with your goods, another who finds you via the same channel may have never heard of you.
When developing content for a single marketing channel, you must consider the whole marketing funnel.
- What Is It’s Purpose?
Successful content must not only reach your audience, but also motivate them to act by demonstrating the benefits of your product or service.
Consider what issues, if any, your goods or services assist clients in resolving. You’ve analyzed your customers’ data to determine their preferences and areas of interest. Additionally, you’ll need to comprehend their dislikes, the issues they’re attempting to resolve, and the outcomes they aim to avoid.
One technique to collect “problem” data is to do research into the frequently asked questions about your product or sector. There are a few keyword research tools, such as the Keyword Magic tool, that can monitor typical search queries or inquiries.
Start by entering a target term linked to your product or service into the tool. We searched for the word “tennis shoes:” in this instance.
The tool will provide a list of comparable keywords and their associated data, such as average search traffic, keyword difficulty, and any characteristics that appear on the term’s SERP page. Utilize the toolbar to narrow the results to queries, and you’ll find the most often asked SEO queries.
For instance, the phrase “how to clean tennis shoes” is searched for 1,900 times each month in this sample. Individuals that look for this term have a specific issue (dirty tennis shoes) that they want to resolve. They’re probably at the start of their buyer journey and are seeking for answers or assistance.
You might write a tutorial on how to clean tennis shoes at home or construct a landing page for your specialized shoe cleaner. The concept is that you’re utilizing your content to educate or engage your audience about their issue and then provide a solution.
- What Makes Your Business Unique?
Your rivals are almost certainly already developing content about their goods and services. It will not enough to plan your content around the concept of giving another option in a sea of many. Additionally, you must demonstrate why your solution is superior than others.
Consider what makes your product superior to or distinct from that of your rivals. These elements — frequently referred to as “unique selling propositions” (USPs) — should be included in your content to demonstrate how your product brings value to your clients’ lives.
If you’re unsure of what differentiates you from your competition, you might begin by reviewing all of the greatest content in your sector. Utilize the Topic Research Tool to determine the sort of content that ranks for a certain subject in your nation.
The program provides similar topics, questions, and top content for the term you select. This information will assist you in identifying all of the content that is effective for your niche, which you can then study to see how it may be improved.
Pay close attention to the content types that catch your eye. Is there a content kind that performs better than another? Are video or image-based results predominating in search results?
- How Will Your Information Be Delivered?
Your content’s format should be determined by your audience, message, and platform. The content plan will very certainly incorporate a variety of various content forms.
Consider the kind of content that have been effective on your marketing channel. Is it true that blog articles are more popular than emails? Do emails outperform whitepapers in terms of popularity?
Additionally, you should analyze what is genuinely appropriate for your market and message. Even though a certain form of content is popular, it is not necessarily the most efficient approach to communicate your message. Utilize whatever information you’ve obtained about your customers’ favorite channels and interests, as well as any traffic sources you discover through your investigation.
Your content plan should include a variety of formats, including text, video, photos, and more, based on the channels on which you operate and how your consumers explore.
- How Are You Going to Create Content?
After determining who your content is intended for, where it will be released, the message that will accompany it, and the manner in which it will be delivered, it’s time to schedule its development. The production and dissemination of content is a critical last step in ensuring that your content is viewed and results are generated.
You must choose who will be accountable for developing the content and how it will be created. Additionally, you’ll need to consider how and where you’ll publish the content when it’s developed.
It’s critical to plan for these processes to aid in budgeting, task management, and workflow management across teams. Additionally, it will ensure that your content is released at the optimal moment to maximize engagement and conversions.
Three Different Types Of Content Plans
Depending on the stage of the marketing funnel you’re targeting, your content plan may include the following:
• Brand Recognition
• Adjectives
• Adaptations
Planning Content To Increase Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a typical corporate objective. Creating top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content is one of the most effective strategies for promoting your business and gaining popularity.
What Is the Content of TOFU?
Brand awareness (or TOFU) content is used to inform prospective buyers about the existence of your brand and product. It’s more about marketing your brand than it is about selling a product.
You want these clients to get acquainted with your brand’s name and the characteristics that distinguish it. These are individuals who are unlikely to be familiar with your brand or goods.
What Purpose Should TOFU Content Serve?
• Educate a prospective customer about your business and offerings
• Demonstrate your company’s values
• Educate and inform
• Steer clear of “sales talk”
• Demonstrate how your product solves the customer’s issue
An Illustration Of Brand Awareness Content
Social media is the most prevalent medium for TOFU content. You have the chance to build relationships with communities and to promote your business.
Deadpool is an example of a brand that has effectively used TOFU content. The Deadpool trilogy made extensive use of social media to promote its films, even creating a Tinder profile for the eponymous character.
Planning Content for Keyword Rankings
Increasing your keyword rankings might assist you in driving organic visitors through Google and other search engines. Without creating content that is keyword-focused, it will be almost hard to rank for those terms.
What Is Search Engine Optimized Content?
Content that has been optimized for SEO has been updated to target a certain search keyword.
This form of content is not intended to market your product or brand to the reader. Rather than that, you’re concentrating on “selling” to Google. By include the term in your content, you may demonstrate to Google that you have the solution to the searcher’s question.
It will need more than just shoving your keyword throughout your content. You’ll begin by doing keyword research to determine the most appropriate terms to target.
You’ll use SEO content to target all phases of the marketing funnel depending on the keyword you pick. Consult our guide to the many sorts of keywords to determine who they target.
What Purpose Should SEO Content Serve?
• Concentrate on carefully selected keywords obtained via keyword research
• Correspond to the keyword’s search intent
• Create content that is similar to what is presently ranking for your keyword.
• Provide instructional and useful content
• Demonstrate to prospective clients that their issue has a solution
An Illustration Of SEO Content
The most popular kind of SEO-optimized content is blog posts and articles. Blogs are often instructive and instructional, and they may provide a solution to the searcher’s quest without explicitly selling to the client.
For instance, the Healthline website routinely ranks on the first page of search results for health-related terms by publishing well-referenced articles that address several issues in a single post.
Conversion-Oriented Content Planning
The ultimate corporate objective is to increase sales. While content is not often given priority at the bottom of the marketing funnel, it may actually result in a direct sale.
How Is BOFU Content Defined?
Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content is designed to appeal to the segments of your audience who are ready to purchase or act.
BOFU content actively promotes your product and aims to persuade your audience that it is a worthwhile investment. You aim to convert visitors and subscribers to customers in this section.
The audience for BOFU content is at the bottom of the marketing funnel. These are individuals who know precisely what they want yet are receptive to other brands. While they may be familiar with your product category, they are unlikely to be familiar with your business or why your product is superior.
What Is the Purpose of Conversion Content?
• Employ strong language
• In the opening paragraph, be clear about what you want your reader to accomplish.
• Incorporate visuals
• Prioritize outcomes above procedures
• Be precise
• Have recurrent or unambiguous CTAs
An Illustration Of BOFU Content
Email marketing is the most popular kind of conversion stage content. Emails allow you to communicate directly with a possible consumer who has subscribed to your mailing list. They have already indicated an interest in your goods; all that remains is to persuade them to act.
A landing page for your specialized shoe detergent would be an example of BOFU content. This landing page would have a prominent call to action, a summary of the advantages of using your shoe detergent, and any compelling offers that would entice the user to click the “buy” button.
Measuring the Success of Content
While creating the correct content and distributing it in the appropriate locations is critical, you’ll also need to be able to track its performance. Once you’ve begun publishing content, you’ll want to include a plan for tracking performance.
Plan to check your content at regular times after it is online to gauge its effect. Consider KPIs unique to your sort of content, such as share of voice for blog articles, engagement levels for social postings, email open rates, and landing page bounce rates.
To get this information, data tools such as Google Analytics and Semrush may be used. Keyword Manager enables you to monitor the ranks of the page content you write, while the Social Media Tracker keeps an eye on comments, shares, and what your rivals write.
Conclusion
Your content plan is critical to creating compelling content that converts. Regardless of where your clients are in the marketing funnel, you should be able to provide content that adequately communicates your brand’s and product’s purpose.
Create a content plan that focuses on each step of the funnel, and do research to have a better understanding of your audience’s location and interests. With little forethought and work, you may significantly improve the quality and receptivity of your content.
