LBD #027: Creating a Content Marketing Strategy [Learn from HubSpot]

TL;DR & Summary

Many marketers make the mistake of creating a content marketing strategy without a clear objective. This leads to scattered efforts that fail to deliver results.

By following the three steps (mentioned below), you can create a content marketing strategy that drives traffic, leads, and conversions.

Creating a content marketing strategy is within your reach, and it can help you achieve your business goals. With a well-planned strategy, you can increase your brand awareness, engage your audience, and establish your authority in your industry.

By the end of this issue, you will be able to create a content marketing strategy that is aligned with your business goals and drives results.

  1. Define Your Objectives
  2. Identify Your Target Audience
  3. Create a Content Plan

In today’s competitive landscape, the enemy of content marketing is the lack of direction. Without clear objectives, you’ll end up creating content that doesn’t resonate with your target audience or drive business results.

It’s a frustrating experience, and it sucks. However, by creating a content marketing strategy with clear objectives, you can avoid this trap. You’ll be able to create content that speaks directly to your audience and drives traffic, leads, and conversions.

The primary reason why creating a content marketing strategy is crucial is that it helps you define your objectives. Without clear goals, your content will be scattered, and you’ll struggle to measure your results.

Here are some common reasons why people don’t create a content marketing strategy:

  • Lack of knowledge and resources
  • Fear of failure
  • Lack of time
  • Inability to measure results

By following the three steps outlined below, you can overcome these challenges and create a successful content marketing strategy.

Step 1: Define Your Target Objective

The first step in creating a content marketing strategy is to define your objectives. What do you want to achieve with your content? Do you want to increase website traffic, generate leads, or establish thought leadership in your industry?

It’s essential to set specific, measurable, and achievable objectives. Defined objective can help you identify the audience as well.

For example, you might aim to increase website traffic by 20% within six months or generate 50 leads per month from your content. Once you’ve defined your objectives, you can create a plan that aligns with your goals.

HubSpot understands this and has created a range of content that caters to its audience, which is primarily composed of marketers and salespeople.

Their blog covers a variety of topics related to marketing, sales, and customer service, SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, and more.

HubSpot also offers webinars, ebooks, and guides that cater to the needs and interests of their target audience. Which is primarily based on their objective to help marketers & salespeople with their content.

Step 2: Create Quality Content for Your Audience

The second step in creating a content marketing strategy is to identify your target audience. Who are you creating content for, and what are their pain points and interests? It’s crucial to understand your audience’s needs and preferences to create content that resonates with them.

You can use tools like Google Analytics and social media insights to gather data about your audience’s demographics, behavior, and interests.

The next step is to create quality content that resonates with your audience. HubSpot excels at creating high-quality, educational content that helps its audience solve their problems and achieve their goals.

Their blog posts are well-researched, informative, and easy to read, and they also include images, videos, and infographics to make the content more engaging.

HubSpot also offers free templates, tools, and resources that their audience can use to improve their marketing efforts.

What HubSpot does with their content to make them more eligible to rank higher?

  • Answer boxes through out posts (optimized for featured snippets)
  • Bold anchor texts (anchor texts are an indirect ranking factor)
  • bullet points for skimmers

Step 3: Promote & Distribute Your Content

The third step in creating a content marketing strategy is to create a content plan. Based on your objectives and target audience, you can develop a plan that outlines your content topics, formats, and channels.

Your plan should include a content calendar that outlines the topics, publishing schedule, and distribution channels. You can also plan to repurpose your content into different formats and use social media to promote your content.

Creating a content marketing strategy is crucial for driving business results. You can create a strategy that aligns with your objectives, resonates with your audience, and drives traffic, leads, and conversions.

Distribute & promote your content so that it reaches your target audience. HubSpot has a robust distribution and promotion strategy that includes social media marketing, email marketing, and search engine optimization.

They have a large social media following and regularly post their content on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. HubSpot also sends out regular newsletters to its subscribers, highlighting their latest blog posts and resources.

Additionally, they use SEO best practices to ensure that their content ranks well on search engines and is easily discoverable by their target audience.

SEO this week (News Updates)

  1. Now you can define the favicon of your site and that will appear in the SERPs against your domain name. This will help with branding & people recognizing your brand logo are more likely to click on your link, hence helping you with more traffic from search.
  2. DuckDuckGo enters the AI Race with their own AI Assistant, Duck Assist
  3. Google has updated guidelines for mobile & desktop search. Search results will change how they appear on mobile.

Clickworthy Resources

  1. How to get more signups to build an email list using organic traffic?” by Jake Ward
  2. How to create engaging content (a way not many are talking about)?
  3. How to create content for internet? [The unconventional way]
  4. OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 is coming next week. Are you ready for it?

Discover New Tools

  1. Roamaround: Simply enter the destination, date and & # of days you’re planning to say.
  2. Arvin: AI based resume & cover letter writer
  3. Sheldon AI: One chrome extension for all your tasks on the internet

If you’re looking forward to winning online, here’s how I can help:

  1. Sit with you 1-on-1 & create a content marketing strategy for your startup. Hire me for paid consulting.
  2. Write blogs, social posts, and emails for you. Get in touch here with queries (Please mention you found this email in the newsletter to get noticed quickly)
  3. Join my tribe on Twitter where I share SEO tips (every single day) & teaser of the next issue of Letters ByDavey.