Bill Gates once said that “content is king” this can be traced to the fact that content marketing is one component of digital marketing that has a relationship with almost every other component in digital marketing.

Take for example, if you decide to engage in internet marketing activities like social media marketing, email marketing, SEO or SEM, etc, content is one major thing you will have to deal with, it’s one component that you will have to deal with while implementing other components in digital marketing.

If you are not familiar with some of the other components of digital marketing mentioned above, check out this article here, where I explained some of the most used terms and phrases in digital marketing, understanding these terms will help you learn digital marketing faster and get more from this post.

Back to our discussion, the bottom line here is that content is essential when it comes to digital marketing, if you are going to be implementing digital marketing in your business or you wish to become a digital marketing expert, it’s necessary you understand the concept of content marketing and also have an idea of how to implement content marketing in business or for your client.

In this post, we will briefly look at what content and content marketing are all about, forms of content, sources of content and how to implement content marketing in a business or brand.

So, let’s get started.

Overview Content Marketing 

Just like we have explained in a previous post, content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable and useful content, with the end goal of converting potential customers into leads and hopefully buying customers.

In a nutshell, content marketing is all about creating content and marketing the content with the hope of achieving a business marketing objective.

The objective of implementing Content Marketing either as an individual or business includes increasing sales, expanding customer base, increasing brand awareness, increasing brand credibility, Nurturing leads, engaging an online community and so on.

Content marketing, whenever and wherever it’s implemented is always aimed at achieving its goal or objective, which we will be discussing soon.

How to implement content marketing in your business with the 5 step process

This 5 step process is like an overall content marketing implementation process broken down into actionable steps.

The first step in the process is:

1. Goal or Objective

The first step in the process of content marketing implementation is defining your Goals or Objectives.

You need to define what you hope to achieve with content marketing as an individual or business, your goal or objectives is the summary of your content marketing strategy.

One question that will help you figure out what your objective is; “why do you want to do content marketing?”

The questions can be for you as an individual or as a business, what is the essence of adding content marketing to your overall marketing strategy?

Giving an honest answer to this question is important because it will determine what other steps in this process will look like.

While this can be applied in any form of business, let’s take a beauty shop as an example here.

Let’s say you run a fashion business and you want to add content marketing in your marketing strategy, your objectives could be to create awareness, attract a kind of people to your platforms, entertain, educate and inform them about fashion and style, once you have your objective clearly stated out it will be much easier to deal with the next step of the implementation process.

2. Strategy/planning

In the second step in the process, you are breaking down the overall objectives into concentrated activities, this is where you draw the map for your objectives.

This is where you put the targeted audience for your business into consideration, the form of content, the type of content to produce and the channels that can be used to get this content to its intended audience.

In the case of our fashion business, Let’s say, on your content marketing objective, you decided to use content marketing to create awareness, attract people to your business and increase paying customers.

Your content strategy/planning can be something like this in writing…

By implementing content marketing people will be aware of me and my business, which will create more business opportunities like exposing me to people who value my works… (more can come in here). To achieve this, I will share tips for personal styling, my experience and stories, I will also share my skills, knowledge and thoughts for people who wish to learn about the fashion business or how to personally style themselves. I will use both written and video forms of content, I will use channels like YouTube, social media and professional blogs to distribute my content, where I can reach my potential customers attract them to my platforms, build trust and with the aim of turning them into buying customers… etc.

The above strategy contains actionable steps that can help you reach the objective of your fashion business, it will help you define who your potential audience is, the form and source of your content and the channels through which your content can be distributed. All of these can serve as guidelines for creating workable plans.

Here are some questions that will help you craft a workable strategy.

  1. Who are my potential customers (target audience )?
  2. What form of content suit my potential customers?
  3. How am I going to create my content?
  4. Which channels will I use to distribute your content?
  5. 5. How am I going to convert your potential customers?

3) Content Creation

This stage deals with the creation of content.

Your overall objective and strategy are put into perceptive in this stage.

Knowing the tools and skills needed for the production or creation of your content is important.

For example, if you will be writing blog posts sharing your stories, your experience, skills or knowledge through written content, focusing on improving your writing skills and learning more about tools needed for publishing your writings will be necessary, same with when you decide to share pictures and videos of your styles and collections.

Questions that can help you get this stage right include:

  1. What kind of content will be suitable for my audience?
  2. What skills do I need to create the right kind of content for my audience?
  3. What tools do I need to create the right kind of content for my audience? 

4) Marketing

Marketing for your content must have been defined in your strategy.

In this stage, it’s all about getting the content to the intended audience, it’s more about exploring the channels you defined in your strategy

Using online marketing channels to implement content marketing can be blog, video channels like YouTube, email, etc.

You can reach your target audience through organic or paid traffic.

This is also where you define how to optimise the awareness and potential customers you will be attracting to your platforms, what do you want them to do once they find you, DM you, like your page, follow you, subscribe to your channels or email, etc.

Some of the questions to ask include:

  1. What form of marketing will I use, free or paid or both combined?
  2. How will I distribute my content?
  3. What actions do I want my potential customers to take after consuming my content?

5) Evaluate 

In this stage of the process, you evaluate to see how well all the above processes are doing, it involves evaluating to see if the overall objective is achieved, addressing any issue and adjusting when and where necessary.

Here are some questions you can ask to help you measure your content marketing strategy.

  1. Are my reaching the right audience?
  2. Are my contents adding value?
  3. Are the potential customers that I’m attracting converting?
  4. Is the cost per acquisition reasonable, putting the lifetime value (LTV) of your conversions into consideration?

Summary

To sum it all up, first, you decide what you wish to accomplish with content marketing, next develop a strategy, a sound plan which will include, your potential audience, your source of content, the form of your content, digital channels to use, such as social media, blog, email etc. then create your content putting into considerations all these important factors.

When your content is set, use the right channels to distribute your content, monitor, evaluate and adjust your strategy if necessary, you can use these processes to implement content marketing in any business.

Hope this post helps you understand how to implement content marketing.

If you have any questions about implementing content marketing, you can ask in the comments below.

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Emmanuel Onyewuchi

Emmanuel Onyewuchi aka Digitalchuksemma is an Ex Computer Engr/Instructor turned Digital Mentor, a minimalist, Wished to be a father to 3 Kids from a loving wife. He founded the Digital Optimizers Hub in 2021 to fix the problem of an outdated educational system and lack of ICT and digital adaptability by young Africans. He has thought hundreds and Thousands of students ICT and digital skills in the classroom and online. Currently, he is the CEO and Lead Trainer at Learnvale,com, the new school online for the next breed of digital optimizers and is on the mission to help 100,000 people optimize digital tools and resources to build a thriving business that enables a freedom lifestyle.