content strategy lesson script - english

Content Strategy

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@Circus_St | www.circusstreet.com

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CONTENT CONTENT STRATEGY

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Chapter 1: Introduction

It’s hard to deny how effective good content can be. It pulls audiences in, it’s informative and personal, and - one way or another - it adds value. However, no matter how spectacularly amazing your content is, you’re going to need to take the time to put a solid strategy in place. Strategy is essential to the success of all things content: it gives you direction, and it’s the difference between a hopeful attempt to have some vague kind of positive effect, and a clear, purposeful and ultimately successful effort towards meaningful business impact. In this lesson we’ll be discussing the goals you’ll set that will form the backbone of your content strategy; the role that content plays in meeting customer needs and expectations across the customer journey, and we’ll be exploring the question that should be on everybody’s lips: how can I measure the impact my content is having? Let’s get started.So, let’s get started...



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Chapter 2: Setting Goals

When developing a content strategy, the first thing you’ll need to think about are your goals. What are you looking to achieve with your content, and how can it help you meet your overall business objectives? Every content goal should correlate to at least one of your business objectives - otherwise whatever you achieve risks not being aligned with the overall aims of your business.

To help you keep track of your progress, your goals should be SMART: that is, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. A good example might be a goal to “increase email subscribers by 30% within six months” or “increase employee satisfaction by 15% over the next year”. Metrics known as Key Performance Indicators - or KPIs - should also be established for each goal, but we’ll get onto those a bit later in the lesson.

Let’s begin by focusing on some of the more common goals you might look to achieve with your content.

First up: brand awareness. Effective content is a key factor in increasing the number of people who’ve heard of - and have a positive perception of - a business. Not only can good content increase brand recognition but it can be helpful in establishing your company’s values - improving your credibility and building your audience’s commitment to your brand.

Increasing website traffic is another common goal many businesses look to achieve with content. Since so many people hear of a business through search engines, content plays a major role in bringing potential customers to your website. In fact, over 80% of consumers search online when looking for products and services, so if your content isn’t working to drive traffic to your site, you’re missing a trick.

Another thing to consider is how you might use content to nurture relationships with your customers, and staying top-of-mind with both current and potential customers is a very achievable goal when it comes to content...

Well thought out and innovative content has the ability to nurture long-term relationships with your customers and keep them engaged with what you have to offer. Personalised content is key here, helping to create an emotional connection between a customer and a business. Customers who find content helpful, moving or entertaining are not only likely to view your brand in a positive light but are also more likely to share it with others, increasing your overall reach.



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Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign is a great example of personalised content that had a massive impact. Launched ‘down under’ in 2011, it was soon expanded to more than seventy countries. Instead of using the famous logo we all know and love, the campaign saw to it that the most popular names in each country were placed slap bang in the middle of millions of cans and bottles in circulation, and some were even in braille!

The campaign allowed Coca-Cola to appeal to customers on a much more personal, individual level, giving them the impression that they had a product created especially for them. Coca-Cola then encouraged these customers to share pictures of their ‘namesake’ with the hashtag #shareacoke - which is still widely used today. Recently, the campaign has been relaunched in Australia and Coca-Cola even added a skill to Amazon’s Alexa that allowed customers to use voice commands to redeem a free personalised coke.

Next, let’s talk about subscribers. These people - who’ve agreed to give you their contact details in exchange for information on your business - are a huge asset. The importance of providing your subscribers with valuable content cannot be overstated - it’s a great opportunity to both retain existing subscribers and add to the ones you’ve already got, so make sure that whatever you drop in their inbox is worth their time.

You should avoid sending content for the sake of it that could easily be deemed unnecessary or irrelevant, as this might just lead to your subscribers hitting the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’ button.

Subscribers are one thing, but turn them into leads and they become even more valuable to your business. Lead generation is a common content goal which is especially important in the B2B arena, where things like whitepapers, reports, free trials or demos can be exchanged for details like an individual’s job title and email address, in a process referred to as ‘gating’. But, you don’t want to scare off any potential leads, so it’s advisable to begin any lead gen campaign with some free content to avoid potential barriers to gaining those all-important customer details.

An award-winning example of this type of content comes from software giant SAP. To create awareness of its new artificial intelligence tool, SAP launched a free nine-episode podcast called ‘Searching for Salai’. A fictional narrative that focused on the themes of tech, humanity and...time-travel...the podcast was designed to motivate listeners to visit the SAP blog, which contained more detailed material that was gated, for the purposes of lead generation.



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Although it can be difficult to directly link a piece of content to an actual purchase, increasing sales and revenue is another common goal to look to achieve with your content. Here, businesses should consider the impact that well planned out product content can have, with detailed product descriptions, product images and customer reviews all playing a role in assisting sales growth.

As well as an increase in sales, you’ll also want to see an increased return on investment - which can be equally hard to quantify. However, think about how your content can reduce your costs: providing detailed ‘self-service’ support content on your website, like a good FAQs section, could well reduce your customer service costs, which might increase your overall return on investment.

All the goals that we’ve mentioned are by no means the be all and end all - there are other goals you might seek to achieve with your content and we’ve only touched on a few. And, although some pieces of content might support or even fulfil more than one goal at a time, it’s best not to place too much emphasis on trying to achieve this. Instead, clearly define what it is you want your content to achieve, because alongside this you’ll need to be thinking about the audience you’re creating it for...



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Chapter 3: An Audience-First Approach

Whether you operate a B2C, B2B, or any other business model, in almost any buying process there’s a journey that a customer takes from first realising a need for a product to actually purchasing it. This is typically called the customer journey and it represents a way of thinking about the various ‘stages’ and associated thought processes that customers go through when deciding on the products or services they’ll ultimately purchase.

At each stage of the customer journey, you’ll need to provide content that both meets customer needs and expectations, and helps to move them from one stage to the next. Now, depending on your business, these stages may be called slightly different things, but we’ll refer to them as awareness, consideration, decision and retention.

The first stage in the customer journey is awareness, and this is where potential customers realise they have a need and start looking for a business that can fulfill it. But, what types of content might customers expect to find at this stage?

Let’s say a customer is looking for a new mirror after an unfortunate accident with a less than sturdy screw. At this point in their journey, they use a search engine to try and find a business where they can buy a replacement and also seek out recommendations from relevant accounts on social media.

Because customers may have limited knowledge on the businesses available to them at this stage, content should provide information and establish trust. A business should make sure the customer views them as an expert and should frame their content around the customer’s needs - like providing articles on how to make sure a wall can actually support a mirror, or a detailed blog post on the correct tools to use when indulging in some DIY. Even videos, infographics or podcasts that tell the story of a brand can help to pique a customer’s interest.

Gated content works well at this stage, as businesses can use the details that customers provide to maintain contact with them through promotional emails and content that’s tailored to their interests.

However, you shouldn’t focus too much on selling anything just yet. At this point the focus should be on getting the customer to the consideration stage, where they can begin refining their ideas about what they’re looking for and begin more in-depth research. They might even have a short-list of potential businesses where they’re considering spending their hard-earned cash. So, content should reinforce brand



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messaging and highlight the benefits and quality of a business’s products and services. Materials like email newsletters, webinars and tutorials work well here, as do product comparisons and case studies.

For some products, mobile apps and augmented reality can really seal the deal at this stage. IKEA is well known for its PLACE app which allows customers to use their mobile device to superimpose items of furniture in a room, providing a preview of how a product might look once purchased. Similarly, beauty company L’Oreal lets customers try out different types and shades of makeup on their own selfies before making a purchase.

So, we’ve made it to the Decision stage. Customers at this stage are ready to make a purchase - but don’t overlook the opportunity to create content that gives customers a little nudge towards completing a transaction. Customer testimonials and reviews are very persuasive at this point: getting confirmation on how well a product worked for someone else can be the final push a potential customer needs to make a decision.

Terms and conditions or even your returns policy may be just what someone needs to make their mind up. Granted, these pieces of content aren’t always the most intriguing bits of information, but they really matter, so you shouldn’t overlook their importance.

Now we’ve reached the next stage of the customer journey: retention. Encouraging customer loyalty is important, and you’ll want to create content that facilitates that. FAQs and how-to-videos can support the customer post-purchase and maintaining contact with them through newsletters and promotional emails can be just as beneficial: knowing that customer care doesn’t end the moment they hand over their money will go a long way to encouraging future purchases.

Now, one important thing to note is that while we’ve discussed the types of content that can move customers along each stage of their journey, we should also recognise that this idea of the ‘customer journey’ can be applied to other departments in a business.

Take...Human Resources, or HR, for example. Among other HR-related responsibilities, recruitment can be approached in a similar way to the customer journey. Content that you use to attract talent should aim to move an interested individual along each stage of the hiring process - for example, from an applicant



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becoming aware of a job opportunity because of an ad placed on a jobsite, to applying for the role after watching a company’s recruitment video.

Don’t miss a trick by forgetting the importance of creating content that retains employees either. Employee retention is one of the biggest challenges that HR departments face, so it’s important that you think creatively about the type of content that can be used to engage your employees and keep them happy.

One good example of this comes from Heineken. In 2019, the company ran an engagement and recruitment campaign called ‘Go Places’ which features videos of employees of varying levels of seniority from across the company talking about the challenges they faced in their role and the ways they overcame them. The focus was on telling ‘real’ stories and the campaign was a great success, resulting in a higher quantity and quality of employment applications.

We now understand the journey that our customers take on their way to making a purchase and the different ways content can meet customers’ needs and provide value across each stage of that journey. But we can’t just assume they’re all the same. So, how can you work to better understand your customers to ensure that you can create the best content to suit them?

The key way that any business should go about this is by developing personas. These are fictional representations of your target audience and are created to ensure that whatever is published is highly relevant and valuable, and speaks to your audience in language that they’ll understand and find compelling.

The point of developing personas is to create a series of character ‘portraits’ that will give content creators a deep understanding of the mindsets of the people that they want to engage. Personas aren’t just lists of characteristics. They’re incredibly detailed profiles that should include demographic data, geographic location, information on personal values, motivations, frustrations, interests, needs and pain points - anything that can influence someone’s decision-making process.

When conducting research for your personas, don’t forget to gather information on how your customers consume content, where they prefer to engage with it and the devices they use.

Different individuals will have their own preferences on the types of content they prefer and your personas should reflect this. Personas should also distinguish



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between people who are more emotionally motivated, who might perhaps prefer personal stories or entertaining content, as opposed to those who are data-driven.

Without personas, a business will lack the all-important understanding of its target audience that is so essential when it comes to content creation and distribution. By doing the research to help you pull together detailed profiles, you’ll be giving your business the best chance of creating content that will engage your customers and meet their needs - wherever they are on the customer journey.

Once you’ve taken steps to better understand your audience, it’s time to think about how you’ll create content that will provide value and meet their expectations - so that’s what we’ll be exploring next.



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Chapter 4: Creation & Measurement

Okay, you’ve established your goals, clarified who your target audience is and the journey they might take to purchase your products. You’ve also worked out where you can add value across the customer journey and how to create content that will suit your personas.

But what comes next? Well, before you begin to make any new content you should conduct a content audit - an examination of your business’s pre-existing content - to see if there’s anything that was made previously that can be repurposed.

You can also use analytics tools to give you an insight into what content has worked for you in the past to help give you direction about what to make in the future! By reviewing the level of traffic and engagement each piece received, the number of user interactions, each piece’s overall reach and whether it generated any conversions, you’ll be able to see which pieces were successful in supporting your business goals.

It’s also helpful to review search engine rankings to get a better understanding of how and where your content is appearing in search results, and if and how it’s bringing in traffic.

But...how do you actually go about conducting a content audit?

When conducting an audit, keep an eye out for so-called ‘evergreen’ content. Like the trees that maintain their green leaves all year round, this content will stay ‘fresh’ for quite a while so it won’t require frequent updates. Think...the FAQs or the ‘About’ page on your site, how-to guides, tutorials, testimonials, and informative or historical pieces.

An audit might also reveal content that still has value but needs to be updated, like a demo video or maybe an infographic that needs updating with current statistics. Or you might find that some of your existing content is still perfect for your needs, but maybe it hasn’t achieved the reach and engagement you were hoping for, so it’s possible that you need to rethink your promotion tactics.

Part of your audit should be dedicated to reviewing your competitors’ content. There are a number of tools available that can analyse and provide this data, like where a website ranks when certain keywords are used in search engines or which content generates the most traffic, shares and interactions. Think about collecting and



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reviewing this data on your competition to gain insights and ideas about how to improve your own content.

An essential part of designing a content strategy is deciding how your content will be created. Content creation requires a wealth of skills, so you’re likely to need employees who are adept at writing, editing, graphic design, content promotion, and have knowledge of SEO and project management - to name just a few.

While it isn’t impossible to find people skilled in all these areas, some companies choose to outsource content creation to freelancers or agencies, depending on the size of the project and the budget available.

When deciding whether to create content in-house or to outsource it, consider the cost. Freelancers are paid per project, while agencies are a resource that you can return to, as they’re usually held on retainer. Agencies usually have teams with a range of skills who can handle your projects, whereas freelancers often work independently. So, depending on the type of content you need, you might have to bounce from freelancer to freelancer.

Bringing in an external source of creativity may also bring a new perspective and fresh ideas. And any potential concerns you might have about ensuring they understand your industry and speak in your brand’s ‘voice’ should easily be resolved with a well considered content brief.

A content brief should provide freelancers or agencies with very detailed information on the goals you want your content to achieve, brand guidelines, deadlines, audience personas, even target keywords and promotional budget.

Whether you work with an agency or a freelancer make sure you clarify from the beginning how you’ll communicate with each other during the process. Who in your company will they report to? How often will you check-in and how will each piece be reviewed and approved? And, how often will the overall relationship be evaluated? By keeping lines of communication open, you limit the possibility of miscommunication and a piece of content going too far off track.

As well as having a plan in place for what you want your content to achieve, who you’ll create it for and how it’ll be created, you’ll also need to properly plan how you’ll go about measuring the effectiveness of each piece of content.

The ultimate effectiveness of your content strategy should be evaluated in light of your business goals, and the needs of your target audience. Is your content leading



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to high quality traffic, good levels of engagement and sharing, and fulfilling your business’s desired outcomes? If not, which areas are failing in this regard, and why? To measure the success of your content, you’ll use Key Performance Indicators - or KPIs - which are metrics that will help you evaluate whether your content is actually achieving its goals.

Now, it’s important to bear in mind that your target or benchmark for each KPI will depend on your business. While a piece of content with 500 shares might be less than ideal for one company, for another it might indicate that their content is performing well. So, make sure that you know what ‘good’ looks like for your business...

There are a lot of metrics out there that can help you monitor the performance of your content, but let’s explore some of the most popular ones...

First up - take a look at how many times a piece of content is viewed. A low number may mean that your content isn’t being promoted well or your audience isn’t interested in what you’re saying.

Speaking of which, how well are people engaging with your content? The frequency with which users share or interact with your content can show you a lot about how engaging it is. Depending on the type of content this will differ, so you should use different metrics to account for how engagement will look for different content formats. Paying attention to what customers do and don’t engage with should influence the types of content you make going forward.

You also need to keep an eye on your bounce rates, where people leave your web pages without taking any action. High bounce rates can indicate that the content users interacted with didn’t appeal to them or that the calls-to-action directing them to any next steps aren’t well positioned or clear. This can have a negative impact on your search rankings, so high bounce rates should certainly be an area of focus.

Your content should always aim to push your site higher up the search results. Keyword rankings, the number and quality of backlinks to your site, and traffic from organic search results, are all good metrics to help monitor how well your content is performing in regards to SEO. If numbers in these areas are consistently low, explore how you can better optimise your content for SEO purposes. You might want to conduct keyword research into the terms customers use to search for your business, and optimise your content so that it appears prominently for relevant queries.



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Next: is your content achieving your desired outcomes? Analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you to clearly identify whether your content is leading to conversions on your site - which are the actions that you want users to carry out. Besides making a purchase, conversions might be subscriptions, event sign ups, or free trial registrations - ultimately, you decide what counts.

Regardless of the conversions you want to achieve, low conversion rates clearly show that your content is not performing as it should.

And let’s not forget return on investment, which is how you’ll calculate whether the revenue you’ve generated outweighs your costs. While it appears to be a simple equation, calculating ROI in relation to one piece of content can be tricky, because you’ll need to take a number of factors into account, like the cost of creating the content, the cost of hiring employees, freelancer or agency costs, and the cost of material and equipment - and then compare it with the revenue you’ve generated.

Establishing an effective content strategy is an ongoing process - you have to be in it for the long-haul if you’re hoping to see results. The very nature of content itself, the ways people find it, and how it’s created are constantly evolving.

Even the formats themselves are changing: the popularity of podcasts continues to rise, customers are becoming more comfortable with voice search, and AI is helping companies to not only personalise content but work out where it should appear in the customer journey. So, make sure your strategy is adaptable and be willing to embrace the changing trends you see around you. Thanks for joining us.

content strategy lesson script - english

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