Learn About the 5 Key stages of the Content Marketing Process. Get tips and Advice to Help You with Each Step.

1. CONTENT
MARKETING
PROCESS
ESSENTIAL STEPS IN THE
5

2. Content Marketing is being embraced by businesses of all shapes and sizes. The objective
is to build a relationship with your customer by providing helpful content in your area of
expertise rather than content that directly promotes your products or services.
It's all about
Selling Less, Giving More
INTRODUCTION
To Make this strategy work for your business you need to implement an effective Content
Marketing Process.. This will help you to think about your content (articles, guides, videos,
podcasts etc) as part of a 'Bigger Picture'' and ensure your Content Marketing Objectives are
achieved.
In This Guide You Will .......
Learn Why You Should Think About and Manage Your
Content as Part of a Co-ordinated Content Marketing
Process.
Understand the 5 Essential Stages in the Content
Marketing Process.
Let's Get Started!

3. CONTENT MARKETING PROCESS
What is a Content Marketing Process?
Your Content Marketing Process is the system you put in place to co-ordinate your
content goals and activities. It separates the key stages of your content production line
and identifies what tasks are required in each step.
Be more efficient with your time.
Streamline your Content Marketing Tasks.
Maintain Brand Identity and Quality Control.
Make the Content You Produce Work harder for your
business.
Strategically Grow Your Audience.
Enable Market Research-led Strategies.
It Will Help You to.......
Let's Look at the 5 Essential Stages of the Content Marketing Process

4. 5 ESSENTIAL STAGES

5. 1. STRATEGY
It is necessary to map content to your buyer persona. Think about their specific pain points and
what information is useful to them.
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is creating
content for the sake of it. This can result in a whole lot of
wasted time if you don't first know who you are producing
content for and why. Here's what you need to ask yourself :
Next, Plan Your Content Marketing Output
It's OK to have more than one buyer persona. For example if you sell sports equipment you may
wish to target beginners, advanced or professional levels separately. What do you know about
the behaviours and habits of these customers? You need to know your audience in order to
cater for them and speak to them.
This could be to build brand awareness, to gather an email database or to establish thought
leadership on a particular aspect of your industry. Remember, Content Marketing is part of your
overall Sales and Marketing Plan. Always set content goals based on your business objectives.
What business goals do you want to achieve?
Who are your target customers?
What type of content are these customers looking for?

6. 2. PLANNING
Set up a Topic Library for Research and Idea Generation.
Start with about 6 topic themes/categories and list ideas in
each.
Economise Content with Re-purposing and Gateway
Content Goals.
Populate an Editorial Calendar.
Implement Work Flow System and Quality Checks.
"Fail to Plan - Plan to Fail"
We have all heard this a million times before, but it rings true once again - and loudly so -
when it comes to Content Marketing. Businesses often fall into the trap of inconsistent
content delivery. This happens, for example, when we don't set dedicated time aside to
write a blog and then panic every so often about getting one done. The result is usually
pointless - a piece of content that is below standard and not designed to meet any
specific content marketing strategy goals.
Tips for Planning Your Content

7. 3. CONTENT CREATION
Always give value to your reader.
Maintain a consistent brand voice and style
across all content.
Use enticing titles.
Break Content into digestible segments.
Optimise for search engines.
Be visually stimulating.
Try out different content formats.
Blogs
Articles
SlideShares
Infographics
Images
Videos
Podcasts
Social cards
White Papers
Guides/E-books
Webinars
Quizes
Interctive Online Tools
Content Formats
Now that you have the right content strategy and
plan in place, it is time to start creating the content
itself. It's important to remember that we live in an
Information Age. The internet is flooded with
material, both good and bad, so you need to make
your content stand out. The only way to do that is
to be better than good; be brilliant. That means
making your content enticing at a glance and
strong enough to keep your audience
engaged until the end.
Tips

8. 4. DISTRIBUTION & PROMOTION
Owned Media - On-site Publishing
Owned Media - Social Media Management
Owned Media - Email Marketing/Newsletter
Earned Media - Influencer OutReach and Link-Building
Paid Media - Social Media Amplification
Paid Media - Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
Producing brilliant content is one thing. Getting it in front of people is another. Ask yourself:
I
Likewise, if no one knows about your content then how can it work for you? The answer, of
course, is that it can't. Where is the 'marketing' in that?
In order to make content marketing work you need to take active measures to distribute and
promote your content in the right channels for your target audiences. There are 2 ways to do
this - Owned Media & Paid Media. You need both. You must be prepared to invest money to
ignite your content if you want it to be a success.. Bear in mind that most 'overnight
sensations' are initially propelled to viral status by sponsored campaigns. Even if your content
is not the viral type you can still sell yourself short if you don't help it to find an audience.
"If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there, does it still make a sound?"
Channels

9. 5. ANALYSIS & LEARNING
Use Google Analytics and Tag Manager.
Track Goals and Conversions.
Learn About Your Audience.
Organise Audiences into Re-marketing Lists.
Understand What Content Drives Engagement.
Understand What Promotion Channels Deliver.
Conversion Rate Optimisation - Do More of What Works and Stop What Not.
The last step in the Content Marketing Process is to analyse your results.. It is a really
important stage because it is the one that helps you hone your content marketing
strategy and improve your offering. The learnings you acquire will feed back into your
overall strategy and so your cycle starts again.
You notice that a particular subject area gets a very high
response from your audience when you publish content
about it. It's possible you've discovered a content niche,
which you now want to address in your strategy.
EXAMPLE
TIPS

10. THANK YOU!
Thank you for taking the time out to read this guide. I hope that you found it useful and
will be able to implement what you've learnt here into your
own Content Marketing Process.
If you'd like more tips, guides and graphics about Content Marketing
or Digital Marketing then head over to our website resource area: www.conker.ie/blog
I'm always happy to hear from my readers, so if you have a comment or a question
please feel free to post it here and I'll be sure to get back to you.
www.CONKER.ie