is your content marketing campaign aligned with your objectives?

Check that your company's content marketing is consistent and targeted to meet your objectives

When you go out on the street, do you know in advance where you are going and why? This question can be extrapolated to marketing, as every campaign should be aware of what it aims to achieve before it starts. In this sense, every action within content creation should be linked to one or more marketing objectives. In turn, these are based on the company's overall goals, usually related to profitability.

It is important to check whether your content marketing efforts will be rewarded. To do this, consider the four questions below before you go ahead with your strategy. They will also help if you are thinking of joining content marketing, but have not yet started.

1. first of all... Have you set your goals?

To ensure that your content marketing work meets your company's objectives, you first need to be specific about what goals you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. To do this, it is essential to write your objectives according to the SMART criteria. Let's look at what each of these acronyms consists of:

• specific. Specification avoids generic approaches.
• measurable: At the end of the campaign, you must be able to measure the results.
• attainable, taking into account the situation of the company and its possibilities in order to be realistic.
• relevant: The objectives must be useful for the company and for the customers.
• timely: Eternity does not exist in marketing: a deadline must be set in order to optimise the work.

An example of a SMART goal would be: get a minimum of 20 visits to each blog post in the first month. As you can see, it meets each of the criteria and reveals that this is a small brand that is just starting out in content marketing. Once this goal is reached, the company could set another one like this: get 50 leads created by the content offer in one month. Thus, goal after goal, the company will optimise its strategy to achieve the highest possible profitability.

With the requirements for goal setting learnt, you might ask yourself another question: why is it so important to set SMART goals in marketing? We can see it:

• they are the key to planning. Having an end purpose makes it easier to organise time, resources and teams.
• they direct all the actions of the campaign. Objectives ensure that every action in content marketing brings the company closer to its goals. Always ask yourself if what you are doing is really useful in this sense. If not, maybe you should review your objectives and adapt your work to them.
• they offer a realistic goal. Objectives need to be achievable because they need to be tailored to the business. This way, your content creation strategy can increase in ambition as you achieve your goals. This improves the working environment and allows those involved to feel that their efforts are rewarded.

With your objectives clear, it's time to ask the second question.

2. does the content address your buyer persona?

The ultimate purpose of this type of marketing is to attract new customers by adding value to their brand experience with quality content. But, in order for your target audience to find your materials relevant, you need to make sure you are specifically targeting those people. If your company has not yet established its buyer persona, you can solve this by downloading our guide on this topic.

In this regard, it is important that you design an editorial plan paying attention to three key elements of content marketing: subject matter, copywriting and design:

• focus on the topics you are an expert on that are related to your services. This way, you can create an image of credibility and trust so that users perceive you as a source of valuable information. In addition, you will be targeting your potential audience and you will facilitate that, at the last stage of the buyer's journey, they become customers.
• establish a unified writing style adapted to your audience. Use a friendly tone using the second person, as well as clear, concise and easy to understand writing. To do this, reduce the use of technical terms and acronyms: you may be read by many people who do not know these terms. Even so, when you use them, remember to explain their meaning the first time you mention them.
• design content to make it attractive and easy for users to consult. In this strategy, the content and the way it is presented are equally important. In addition to quality information, it is essential to design and structure the materials as well as possible according to the format and the dissemination channel.

In addition to reaching your audience, make sure your content has an impact on them by telling stories that generate emotions and satisfy users' needs, thus creating a bond with your buyer personas that will facilitate the final conversion.

3. do you take into account the buyer's journey?

To achieve your more or less ambitious objectives in terms of customer acquisition, you must create content adapted to each stage of the buyer's journey (the basis of inbound marketing). Remember that a contact who has just arrived on your website is not the same as one who has been receiving your newsletter for months.

In this way, you will be able to offer adapted material to any of your contacts at any stage of their journey. The objective is to attract their attention, improve their experience with the brand and pave the way for them to become a customer. To do this, you must enrich each of the four stages with specific content:

• attraction. Here it is necessary to solve doubts and problems of users who are looking for simple and effective solutions. Therefore, being the first contact they will have with your company, try to convey a professional and trustworthy image by creating useful content and, at the same time, exposing the values of the brand. And always remember to arouse positive emotions. Example: an article on your blog explaining the steps to publish a video on YouTube.
• interaction: After the first phase, now is the time to offer the best relationship with users to enrich their journey. Here, the content is more elaborate and professional than in the previous stage. Example: an ebook on how to establish a long-term video marketing strategy.
• conversion: Now it's time to convince your contacts to buy your products or services by generating a need to buy, e.g. a video with statements from satisfied customers demonstrating the benefits of your product.
• delight: Here, the objective is to create loyalty among buyers so that they generate a close bond with your company and feel part of it. It is important to give a sense of community and show them that their opinions and suggestions are very important for the brand. Example: a thank you and welcome video explaining the benefits of being part of your company.

Thus, by offering diversified content, you will make it easier for a new contact to become a customer. To do this, do not forget to use different formats and dissemination channels (without forgetting the video), include calls to action (CTA) and links or hyperlinks in your articles to enrich their passage through your company.

4. Once the campaign is over, will you be able to analyse its results?

For your content strategy to be aligned with your brand's objectives, it is essential that you are able to measure the impact of your campaign. Otherwise, how will you know if you have obtained successful or less than expected results? What is the point of setting initial objectives if at the end you do not know if they have been met or not?

For this, it is important to know the metrics you will use to analyse your content marketing campaign. And not only at the end of your objectives, but also during its development. Tracking is essential to be able to adapt to the needs of the campaign and try to redirect your efforts to optimise them. In other words, the goal is to improve your strategy and check what works and what does not.

Platforms like HubSpot offer many useful tools for your content strategy, so decide which metrics you consider relevant and how you are going to calculate them before reporting results.

Ultimately, your content marketing strategy should always keep in mind the specific goals of this campaign, but also the overall goals of your company, so that you optimise time and resources and provide a better experience for your potential customers.