5 Ways to Build a Powerful Content Marketing Strategy
By Jordan Eller
Kapost reports that 91% of marketers have a content marketing strategy, but only 42% say they’re using it effectively.
Their ebook, The Complete Guide to Building Your Content Marketing Workflow, explores this performance gap, and then presses marketing teams to determine and document their content purpose, themes and topics, resources, and schedule. To help marketers avoid biting off more than they can chew when it comes to creating and maintaining an effective content schedule, Kapost walks them through the value and mechanics of content marketing workflows – “… sequence
These workflows are comprehensive and disciplined, but it seems like they’re more suited for larger companies, which typically have bigger marketing divisions.
Many life sciences organizations don’t have the luxury of size. They’re start-ups and they’re small, but they have big ideas – which can be huge differentiators if they’re concisely and compellingly communicated. Small organizations typically have limited budgets, personnel, priority, or time to devote to any kind of marketing, let alone a well-crafted content strategy.
For life science marketers whose time is short, whose budgets are lean, and whose content dreams are lofty, we’ve listed the best ways to kickstart your content marketing initiatives below:
What is your “why”?
Why are you creating content? Are you doing it because you heard that it’s good for SEO? Are you doing it because you need something to put in your newsletter every month? Or are you doing it because you want to connect with your audience and get them interested in your brand?
Content exists to serve your audience. It’s the #1 way to communicate with the people you’re trying to sell to. If you’re not trying to deliver unique, relevant content to your audience, it’s time to realign your objectives.
Pick a theme (or themes)
Your content needs a theme. Without a theme, your content marketing strategy will be generic and aimless. Here are some things to consider when choosing a theme for your content:
- What are your business goals?
- What are the needs of your audience?
- Which industry trends are important to your customers?
Additionally, think about what your customers do (and don’t) know, and tune your content based on whether they should be made aware of certain industry trends. These topics are usually worth supporting with content.
Repurpose, re-create, and re-imagine
Just because content should be unique doesn’t mean that you can’t utilize a specific subject in a variety of ways.
For example, let’s say you’re hosting a webinar on clinical trial optimization. Regardless of how many people attend the webinar, you could then take that subject and transform it into an eBook, or an infographic, or a whitepaper. Then, you can develop a social post or email campaign that links to all this fresh, repurposed content.
There’s a variety of ways to use content to engage with your audience, so always make sure to keep thinking ahead!
Use your experts
Your life science organization is filled with brilliant thinkers and subject matter experts. These experts are invaluable assets and can help shape (and even write) the content that can drive engagement rates and increase conversions.
However, not every expert is suited for content creation. One solution for this is to ask one of your marketers to interview the expert and gather their insights for use later.
Consistency is key
This is where many life science organizations come up short: staying consistent with a content marketing strategy.
Consistency is more important than length, subjects, optimization, or uniqueness. Being able to consistently deliver content to your audience is the core of a successful content marketing strategy.
Start with setting a realistic schedule. Can you commit to 2 blogs per month, or 1 webinar per quarter, or 5 social posts per week? Experiment and choose a cadence that you can deliver on, and your audience will thank you with their loyalty.
Developing a content marketing strategy is crucial if you want to communicate with your audience. If you want to learn more about how to create an impactful content marketing strategy, check out our blog, The Key to Nailing Your Content Marketing Strategy.
