5 Steps to a Content Marketing Plan that Works

The Web’s a noisy place. To be heard, you need quality custom content built around a content marketing plan to drive engagement, retention and sales.

According to research by the Custom Content Council, consumers have this to say about custom content:

• 90 percent find it useful
• 78 percent believe it shows companies want to build good relationships with them
• 73 percent prefer information from articles over traditional advertisement copy
• 61 percent feel better about and are more likely to buy from a company with custom content

A high-impact content marketing plan that shows you’re listening focuses on quality and quantity to build your voice and increase visibility. Kick the quick, dirty and keyword-heavy content of yesteryear to the curb, and use crowdsourcing to develop quality content at scale in 5 steps:

• Define goals
• Develop personas
• Establish mission
• Crowdsource content
• Evaluate metrics

Step 1: Define goals

Producing content with no end goals is like making a cake by randomly throwing ingredients together and hoping for the right batter. With crowdsourcing, a content specialist uses your pre-defined goals or works with you to define strategy for direct impact on at least one of three areas: revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction.

Step 2: Develop audience personas

Your audience is the king of your content castle, and effective content carries the keys to the kingdom. To grab those keys, your content must address the needs and wants of your audience with a consistent voice. Managed crowdsourcing means a team helps craft personas through answering three questions:

1. Who is your audience?
2. What are their pain points and informational needs?
3. What will make them care about what you offer?

Step 3: Establish your mission

A mission statement centered on the information needs of your audience personas is essential. A mission to produce epic, sharable content to drive ROI includes three aspects:

• The main target audience
• What you deliver to the audience
• How the audience benefits

Content specialists work with you to draft your mission or to shape custom content based on defined guidelines.

Step 4: Crowdsource content

Quality content is valuable to your audience and consistent with your message. It’s dynamic, fresh and frequent. It flows into your overall brand presence. Crowdsourcing delivers on all these measures and offers guidance on the best types of content. CrowdSource workers bring your content to life with engaging content based on audience personas and goals while meeting scale and delivery needs.

Step 5: Perform metrics and tweak

Metrics ensure your quality expectations are continuously met to keep strategy focused on specific goals and your mission. Measure the effectiveness through a variety of metrics:

• Page views
• Social shares
• Bounce rates
• Number/quality of sales leads
• Conversion rates
• Retention rates
• SEO rankings
• External links

Using those metrics, take a hands-on or hands-off approach in utilizing a content specialist to tweak your strategy to maintain a high-impact content marketing plan.

Whether you need a 360 solution or content created to fit an existing content marketing plan, crowdsourcing lets you create content cost effectively with the quality, scale and delivery your enterprise needs to maximize ROI. How can your business benefit from custom content that gets you noticed?