Content marketing is a marketing strategy. It is focused on the creation and distribution of valuable content with the purpose of attracting and retaining a specific, targeted audience. It builds interest in your brand and develops relationships and trust with your audience. But understanding what content marketing is doesn’t necessarily help you launch a content marketing effort. In our latest presentation, we map out the six steps you can take to launch a content marketing initiative.

1. Launching A Content
Marketing Initiative
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2. Introduction
To lay a proper foundation for a content marketing initiative,
it is important to appreciate the difference between content
strategy and content marketing, and to understand how they
work together to accomplish your goals.
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3. Content Strategy
“Content strategy guides the creation, delivery, and governance of useful,
usable content.”
~ Kristina Halvorson, BrainTraffic
● Content strategy can be about marketing, but it doesn’t have to be. It is
also about sales, human resources, and customer service. It covers all of
the content your brand creates.
● Content strategy helps you manage your content so you can find, use, and
update it more effectively. It also helps determine your content needs.
● Think of content strategy as a form of information architecture that
manages content throughout its lifecycle.
● Content strategy makes sure that all content — whether for internal or
external use — has a defined purpose that tells a consistent story and uses
consistent language.
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4. Content Marketing
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and
distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a
clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
~ The Content Marketing Institute
● Content marketing is a marketing strategy.
● The primary goal of content marketing is to help brands deepen their
relationships with their audiences so they can develop and nurture leads
and thereby increase sales.
● It focuses on telling your brand’s story to a specific, external audience. It
also identifies the channels that will be used to engage the audience.
● Content marketing drives targeted traffic to your website.
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5. Benefits of Content Marketing
● Content marketing raises awareness, drives traffic to your website,
generates leads, and drives sales.
● A content marketing initiative builds interest in your brand, develops trust
with your audience, and enhances your reputation as an expert within
your field.
● By answering questions posed by your target audience, it helps your
brand be found online and improves organic search results.
● By answering the questions your audience poses at all stages of the sales
cycle — from awareness through the close of the sale — content
marketing informs and engages your audience.
● Rich content in the form of blog posts, articles, information sheets, white
papers, and case studies, helps your sales team move a prospect through
the sales funnel. Content can serve as a valuable resource for prospective
clients, your sales team, current clients, and customer service.
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6. Crafting a Content Marketing Strategy
The following pages outline the six steps you must take to
craft an effective content marketing strategy.
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7. 1.
Goals + KPIs
A good content
marketing
strategy must
start with the
end goal in mind.
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8. Set Your Goals + Define Your KPIs
● Why do you want to undertake a content marketing initiative? What do
you hope to accomplish?
○ Are you trying to increase brand awareness?
○ Are you looking for more audience engagement?
○ Do you want to drive targeted traffic to your website?
○ Do you need to generate better leads for your sales team?
○ Do you need help moving leads down the sales funnel?
● Once you’ve identified your goals, you need to determine the key
performance indicators (KPIs) for each one. A KPI defines how you
measure success.
○ Brand awareness might be measured in press mentions.
○ Audience engagement might be measured in Facebook followers.
○ Google Analytics can identify an uptick in website traffic.
○ Newsletter sign-ups or gated downloads indicate lead generation.
○ The number of demonstrations scheduled indicates lead nurturing.
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9. 2.
Research
Who are your
audiences? What
do they need?
How can content
help them
achieve their
goals?
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10. Do Your Research
● The most effective content marketing initiatives address the goals, desires,
and needs of your audiences.
● Identify your all of your audience segments. This includes your prospective
clients (and may include more than one type of client), but it also includes
influencers and your sales team.
● What questions does each of your audience segments have about the
services you provide? What are they struggling with? What resources do
they need that you can provide through content?
● Talk to as many members of each of these audience segments as you can.
How do they make a purchasing decision? What questions do you or your
sales team receive on a regular basis? What questions should prospective
clients ask? What are your pet peeves about your industry? These are all
ideas for future content development.
● Every piece of content should be developed for a specific purpose and a
specific audience. Always keep the needs of your audience in mind.
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11. 3.
Content Audit
What content
have you already
created? What
purpose does it
serve?
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12. Conduct a Content Audit
● Pull together all of the content your brand has already created. Where
does this content reside? It is on your website? Is it still in progress? Is it a
print piece, published article, downloadable resource or guest post?
● For each piece of content, identify the purpose, intended audience, and
value of the content to that audience. If any of these are unclear, decide
whether the content needs to be updated or if it should be retired.
● Identify those pieces that need to be completed, updated, or promoted
more effectively.
● Determine how each piece of content can be used to accomplish the
goals of your content marketing initiative.
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13. 4.
Content
Strategy
Pull together
everything
you’ve learned
and develop a
simple content
strategy.
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14. Elements of a Content Strategy
● What are the primary and secondary goals for your content marketing
initiative?
● Define your value propositions. Each piece of content must be in keeping
with your values.
● Describe your audience personas. What are their needs and expectations?
Where do they get stuck? Where do they need reassurance?
● Outline your brand guidelines, including your brand’s voice, look, and feel.
How do your brand guidelines manifest themselves in your writing and in
the images and graphics you use?
● Define your keyword, blog, email, and social media strategies. What are
the key themes your content will address? Are you going to pursue guest
blogging opportunities or write articles for industry publications? How
often will you send out an email newsletter? How do you plan to use social
media?
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15. 5.
Editorial
Calendar
How often will
you create
content? Where
will it be
published? How
will it be used?
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16. Plan Your Content Development
● Use what you learned during the research phase to brainstorm a list of
content ideas. You can start with blog posts, but you might also include
webinars, white papers, case studies, information sheets, ebooks, videos,
podcasts, and infographics.
● Describe each idea in a few sentences. Identify the key theme, keywords,
target persona, and call to action.
● Think about the various formats in which this content can be presented
and how it might meet the needs of your audience at each stage of the
sales funnel — from discovery through retention.
● Consider how you might modify the content you are developing to reach a
different segment of your audience. An informational blog post could be
modified to address the needs of each of your audience segments.
● Select images and graphics to go with each piece of content. Images don’t
have to be literal interpretations, but they should help tell the story.
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17. 6.
Promotion Plan
How will you
promote your
content?
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18. Spread the Word
● Share your content with your email list. These are the people already
engaged with your brand and they are interested in what you do. Ask your
subscribers to share the content with their network.
● Promote your content through your social media channels.
● If your audience is part of a specific group on LinkedIn or another social
channel, participate in those groups. Engage with your audience and look
for opportunities to share your content naturally. This is also a great place
to get ideas for content!
● Depending on the goals of a particular piece of content, you might want
to promote it through paid advertising.
● Did a particular prospect, sales person, or client inspire the content? If so,
share it with them directly and ask them to share it with their networks if
they find it valuable.
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19. Content Marketing + Advertising
Content marketing and advertising can work in concert to
improve both your short-term and long-term results.
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20. Better Together
● Content marketing enables advertising by improving your quality score
with Google. A high-quality website is critical to a successful digital
advertising campaign.
● Awareness comes before conversion. Content marketing supports your
advertising by building brand recognition and providing resources to
generate leads, inform your prospects, and help your sales team close the
deal.
● Content marketing can not only attract a targeted audience by providing
helpful information, it also provides your campaign with high-quality
website visitors who can be retargeted through advertising.
● Content marketing improves your SEO, which improves your quality score
with Google and helps inform paid search initiatives.
● Content marketing provides high-quality materials your sales team can
use to nurture the leads acquired through your advertising campaign.
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21. Questions? We’re Here to Help!
Whether you are interested in content marketing, SEO, or
advertising, our team is here to help you reach your goals.
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22. Anne E. Richardson
Anne has more than two decades of experience
planning and implementing media campaigns
across multiple advertising platforms. Working
at full-service shops from Portland to Boston,
she gained invaluable knowledge of the
complexities within the vast media marketplace.
Between agency assignments, she earned her
M.Ed. and taught English and history in the
public sector. Her dual careers naturally
converged towards an entrepreneurial path. Our
clients value her deep understanding of the
ever-changing paid media landscape, her
strategic focus, and her detail-oriented
approach to campaign management. We love
her commitment to maintaining the highest
standards and her passionate vision for our
future. Email Anne.
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23. Erica A. Holthausen
Erica began her professional life as an
attorney in Boston, but most of her career
has been in project management,
marketing, and business operations. She is a
contributing writer for several magazines
and is a guest lecturer at Northern Essex
Community College, where she teaches
nonprofit professionals about marketing. She
brings these varied experiences, along with a
wicked sense of humor, to her work at
Richardson Media Group, where she is
actively engaged in project management,
content development and SEO. Our clients
value her impressive writing talents, and
stellar organizational skills. We love her
willingness to dive in head-first to keep our
projects running smoothly. Email Erica.
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24. Marco Mottola
Marco started his career in advertising working
at radio stations in Anchorage, Alaska, and
Orlando and West Palm Beach, Florida. He
launched his digital career while online
advertising was still in its infancy, later building
out the digital department for an 8-station
broadcast conglomerate. He executes complex
digital advertising campaigns that use paid
social, paid search, mobile in-app, video, display,
retargeting, and a host of additional audience
delivery methods. Our clients value his
technical know-how and dedication to
optimizing digital campaigns that produce
measurable results. We love his stories about
growing up in Alaska and his propensity for
targeted digital media buying. Email Marco.
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25. Thank you!
Richardson Media Group, Inc.
59 Bow Street
Portsmouth, NH 03801
(603) 373-8866
anne@richardsonmediagroup.com
www.richardsonmediagroup.com
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