Content marketing develops marketing communications (articles, videos, infographics) based on relevant and valuable content to attract, engage, and retain potential customers. This is effective because it’s easier to share engaging messages with your target audience than push out sales or promotional messages.

Content marketing is a marketing strategy by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media used to attract, engage, and retain an audience. This approach promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.

Content marketing strategy includes a few key elements and this article will point out some of them.

• What Are the Four Elements of a Strong Content Marketing Strategy?
• What Are the 4 Four Strategy Elements in Marketing?
• What Are the Elements of a Content Strategy?
• What Are the 5 Essential Elements of a Content Marketing Strategy?
• What Are the Four Components of a Creative Content?
• What Are the 4 P’s of Digital Marketing?
• What Are Content Marketing Strategies?
• What Are the 7 Elements of a Marketing Plan?

What Are the Four Elements of a Strong Content Marketing Strategy?

An effective Content Marketing strategy should have these four core elements to be successful: audience personas, brand positioning, business case, and an action plan. Let’s see why these elements are essential and how you can start implementing each of them.

1. Audience Personas 

You can’t really tell the story of your brand if you don’t know who you are telling your story to. That’s why your first step will be to identify the audience you are attempting to target with your content. There are multiple ways to do this: 

• Survey your existing customers 
• Research industry trends 
• Know who you aren’t trying to target 
• Keep close tabs on whom your competitors are targeting

Once you have your audience in mind, you can use our free Personas tool to put them into writing. You’ll want to be able to clearly and succinctly communicate who your audience is to all stakeholders and anyone involved in brand messaging.  

2. Positioning Your Brand and Story

A clearly defined brand and product positioning will help you provide a consistent experience for your audience and build the right image through all your content marketing channels.

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These questions will help you brainstorm your positioning in the market:

• Who are my existing and potential customers, and what are their goals?
• Who are my top competitors, and how do they market their brands?
• What is my brand’s unique value?
• What problems does my product help to solve?
• What makes it a better choice over my competitors?

Use this information to shape the main pillars of your brand story. A brand story is a summary of your company’s history, mission, purpose, and values. It can help you choose the right direction in your content marketing strategy, identifying to right messages and topics to translate with your content.

Focus on the following elements:

• The hero of your story (your customer) and their goals and challenges
• Your brand’s personality
• The purpose of your brand and key brand values
• The way your product and your content can help reinforce all the above and empower your hero 

Use this free brand storytelling template to complete this step and document your efforts. This step can be especially beneficial for small businesses and startups that can leverage their unique backgrounds and identities.

3. Business Case and Content Marketing Goals

Providing value to your audience is an integral part of a successful content strategy. But in addition to attracting new readers and followers, content marketing should drive your business forward.

Identify business goals your company needs to achieve and figure out how content marketing will bring your company closer to those goals. How many resources do you need to invest in your content strategy and what results do you want to generate?

A documented business case will help you better understand the benefits, costs, and risks of implementing a content marketing strategy in your company and convince the decision-makers of its value for the company.

4. Action Plan

Finally, you will list out your main content marketing campaigns and projects on deck for the year and add them to your content plan. Think about how they will achieve the content marketing goals you’ve previously set for your business.

Doing this will allow you to think through each content strategy step. Make sure to include the following information:

• Content formats you want to focus on
• High-level content topics and campaigns
• Channels for content distribution and promotion

To decide on your optimal content formats and channels, you’ll need to look at your historical content performance and further analyze your audience.

What are the 4 Four Strategy Elements in Marketing?

The four Ps are a “marketing mix” comprised of four key elements—product, price, place, and promotion—used when marketing a product or service. Typically, businesses consider the four Ps when creating marketing plans and strategies to effectively market to their target audience. 

Although there are many other “marketing mixes,” the four Ps are the most common and foundational to creating a successful marketing plan.

The four Ps form a dynamic relationship with one another. Rather than one taking priority over the other, each is considered equally important in crafting a strategic marketing plan. 

Product

The product is the good or service being marketed to the target audience. 

Generally, successful products fill a need not currently being met in the marketplace or provide a novel customer experience that creates demand. For example, the original iPhone filled a need in the market for a simplified device that paired a phone with an iPod, and the chia pet provided a humorous experience for consumers that was utterly unique.    

As you are working on your product, it is essential to consider your target audience and their unique needs. Some questions to consider when working on a product include: 

• What is your product? 
• What does your product do? Does the product meet an unfilled need or provide a novel experience? 
• Who is your product’s target audience? 
• How is your product different from what others offer? 

Price 

Price is the cost of a product or service. 

When marketing a product or service, it is important to pick a price that is simultaneously accessible to the target market and meets a business’s goals. Pricing can have a significant impact on the overall success of a product. For example, if you price your product too high for your targeted audience, then very few of them will likely purchase it.

Similarly, if you price your product too low, then some might pass it up simply because they are concerned it might be of inferior quality and cut into your potential profit margins. 

To identify a successful price, you will want to thoroughly understand your target audience and their willingness to pay for your product. Some questions you might ask yourself as you are considering your product’s price include:

• What is the price range of your product’s competitors? 
• What is the price range of your target audience? 
• What price is too high for your audience? What price is too low? 
• What price best fits your target market? 

Place

Place is where you sell your product and the distribution channels you use to get it to your customer. 

Much like price, finding the right place to market and sell your product is a key factor in reaching your target audience. If you put your product in a place that your target customer doesn’t visit—whether on or offline— then you will likely not meet your sales target. The right place, meanwhile, can help you connect with your target audience and set you up for success. 

For example, imagine you are selling an athletic shoe you designed. Your target market is athletes in their early twenties to late thirties, so you decide to market your product in sports publications and sell it at specialty athletics stores. By focusing on sports stores over shoe stores in general, you are targeting your efforts to a specific place that best fits your marketing mix.  

To decide the best place to market and sell your product, you should consider researching the physical or digital places that your target audience shops and consumes information. Some questions to consider include: 

• Where will you sell your product?
• Where does your target audience shop? 
• What distribution channels are best to reach your target market? 

Promotion

Promotion is how you advertise your product or service. Through promotion, you will get the word out about your product with an effective marketing campaign that resonates with your target audience. 

There are many different ways to promote your product. Some traditional methods include word of mouth, print advertisements, and television commercials. In the digital age, though, there are even more marketing channels that you can use to promote your product, such as content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing.  

 Some questions to consider as you are working on your product promotion include: 

• What is the best time to reach your target audience? 
• What marketing channels are most effective for your target audience? 
• What advertising approaches are most persuasive to your target audience?

What Are the Elements of a Content Strategy?

At its core, a content marketing strategy is your “why, who, and how.” Why you are creating content, who you are helping, and how you will help them in a way no one else can. Organizations typically use content marketing to build an audience and achieve at least one of these profitable results: higher lead quality, faster conversions, and increased revenue.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “content is king,” and with a thoughtful vision, it can also be an integral tool that helps you get the attention of your audience. We’ve identified 10 core elements that will help develop your organization’s content marketing strategy or take it to the next level.

1. Brand guidelines

The foundation of your strategy comes from your brand identity which should include clear guidance on personality, voice, and tone. Successfully communicating your brand identity through your content is critical if you want content marketing to work. Developing and putting to use your unique brand book will help create a consistent voice and tone across the different assets and channels your organization uses. 

2. Marketing objectives

Your organization’s marketing strategy helps ground your team on its big-picture goals and objectives. To reach your content marketing goals, it’s helpful to align them with audience needs and streamline your content creation process. This will make it easier to reach your goals, and to be successful, they should be: 

• Specific: State exactly what you want to accomplish.
• Measurable: Determine the metrics for success.
• Achievable: Go for challenging but attainable results.
• Relevant: Make sure the goals support your marketing strategy.
• Time-bound: Outline the period in which you’ll work on achieving the goal.

3. Customer persona(s)

Understanding your audience helps align your content strategy to the addressable needs of your market. A customer persona is a fictional character that is developed based upon different attributes for a role or segment. These can include demographics like:

• Role and responsibilities
• Challenges and pain points
• Influence on the purchase decision
• Goals and objectives
• Solution requirements

Most importantly, work to uncover a unique insight about your target customer that the rest of the industry overlooks or under-appreciates. Often, it will serve as the creative catalyst for a successful content strategy or campaign direction.

4. Data and market research

Data and research help your organization understand the current conditions of the market as well as where it’s going. The content that your organization shares with its audience generates data and insights that can help your team fine-tune its content strategy.

Market research provides insights into what other brands have done to improve their strategy. Learning about the market includes learning about your competitors, as well. If you know what content your competitors share with their customers and prospects, you can use that to your advantage.

Tools like social listening can help your organization understand how prospects and buyers discuss your product and industry online. These valuable insights can help your organization improve its content and gain an edge.

5. Customer journey map

Once you’ve defined who your customer is, a journey map outlines your persona’s needs and how you can meet them at every stage of the buyer’s journey. An effective map is a visual representation of the customer journey based on what the buyer is thinking and feeling at every stage of the decision-making journey.

By understanding what a buyer is thinking and feeling, you can create content that best supports them as they consider your product or service. 

Customer journeys are not linear, but there are several ways your organization can be agile and adapt to changes. Savvy marketing leaders use a variety of methods to represent the journey, from post-it notes on a boardroom wall to Excel spreadsheets to infographics. The most important thing is that the map makes sense to those who use it.

It helps if your journey map is tailored to your specific customer profile (and how you reach and interact with them), but a few guiding principles and good design approaches apply. Here is what is typically included in a customer journey map:

• Buying process
• User actions
• Emotions
• Pain points
• Solutions

6. Content-market fit

At times, the content a company creates doesn’t always satisfy the customers it’s trying to attract, either because the content doesn’t reach them, doesn’t fit their needs, or both. For example:

• Findability issues: content is published without first considering how potential and existing customers might find it → time and effort are wasted on content that nobody sees.
• Relevance issues: content is published without making sure it is what potential and existing customers are interested in/need → time and effort are wasted on content aimed at the wrong audience.

As important as it is to understand your customer, it’s also important to understand the current state of content in your industry to look for opportunities. Be sure to also pay attention to the state of media behavior and content consumption formats, including device usage and visual trends.

The key is to find your unique place to stand out and add value to the conversation. Simply put, the goal of a content-market fit is distributing content to attract and retain customers.

7. Process

Every effective content program requires an iterative process that helps your team focus on what’s important: translating creativity into effective content. To build an efficient content marketing machine, consider the following:

• Group content into a few core buckets (eg, videos, blogs, ebooks, microsites)
• Design a ‘best practices’ workflow for each core content type. Think about where each content type begins, who owns the business requirements and brief development process, when/where resources need to be turned on or off, how feedback and approvals are coordinated, how to measure each step, and who’s responsible for the final output.
• Meet with stakeholders and members of your team to see whether your ‘best case’ process is possible and makes sense for them. Identify what might be missing or that you haven’t thought of?
• Test the process. Does it work? Where are the gaps? Where are the breaking points? Processes will mature and develop over time. Stay cognizant of production time and resource requirements. Regularly check in with teams about any frustrations.
• Incorporate habits. Making your new workflows a habit is what will allow you to truly scale your content strategy. Enforce your new workflows internally and find champions at each checkpoint to help you.

You may also want to diagram your process, along with key challenges and opportunities for improvement, with a “swim lane” diagram:

8. Internal communications plan

An internal communications strategy can be a recipe for success, but without a detailed plan to execute that strategy, there may be a breakdown in your process. Your content team can bring in diverse voices — your head of communications, customer marketing, product marketing, and senior marketing management — to ensure they’re aligned with your strategy. This is particularly useful if your content team is operating as a ‘service’ function for other parts of the organization. 

9. Content calendar

Consistency is essential when building a digital presence, and a great way to have everyone in the loop is to manage a joint content calendar. This tool will help you plan and stick to a consistent schedule of publishing content. It can include information about the content format, time of posting, channels, and so on.

By scheduling content on a shared calendar, you can enable proper visibility and coordination across different initiatives, teams, and regions.

10. Ongoing analysis

It’s often said “a writer’s work is never done,” and the same is true when you’re responsible for defining a brand’s ongoing narrative. In general, “test and learn” is a sound operating philosophy, and it’s particularly true with content. Place small bets, iterate, gather data, listen for feedback, and then scale your successes.

Building great content effectiveness requires patience and perseverance, so it’s important to progress incrementally, milestone by milestone, and break down your ideal outcomes into actionable programs and phases.

What Are the 5 Essential Elements of a Content Marketing Strategy?

When implemented correctly, your content marketing campaign could yield three times as many leads as traditional marketing methods while costing 62% less. So if you want to create a successful content marketing campaign, you need to get a few elements right.

Here are six of the most essential elements of a successful content marketing campaign:

1. A defined target audience

Successful content marketing is all about creating content that’s useful to your audience rather than highly promotional sales messages. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute found that 90% of the top performing B2B marketers aim to deliver content that satisfies their audience’s informational needs.

But to create content that’s useful to your audience, first you need to know who your audience is. Unless you have a clear idea of who you’re creating content for, you will have no idea what is useful for them. This makes it crucial to clearly define your target audience when developing a content marketing campaign.

You can start by taking a closer look at your current customer base. Who are they and why do they buy from you? Take a closer look at their demographics such as age group, location, occupation, etc. This will give you a better sense of what kind of audience is interested in your brand and your products.

Next, take a look at who your competitors are targeting. Are there any audience groups that you missed targeting? Are they overlooking any potential customers? Use these collective insights to build a stronger definition of what your target audience looks like and what their values and pain points are.

2. Clear and measurable goals

If you want to set up a successful content marketing campaign, you need to have a clear idea of what success looks like to you. That’s why it’s crucial to set a clear and measurable goal for your campaign so you know what to measure your performance against.

Your goal may be to raise brand awareness, build brand credibility, generate leads, or something else. When you understand the most common content marketing goals, it can give you a better idea of what you can achieve. According to the CMI study cited earlier, 81% of B2B marketers have used content marketing to create brand awareness, for example.

But make sure whatever goal you define is highly specific with a clear timeline. For instance, you can’t just vaguely aim to generate more leads because there’s no way to really understand the impact of your campaign.

Instead, you should aim for a specific number of leads within a specific time period. So in this case, maybe your goal is to generate 2X more leads within the next three months.

However, make sure your goal is realistic as well. You could set a specific and measurable goal, but if it’s impossible to achieve, it can demotivate your team. You may not have enough writers or resources to keep producing the amount of content required to achieve the goal, for example.

This makes it crucial to take your current resources and circumstances into consideration when developing a goal for your campaign.

3. Relevant buyer personas

Just like you require buyer personas for other marketing efforts, successful content marketing also requires relevant buyer personas. In fact, the previously-cited CMI study also found that 77% of the most successful B2B marketers use personas in content marketing.

There’s no way you can cater to the needs of your entire audience through a single piece of content. Your audience may be comprised of people with different values and job roles. So you need to produce content that will address each of their unique needs if you want to succeed.

One customer’s priorities when choosing a product or service may be completely different than those of another customer. For instance, an agency using your social media management and reporting tool may prioritize white labeling features and the ability to switch between multiple accounts.

But for a small startup, cost may be the biggest concern. They may be looking for something that fulfills the purpose without spending too much.

You need to create content that effectively addresses these unique concerns. This makes it crucial to define the unique buyer personas that your campaign is going to target. You can use Socialbakers’ AI Persona Mapping tool to create a comprehensive visual representation of each persona.

In addition to choosing a name and avatar for each persona, you can define them by their demographic traits like age and education. You can further add business-related characteristics like their industry, job title, organization size, job responsibilities, challenges, etc.

This tool allows you to really get down to the specifics of each buyer persona. So everyone in your team can refer to it and use it when creating, publishing, or promoting content for your campaign.

4. Diverse range of content

Setting up a blog is crucial for every content marketing strategy because you want to produce informative blog posts to engage your audience. However, the type of content you should use for your campaign doesn’t just end at blog posts. Not everyone may be interested in reading your blog posts; some may prefer visual content and others may like audio content.

So make sure your campaign includes a diverse range of content that will intrigue different types of personas. You could create product demo videos, infographics, ebooks, and webinars. You could also host podcasts, develop case studies, and conduct interviews with industry influencers.

You should also consider the effectiveness of specific types of content based on the lifecycle stage of your customers. According to the CMI study cited earlier, blog posts, articles, ebooks, podcasts, and videos are the most useful at the awareness stage.

Whitepapers, webinars, case studies, and interactive content are ideal for the middle stages. And case studies and in-person events are best for the final stage of the buyer’s journey.

Keep a close eye on how each of these content types performs so you know which ones to place more focus on. You can conduct an experiment by tagging your content with unique UTM parameters that you can track to measure their individual performance.

This will help you understand how much traffic each type of content is driving to your site. You’ll get a much more comprehensive look at your content’s performance aside from just tracking engagement and shares. However, UTM tagging on a large scale can be time-consuming, not to mention difficult to keep track of.

You can use tools like UTM.io to create UTM templates that you can customize for each piece of content. This means you’ll be able to create multiple tagged URLs based on a single template. The tool also keeps a record of all of your tagged URLs so you never lose track of them.

5. The perfect content marketing platform

You may have the perfect plan for your content marketing campaign, but there’s only so much that humans can do to execute it. Without the right tools in place, your team could lose productivity, efficiency, and organization. And some aspects of your campaign, such as performance measurement, are impossible to perform without technology.

The CMI study also found that the most successful B2B companies make the most of technology in their content marketing efforts.

67% of the most successful marketers are advanced in their content marketing technology proficiency. 86% say they use technology to understand content performance. 73% also say that technology helps them understand their audience behavior and preferences.

So a successful content marketing campaign also requires the right content marketing platform. Invest in the right platforms for every aspect of your campaign – from planning and development to publishing and measurement.

For instance, Socialbakers can be used for the research and planning phase of your campaign, and it’s also perfect for publishing, project management, and social media management.

What Are the Four Components of a Creative Content?

1. Creating Great Blog Content

Think of the successful blogs you follow and you will probably find they have a few things in common. Above all, each and every one of them is probably unique; they reflect the writer’s personality, authority and expertise. Some may simply be informative, funny or entertaining. If you offer specialist services, your blog  should reflect your knowledge.

Your content should be  based on recognized, credible sources such as those archived in academic databases. Tools like Google advanced search operators will allow you to search within an authoritative domain such as ‘site:.edu’ or to search for trustworthy media sources.

If you deal in a specialized field like computers or law, provide a bibliography at the end of your post. Make sure your SEO is up to scratch, using tools like Yoast to improve readability and use the right keywords.

2. Videos In The 21st Century

Video has taken on a whole new level of importance in content marketing strategy,  with research by Vebu showing that around 80% of online traffic will consist of video by next year.

Video is known to have a high ROI, and currently around 88% of marketers are dedicating a larger percentage of their budget to creating impactful videos.

To ace your strategy, ensure your content is perfectly in line with your brand. For instance, if you deal in the luxury sector, your visuals should be rich, well styled, and high resolution. Video should always be clear and audio top-rated. 

3. Podcasts Are Growing In Popularity

In the time frame between 2013 and 2018 alone,  podcast ad spend increased by a whopping 1,344%. By the year 2022, the total adspend is expected to reach $1.6 billion.

Like your video and blog content, your podcasts should be informative, entertaining or authoritative. To receive good reviews and achieve a high velocity download rate, create a quality audio trailer that will give prestigious platforms reason to promote your show.

Ally with brand partners that can help you reach your desired audience, use SEO on your published transcripts, and create an amplification strategy  to promote your episode in the first few hours after its release.

4. Creating Great Social Media Content

Similar rules apply to social media as to blogs, websites and podcasts. All content shared should provide value in some way – either visually or through the information you provide.

To ensure content is published regularly and at peak times, use a tool like HootSuite, which allows you to program future content on a host of platforms – including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Regardless of whether you are posting informative or entertaining content, rely on beautiful imagery to support your words. Even the most newsy item can generate more interest if it is accompanied by arresting imagery or video.

What Are the 4 P’s of Digital Marketing?

The “4Ps”— price, product, promotion, and place — have been the cornerstone of a successful marketing strategy for over 50 years. And for good reason. Focusing on price, product, promotion, and place still makes perfect sense, even as consumers’ online behaviors change the ways in which we deliver our messages and communicate with our audience.

Process

In recent years, marketing leaders have increasingly come under pressure to deliver on organizational strategy and brand engagement. They are also responsible for the critical operational processes and marketing technology stack to support revenue goals and other business objectives.

The head of any marketing department must juggle strategy, internal processes, and personnel while coordinating technologies to profitably execute and prove ROI. However, the truth is that many marketers simply feel unprepared for these challenges. In fact, a survey by Deloitte recently found that 32.2% of CMOs feel they lack adequate tools and processes to measure success.

Streamlining your process to improve consumer relationships starts with a few key questions:

• Is your brand ready for today’s marketing environment? Do you have all the pieces in place?
• What tools would help you market to the correct audiences, stay relevant, personalize messaging at greater scale, and respond to interest immediately?
• How can you translate your company’s needs and goals into an operational marketing strategy?
• Can you justify the budget and quantify return?
• Will this solution fit with the company’s data governance or Master Data Management (MDM) strategy?
• Do you have the right stakeholders, bandwidth, competency, and partners to put all this in place?

Price, product, promotion, and place are just as important as they ever were, but each of the original Ps is dependent on adapting to new technologies and processes that deliver results. Effectively organizing your marketing strategy with the right CRM can go a long way toward solving many modern day marketing woes.

People

The key to communication in the digital age is personalization. Gone are the days when one mass message would work for every consumer.

Studies show that consumers are 80% more likely to make a purchase when brands offer a personalized experience. And as consumers demand more personalization, the people, internally and externally, who market your product become the bridge between the traditional Ps and the new Ps.

At its core, CRM is about people and building relationships. Adopting a functional CRM program can actually improve teamwork, communication, and consumer relationships by providing data to segment audiences and mapping out consumer touchpoints with your organization. Price, product, and promotion still matter to consumers—but without personalization and the people which enable those connections, audiences may never find your product or bond with the brand.

Platforms

Business is built around forming loyal relationships, and one of the most important parts of fostering those relationships is choosing the right tool to manage consumer data and help you get the right message out at the right time to the right consumer segment.

Choosing the most effective platform for your business is critical. According to Gartner Group, 55% of all CRM projects don’t produce results. A bad fit platform could be a costly mistake. Make sure you’re choosing platforms that fit the size of your business with a relatively painfree onboarding process that’s easy for the entire team to use.

Performance

The best platforms in the world won’t mean much unless you’re collecting data around the success of your organization. Some of the essential key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the success of your CRM are customer service, engagement, response time, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy.

Developing a solid CRM solution means bucketing and organizing the business processes and technology that support targeting, audience insights, consumer acquisition and retention, and, most importantly, conversion and loyalty. Then, and only then, can an organization map all of that to the consumer lifecycle and lifetime value for effective performance measurement.   

While technology has changed and evolved since the introduction of the original 4Ps, consumers’ main needs haven’t. They want to both feel valued and buy products that provide value. As the accelerating pace of technology and big data makes it necessary for CMOs to prove they are providing that value to consumers across all touchpoints, they must also directly link success to business objectives such as revenue and market share.

What Are Content Marketing Strategies?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.

Content marketing is a go-to tactic that’s proven to work. Also, it provides a competitive advantage. Take a look at what the data says about content marketing:

• Businesses with blogs get 67% more leads than other companies.
• Forty-seven percent of buyers view 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative.
• Companies that use content marketing see approximately 30% higher growth rates than businesses not using it.
• Seventy-two percent of business to business (B2B) marketers say content marketing increases engagement and the number of leads they generate.

Content marketing can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. A successful content marketing campaign should be manageable and sustainable. Take these steps to get started:

• Identify your audience. To create content for a particular reader, you need to have a clear idea of their priorities, challenges, and preferences. If you have detailed descriptions of your various segments, choose 1 or 2 to write for. Otherwise, craft profiles of your audience members and prospects before starting.
• Determine the right formats. The right format corresponds with what stage of the sales cycle you’re creating content for. Another important consideration includes what formats will best help you showcase value. For some, this will be a video; for others, a checklist.
• Decide who will write, edit, and proofread your copy. An audience will judge your content on its quality, and they should. Identify the right resource, internal or external, to create this work. Regardless of who creates it, hire a professional proofreader to review anything before it goes out the door.
• Determine how you’ll distribute. Will you post content on your site, email it to people, or print it for an event? Start with “where” you know your audience is likely to be, and choose formats that make sense. For example, an article makes sense to send via an email, a checklist or worksheet can be posted on social media, and a buyer’s guide is a good follow-up to a pitch.
• Choose a sustainable schedule. It’s easy to make a content marketing plan that’s overly ambitious. Once you know the target readers and the formats, create a short-term (3-6 months) plan for a realistic number of content elements you can create, based on your budget and resources. Keep track of how long it takes you to create each piece of content, so that you can build that time into your schedule.
• Follow best practices. Compelling content is clearly written, without jargon that only you and your peers will know. It should also include how-to advice. A short, relevant, actionable piece of content is best.

What Are the 7 Elements of a Marketing Plan?

1. Objectives:

This is the most fundamental aspect of the marketing plan. The marketing executive needs to fix the objectives and explain them clearly to his staff and motivate them to achieve these goals.

The objectives should be set keeping in mind the consumer demands in the specific product market, market conditions, sales projections, competition, etc. The marketing targets should be aligned in accordance with the overall goals and objectives of the company.

2. Forecasts:

Planning is based on forecasts for the future; it is a future oriented activity. Forecasts give an idea about the opportunities that may arise in future and warn about any possible challenges.

Read Also: What is The Best Affiliate Platform in 2025?

Forecasts enable a company to minimise risks and seize the opportunities with the most favourable outcomes. It helps to take the appropriate decisions at the right time. Forecasts are made about future customer demands, availability of raw materials, competitors’ strategies, economic conditions, governmental policies, etc.

3. Policies:

Policies are the guideline for achieving the set objectives of the firm. They guide the managers, administrators and the subordinates of the company as what is to be done in a particular situation. Policies are the basic principles through which the objectives are attempted to be achieved.

Policies may be of three types:

(i) Basic policies- These guide the top management.

(ii) Common policies- These guide the middle and lower level managers.

(iii) Departmental policies- These are meant to serve as guidelines to departmental heads.

4. Procedures:

Procedures are laid down to serve as guidelines to carry out the marketing activities. A procedure consists of a sequence of activities that are to be executed in a systematic manner to achieve certain goals. Marketing procedures provide guidance in implementation of proper marketing practices in an orderly way.

5. Programmes:

A marketing programme is an agenda involving the use of all the elements of marketing mix in order to achieve certain marketing objectives. It is chalked out keeping in view the policies, procedures and targets of the organization. Programmes may be made in connection with aspects of advertising, promotion, pricing, distribution, product design, etc.

6. Schedule:

A schedule shows the time and period when a particular activity has to be undertaken. It is a plan for performing a work, specifying the order and time allotted for each constituent part.

The schedule specifies the actual time when a marketing project is to be started, the sequence in which activities are to be performed and the time limit within which each activity should be completed so that the overall project is implemented within a prescribed time period.

7. Budget:

Budget is related to the financial aspect of marketing planning. A marketing budget is the estimation of total cost that will be incurred in the overall marketing process. The expenditures related to advertising, marketing communication, sales promotion, salaries to salespersons, etc. will be accounted for.

The estimations are made after conducting market research for greater accuracy. It is important to consider the marketing plan and media used while preparing the budget.