The first step in building a beautiful content marketing garden that generates convertible leads is to define your target audience. The audience description needs to incorporate basic features such as geography and demography as well as deeper attributes such as tastes and preferences. You can then use a variety of tools to determine which content is likely to appeal to your target audience. Ideas about questions that your audience is looking for could be obtained from sites such as Quora or Buzzsumo. Call recordings (with the user’s permission) is another great tool that can help you get insights about possible topics that interest your audience.
Once you know which type of garden you want, the next step is to start planting. So which plant categories will you choose?
- Evergreen: This category consists of topics that have a permanent value for your audience. For example, if you are marketing for a company that rents children’s toys, then a topic such as “how to raise a child on a limited budget.” would be an evergreen topic. This topic is likely to have permanent utility for your user base that is cost-conscious. The topic also links well into your company’s strategy of offering toys on rental as opposed to the more expensive option of buying them.
- Seasonal: Seasonal topics are those that interest your audience only during certain times of the year. For example, if you are marketing for a furniture store then a topic such as “how to decorate your Christmas tree” would have seasonal value. Once the Christmas season is over, this topic will lose its appeal.
Like any beautiful garden, your content marketing garden needs to have diversity, utility and creativity. You need some topics that are evergreen while others that are of seasonal value. The majority of your topics should fall into the evergreen category with long-lasting and general appeal. A few seasonal items, however, can add sparkle to your marketing masterpiece.
Now that you have your plant combination sorted, it’s time to get rid of the weeds. This corresponds to the editing stage of your content marketing effort. At this stage you get rid of anything that is not strictly relevant to your theme. For example, if you are writing a blog post on how to cut expenses and you’ve included a great paragraph on time management skills in it, now is the time to weed it out. You don’t have to trash your paragraph but can use it for crafting another blog post.
Once you have determined the nature of your garden, chosen your plants and got rid of the weeds, you can sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of your garden. However, don’t forget to occasionally revisit your content marketing garden to make useful additions and ensure continued relevance.
