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Research
The first step in any process for creating strategic measures for a business based on content is to research in four specific areas:
The first phase is perhaps the most important because it’s going to give you the information you need to fuel the rest of your strategy. With the wrong information, or without enough information, you won’t be able to draft an effective strategy, so pay attention to these main areas:
- Audience – this is when market research is done to determine the target demographics of your product. What do the consumers need? Where are they finding information about your product? What type of content do your buyers gravitate to on a regular basis?
- Competition- Consultants will gather information on what your competitors have out there to consumers for their own marketing. They may be possibly not doing much at all, but you need to know if you have this advantage over them. Are they selling the same product and not being successful in a specific way? Can you learn from this?
- Trends- Taking a look at what type of content is being shared by the bulk of consumers and how it is being shared either through video or print ads. This also gives you some idea of what is popular right now or is trending online specifically.
- Platforms – With so many platforms out there, which ones are at their greatest level of popularity or are beginning to lose their users? Which medium is being used the most by your target audience? Which platform could be a solid opportunity to accelerate growth quickly and cost-effectively?
This area is probably the most crucial, so a professional who is doing it for you will avoid getting the wrong information or too little information that will impede the creation of a draft of a successful strategy going forward to the next phase which is setting goals.
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Goal-Setting
Once the professional consultants have completed the research phase, the implementation of the results is done through setting goals for your marketing campaign. This information is used to do the following:
- Objective targets—the goals must be clearly defined in terms of what purpose they will serve within the campaign. For example, will one goal be a social media blitz done on a specific platform because of the traffic there from your target audience?
- Timeframes—professional consultants you are working with will help you determine a realistic timeframe to complete the goals that have been set. This means knowing that goals need time to be developed, executed, and completed successfully.
- Investment-along with time goes money, so a discussion between business owners and consultants about what type of money is needed to accomplish the goals is imperative.
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Draft
The strategic plan that will be set in motion should have three well-defined aspects:
- Phases- the goals should be set forth in marketing approach phases. For example, if one goal is to build up momentum on social media for your product, the first phase of this might be to create a blog or Facebook page promoting the product. The second phase might be to ramp this up to a different platform like Twitter, even though the content may be very much the same as the first phase.
- Resource allocation – budget allocation for specific tactics like SEO, PPC or conversion rate optimisation.
- With segmented phases comes allocating duties, so this means identifying who within your team will be in charge of each segment. Possibly, this means going outside of your company to find the right person to execute the job. The professional consultant can make that determination for you of it is not your area of expertise.
- Have a flexible plan- Best intentioned plans will oftentimes hit a snag of some kind. Professional consultants will anticipate these issues, so they will make sure they design a plan of action with this in mind. So, there will be sometimes a need to go to “plan B”, but it will already be incorporated into the draft for quick execution if needed.
If accelerated growth is something you want to see in your business for the future, these are just some ways to help your business accomplish this goal and do it with a professional as your guide.