Building a Content Marketing Plan Using Inbound Marketing


November 3, 2014

Content Marketing Plan

To compliment your inbound marketing efforts, a content marketing plan is a must. Creating content can get a little tedious and discouraging, however. It can entail spending hours generating what you think is great content with very little traffic, engagement, or leads in return. To solve this problem, it is best to have a proven content marketing plan in place before you begin. Below are some tips to add to your strategy.

Tying Together Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing

  • Inbound marketing works by engaging and attracting a targeted audience through shared content on social media sites, email newsletters, or blogs. In most cases, the ‘shared’ content links back to a marketer’s website content.
  • Content marketing is the creation of valuable content that your visitors, prospects, and potential customers will find useful. Generating content shows leadership and expertise in your industry and shows prospects that you are knowledgeable.

Neither could get positive results without the other. For instance, if you do not incorporate inbound marketing into your overall marketing plan, people might not find your content. If you don’t create content, why bother with inbound marketing in the first place? In fact, according to Business 2 Community, 65% of marketers rely on distributing content to effectively draw in customers.  With that said, how do you incorporate effective content marketing strategies into your inbound marketing efforts?

Discuss Important Challenges You Plan to Solve

Summarize what you plan to solve with your content marketing plan. There is no need to complicate this by adding in too many points. Just a brief summary that is easy-to-digest and persuasive.

Include your Targeted Buyer Personas

You want to align your content around specific buyer personas. Keep the goals and challenges of your buyer personas in mind so you can address them at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Customer Service

Generate content that will continue to create value for the customer after they have made a sale. This will attract subscribers by showing that there is more to your customer service than just FAQ’s and user manuals. For instance, how will your customer be able to use your products or services? What are the best practices? How have your services been extended into different solutions in innovative ways? How will your customers be able to get the most out of your products?

Customer Upsell

The ‘checkout’ button is no longer the stopping point for marketing. Continuing to engage your buyer personas in future content for other services you offer should be a priority. Too many marketers stop communicating with their customers once they make a purchase. Frequent communication to keep current customers engaged is key. This will help with customer retention and upsells.

Social Media Strategy

It is possible to grow your business through content marketing alone without implementing any type of social media strategy. For instance, users can search long-tail keywords to find your content organically once you have built up an online presence. However, a social strategy will help you to distribute your content in front of a more targeted audience much faster. Social media can work seamlessly with your marketing plan to help achieve your marketing goals.

To really build up an effective content marketing campaign, don’t stop at creating content. You have to market that content as well. Too many times, marketers spend a great deal of time creating their content, but do not market or promote it. By using some of the channels we’ve mentioned above, you can use inbound marketing and content marketing together to reach the maximum number of people possible.