I know what you’re probably thinking. “Brilliant, another article telling me to get a piece of paper, and write down what I’ll be blogging about this year.”
Don’t worry, that’s not what I’m going to be talking about. You already appreciate how important that is for your accountant marketing. However, do you know how to effectively craft a content strategy?
Did you know that barely more than 1/3 B2B marketers document their strategy in this way? They’re missing a trick, and so are many of your competitors. By planning well, and knowing which elements to include in your strategies, you have the opportunity to get ahead of the game.
This doesn’t just give your accountant marketing an edge, however. It helps your team all get on the same page with your message and values, facilitating clear internal communication.
To be truly effective, your content strategy needs to answer some key questions:
- Why are we using content marketing as an aspect of our marketing strategy?
- Which demographics and psychographics are we trying to reach with our content?
- What are we hoping to achieve?
- How does this fit into our overall marketing strategy?
- How will we measure success?
With these questions in mind, let’s turn to the key ingredients you need in order to device a content marketing strategy which answers these questions.
#1 Outline the Mission
It’s important to step back an ask yourself: “Why are we deciding to invest in content?”
If your answer is simply: “Well, we should just be sort of doing it”, it’s important to stop and really think about the question. If you do have a good answer, make sure you record it.
Are you intending to utilise content to build brand credibility, awareness and authority? Are you using it for the purposes of lead generation?
Your answer to this question is essential to your accountants marketing, and will guide the rest of your document.
#2 Zone In On Buyer Personas
At the beginning, you may have decided to target a fairly generic target audience. This can be a useful place to begin, but you will need to go into more detail for this to really work effectively.
If you’re going to create engaging content, you need to know who you’re engaging with.
- Who is your target audience?
- How old are they, and what are they interested in?
- What problems are they facing, and how do they look to solve them?
- How do they tend to regard solutions like yours?
Create a detailed buyer persona, which outlines your answers to these kinds of questions.
#3 Brainstorm Your Mix
You know why you’re using content in your accountant marketing. You know who you’re doing it for. Now you need to look at what kinds of content you will be creating.
This content mix will depend on a number of factors. First, it will depend on your marketing funnel.
- Will certain content types engage with prospects who are just educating themselves about your area? (E.g. Podcast, blog, video series).
- Will other content types work better with people who are almost ready to make a transaction?
Second, the content mix will depend on your demographics. Most companies market to multiple buyer personas, not just one. For instance, an IFA might want to target small business owners as well as senior citizens with a private pension. Might one content type engage the former more effectively than the latter?
#4 Editorial Calendar
You will now need to determine who will be producing the content, and the workflows involved in this area of your finance marketing. In addition, it will be crucial to outline an editorial calendar which allows you to push out content consistently to your target audience.
Come up with a detailed schedule. When will you publish your content, and how often? Map out important deadlines and dates, and coordinate your topics in light of these.
Finally, your finance marketing will also need a distribution plan. Will you use the “Boost Post” feature on Facebook, for instance, in order to push your content out further to more people? Will you use Facebook Ads to promote it? Will you be using AdWords display advertising to push your whitepaper download to national newspapers?
With your answers to these questions in mind, and written down, you can proceed with your content marketing from a fantastic start.
