You might think that email marketing is difficult enough without wandering into the realms of another form of marketing. However, if you have a website, you are there already. Content marketing is nothing more than managing what’s in your website and what you publish elsewhere, such as social media. 

The norm is that content is published haphazardly, with no overall plan. You read that a blog is an excellent way of obtaining subscribers to your email marketing list as it will generate familiarity and trust. You then start a Facebook page because, obviously, that will help as well. When you heard of a forum that those you target frequent, you started to put material out there to get noticed. 

All this is good of course, but three lots of content, all piecemeal, means you are wasting your efforts. What you need is a plan to integrate your content with email marketing. 

Before starting on yet another plan you might want to know why you should. A few moment’s study of your content will show that much it duplicated, not targeted, is contradictory and wasted. The purpose of a plan is to change all that.

How to plan?

1/ You need to decide who your targets are. For those with established email marketing lists, you are away, but everyone else needs to decide on an audience.

2/ Once you know your target you need to work out what they want. Why should they come to your blog? What’s in it for them is the question that will go through their minds so must go through yours.

3/ Come up with a reason why they should come to your content rather than that of your competitors. You don’t have to be unique. Similar material that is more entertaining, contains easily identifiable facts, and is grammatically superior will win out.

4/ What media outlets you exploit is critical. There’s a temptation to go for all right away but this route has problems. There’s a considerable time/cost element involved. Further, merely republishing the same content on other formats will put off readers.

5/ You need to control the content. You can, of course, pay someone else to do it for you. However, the best content managers are expensive. They know their worth and will have the data to prove it. Cheaper ones are cheaper for a reason. If you decide to do it yourself then put aside enough time to do it properly.

6/ It is difficult to assess the success of your content management plan over a short period, so it requires a certain degree of faith. Ensure your plan is as good as you can make it from the start. 

If you’ve been in email marketing for any time you will know just how competitive it is. You must use every marketing ploy available to you, and use them effectively, because that’s what your successful competitors are doing. Waste is an anathema to a successful business and haphazardly producing content which is not exploited fully is prodigiously wasteful.

There’s more to come on this subject.