What if there was one simple way to create a whole bunch of original content? Your content marketing strategy for the month – that’s 31 days or less – would be set, you would be prepared to write, your customers would be satisfied with information, and your boss would be smiling. “What if” no more because there IS one simple way to get your content working for you to kick-off more relevant content.
Survey your customers
Who knows better what you should be writing about than your customers? They are your target audience after all. Odds are, what your current customers want to know more about your potential customers do too. All you have to do is ask them!
1. Get Started.
You can easily start today by creating a free survey using Survey Monkey. If you want something more robust with a price point, and you have a little more time, check out what Survey Gizmo has to offer.
2. Ask the Right Question.
Yes, that’s right – question, singular. One question is all you need to ask in the beginning to create your content marketing strategy. Your goal is to create targeted content that provides helpful information.
To do this, you need to know who your ideal customers is – this is your buyer persona – and the problems they face. For example, Canva – a website that makes design simple for everyone – recently sent out an email doing just that. See below:
Hey there, it’s Melanie here.
Last week I asked you: What’s the biggest challenge you face while designing at work? I was overwhelmed by the amount of responses I received, so I wanted to share the feedback with you – starting from the most common.
According to the survey, one of the biggest challenges you face is not being able to resize your designs.
In your words:
“We want the ability to resize AFTER creating an image, rather than having to start from scratch with new dimensions. This would be AMAZING.”
“Our biggest problem is managing and creating ads for our social media accounts to fit all the sizes for each social media platform.”
“Almost all eCommerce companies come across the issue of resizing. We need to make 20 different sizes for Google ads alone.”
This is a great example of killing three birds with one stone because it gave Canva the insight into what its customers wanted.
3. Plan Your Content Marketing Strategy.
It’s important that you don’t think of content as just words on a page. Surveys, emails, and video also fall under the content umbrella. Canva’s strategy created three types of content:
- A survey to find out problems its customers are having
- An email announcing the survey results.
- A video offering a sneak peek of the solution it will be launching.
As a bonus, Canva can use the answers it received from the survey to plan out blog topics too, responding to the problems and questions their audience is having.
At the end of the day, your goal is to ensure that you are producing valuable content that discusses and answers those questions. Then, you rely on the power of inbound marketing and Google to get your content found.
If you’d like to learn more about inbound marketing and how your content marketing strategy can work for you, contact us a Half a Bubble Out.
Since 2002, Half a Bubble Out has been dedicated to providing marketing, advertising and small business consulting that meet the needs of our clients. We specialize in powerfully telling stories through Inbound Marketing to grow your business filled with more passion and provision. Based in Chico California, we serve clients throughout Northern California and across the country to New York.
