Content Marketing Plan – Get an inside look at what’s really involved

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Now that you’ve made the decision to explore the possibilities of adding content marketing to your marketing arsenal, you should know what will be involved in the weeks and months to come. Whether you have decided to build an internal marketing team or have chosen to outsource your content marketing to a digital marketing agency, you will still need the same components. We’re here to give you insight into what to be prepared for with an inside look at a comprehensive content marketing plan.

Resources for Content Marketing

First and foremost, you’ll need to know what resources are required to successfully run your content marketing program. Frankly, it may seem to be a bit more than you expected, but planning for the needed resources will help to ensure your efforts and investment in content marketing don’t fail.

There are a variety of resource types that you need. Your first thought is that you just need content. Many times, this is the only resources that are is considered for content marketing, however, there are other resources you need before diving into the actual content creation stage.

The types of content marketing resources you should plan for include:

1. People – who will be responsible for managing and creating marketing content, and the other aspects of your campaigns.
2. Tools – what you will use to measure, track, implement, monitor, and manage your content marketing campaign from a software or platform perspective.
3. Content – the topics, creation, ideation and management of the content itself.
4. Knowledge – what sources of information are needed to create and promote your content.

Thinking about these content marketing resources ahead of time will save you frustration when it comes time to execute on your content marketing plan. Thinking through these resources first will help the rest of the process fall into place.

Budget for Content Marketing

Of course, a budget must be included in your content marketing plan. But you should be aware that a marketing budget includes much more than just the cost of creating content. Budget, or your investment in content marketing can be tricky if you don’t account for all of your actual needs to run your content marketing program. At the end of the day, your investment should be viable, and produce a positive ROI.

Things you need to include in your content marketing budget:

1. Cost of creating content
2. Strategy development cost
3. Investment needed for content promotion
4. Tools, software required to run your content marketing program
5. Cost of team to manage the content and the processes

Be aware that the cost to do content marketing the correct way is not always cheap, but necessary to ensure success.

Timeline for Content Marketing

You may assume that the timeline for content marketing only includes the time it takes to write or create content. Contrary to this thinking, successful content marketers realize that there is more involved than just creating great content, and the effort involved takes time. Making sure you have a timeline that reflects what you need to do, and how long it will take to do it helps tremendously in managing expectations and deadlines.

Back to resources, you will need someone to project manage. Having a point person that knows what is going on at all times, and has a grasp of the actual time tasks take is necessary to keeping your marketing team on task and meeting deadlines.

Lead time is also something to consider. Lead time is the time between the request of a certain piece of content to the time it can logistically be produced, approved, posted and promoted. The project manager should be well aware of the actual lead time it takes depending on the content marketing and management team. When everyone on the marketing team has realistic expectations, deadlines tend to stay on schedule.

Developing and sticking to a timeline manages expectations, and makes sure your content marketing plan stays on track, and deadlines are met.

Road Map for Content Marketing

Future planning is essential to an effective content marketing plan. A road map serves as both a short term strategy for accomplishing content marketing initiatives and a long term outlook on where you want to take your digital marketing. Planning what you want to accomplish in terms of campaign progression for the coming weeks and months helps you develop a timeline and gives you the lead time to ensure you have the necessary resources to accomplish your plans.

Stages of Content Marketing

Lastly, when designing your content marketing strategy and plan, keep in mind that there are phases to every program. These phases or stages of the program vary in time, effort and resources needed. Keeping expectations realistic in how long each stage will actually take will reduce the frustration and disappointment that comes with expecting a content marketing program to be launched within days or weeks.

The main stages in any content marketing program are:

1. Strategy
2. Execution
3. Management

There is a lot to think about when beginning a content marketing program. If you would like help planning, implementing and/or revamping a content campaign, we would love to work with you!  We have helped businesses and organizations of all sizes – across a variety of industries – with their content marketing.

Contact us today for a free content marketing consultation and learn how DBC Digital we can help with all of your content marketing needs.

Please note: DBC Digital is a full-service digital marketing company that provides everything you need to run successful content marketing campaigns. We’re located in the Denver metro area, just south of the Denver Tech Center, near I-25 and Dry Creek Road. We provide marketing services for businesses and organizations throughout the United States.