We’re pleased to offer a free digital marketing consultation. Call today, (303) 357-5757, or e-mail dbc@dbcdigital.com.

In any content marketing plan, there are some basic tools you will need not only for content marketing success, but to make your marketing life easier in the process. These essential tools will help with everything from measuring your metrics to getting the job done efficiently. Preparing yourself for implementation and customization of these tools is the beginning to starting your digital marketing journey off right.

While there are plenty of content marketing resources available, you may become overwhelmed, and end up getting more or less than you need. But fear not, start off with these basics and you’ll be covered from the beginning.

1. Analytics Tools

There must be a method in place to measure your content marketing results, that’s where analytics tools come in. Google Analytics is probably the best known and popular analytics tool available. And it’s very affordable since it is free! No matter where you begin, Google Analytics should be installed and set up properly to measure your goals, traffic volume, engagement, and traffic sources. It is a tool that is extremely powerful and useful when implemented and utilized the right way.

There are many other paid analytics tools such as Tableau, Omniture and Adobe Marketing Suite. These analytics tools have more advanced features and until you absolutely know you need more out of your analytics tools, stick with Google Analytics and use it to its full capability before opting for the more expensive solutions.

In addition to Google Analytics, most platforms have some form of analytics included. Social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. have free analytics tools available as well, however, in some cases, you may need a minimum size of audience or a business account in order to use them.

The most important part in utilizing these tools is integrating them correctly, and knowing how to use them to get the precise content marketing metrics you need. If you have an in-house marketing team or are a marketing individual, it is important for them to become very versed in implementing and using analytics tools. Or, if you are using a content marketing partner or digital marketing agency, they will have resources to assist with implementation, setup and data reporting.

2. Email Marketing Platform

Part of an effective marketing program is email marketing integration. Email marketing is used to follow up with your leads as well as nurture them with a series of emails. In addition, you will want to add your leads to email lists for updates, special promotions, newsletters, announcements, and other communications that will keep your audience engaged both before and after you convert your lead to a customer.

While it is possible to do this through your day-to-day email software, you risk having your emails go into your recipient’s spam folder.  We urge you use an email platform designed for larger volumes of emails.  These platforms are better for organizing, scheduling and automating your emails because they are made for this purpose.

Some examples of email platforms to use for email marketing campaigns are:

1. MailChimp
2. Constant Contact
3. Active Campaign
4. AWeber
5. Vertical Response

Most of these email marketing platforms have a free version that you can use and then upgrade to paid versions according to the volume of emails you are sending, the automation you need, and the reporting you want as well as the size of your email list.

3. CRM (Customer Retention Management) Tools

As you collect leads from your content marketing efforts, managing these leads is essential, especially right from the start. You will not only want to keep track of the leads and their status, but CRMs are very useful for gathering data over time to help gain insights into your content marketing efforts.

As an example, you can integrate tracking codes into your forms that send data directly to your CRM. You can then utilize the data for learning more about your lead process such as the average time it takes for your leads to convert to a customer, the top sources that your leads come from, which landing pages and content work the best, and many more insightful metrics.

A few of the most popular CRMs available are:

1. Salesforce
2. HubSpot CRM
3. Zoho

Once again, there are many solutions that range in price from free to very expensive depending on your needs for digital and traditional marketing.

4. Content Marketing Management

To successfully plan and manage your content marketing program, you will need tools to organize the many components. A few examples of the content marketing tools you will need to manage include media and publishing calendars, asset cataloging and management, and social media and promotion management.

The tools used by digital marketers for content marketing management vary a great deal from company to company and agency to agency. A popular mode of managing content is by utilizing spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel or Google Docs. Then there are more advanced spreadsheet tools like AirTable that add efficiencies and capabilities to normal spreadsheets.

Other options for content marketing management are utilizing collaboration tools such as Trello and platform based content marketing tools such as HubSpot, Kapost and Uberflip. Take some time to think about the capabilities you need from a content management tool, as researching and choosing the one that is right for you takes a fair amount of time. When in doubt, begin with using spreadsheets, and you will quickly build your wish list of capabilities once you have your content management process in place.

5. Social Media Management Tools

Much like content marketing management, you will need a social media management tool. The social media management tool may be the same tool you use for content management, but there are also tools available that are made specifically for social media management.

Social media management tools help you to monitor, engage and organize your social media posts. You can also schedule your posts ahead of time which makes life much easier when managing multiple social media properties.

Spreadsheets and collaboration platforms can be utilized for managing your social media efforts, but utilizing a social media management platform to create dashboards to manage multiple properties is highly recommended.

Top social media management platforms include:

1. Hootsuite
2. Buffer
3. Sprinklr

As you begin to realize all of the tools you need for digital marketing success, you will find that there are plenty of options to choose from, thus determining the specific needs for your company and your digital marketing plans is going to be unique.

When in doubt, utilize free tools that serve multiple functions in order to minimize your marketing stack. And, when you employ a professional Digital Marketing Agency for your content marketing such as DBC Digital, we will help you to determine the mix of marketing tools that specifically meet your needs.

Contact us today for a free digital marketing consultation and learn how we can partner for digital marketing success.

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.

We’re pleased to offer a free content marketing strategy consultation. Call today, (303) 357-5757, or e-mail dbc@dbcdigital.com.

Whether you are starting your 1st or 50th content marketing campaign, you should know that if your foundations aren’t in place, there is a good likelihood you are hindering your campaigns, and not getting the most effective use out of your marketing strategy, plans or implementation.

The good news is, you can fix that now by learning and implementing these 4 content marketing foundations that are key to effective content marketing.

1. Content Marketing Goals

Business goals and content marketing campaign objectives are more than essential. If you start off a campaign and wait to see what results you get before setting specific content marketing goals, you will be faced with the inability to measure your success. When it comes to analyzing your results, not knowing how to gauge success will ultimately force you to start all over again.

Even if you are not sure what the ideal cost per lead, cost per acquisition (CPA) or ROI is for your business, putting some sort of reasonable goal in place in the beginning will go a long way to helping you to see how you should adjust your strategies or tactics to achieve profitability.

Typical business goals for content marketing can include:

1. Increase traffic by x% per month
2. Increase engagement rate by x% per month
3. Obtain x% more leads per month
4. Decrease CPA (cost per acquisition) by x%

KPIs or key performance indicators are the actual metrics you use to measure your content marketing success.

Some examples of main KPI goals you can set are:

1. Engagement rate
2. Click-through rate
3. Conversion rate
4. Cost-per-click
5. Cost-per-engagement
6. Cost-per lead
7. Cost per acquisition

2. Audience Targeting

Once you know your business goals, marketing objectives and KPIs, WHO you are going to target is the next step. This is your target audience that you will be speaking to when you are creating your content.

While it may seem obvious, intentionally creating content that speaks to your target audience (personas) will help ensure your content resonates with those you want to attract and engage with.

Creating personas will go a long way in guiding you in creating the content for the individuals most likely to want or need your product or service. The process of developing personas is also a great way to answer some of your own questions about your target audience.

While there are many ways to create personas, some of the key elements you’ll want to include when building your personas are:

1. Position(s) and level in company
2. Demographics and psychographics
3. Common pain points and problems you provide a solution for
4. Influence and decision-making abilities
5. Key drivers and points of view

3. Customer Journey

After you have established a few key personas, your customer’s “purchasing journey” is another essential foundation to map out. The customer purchasing journey will determine the content you use to target your personas at various steps in their decision-making process. The topics and angles of content creation should speak to the specific point in your customer journey. In addition, knowing where your audience is in their customer journey helps you determine the types of media and content you should create and promote.

Most steps in the customer journey typically fall under 3 main categories:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision

4. Marketing Funnel

Now that you have created content to promote to your personas and targeted your content to each stage of the customer journey, your goals are to successfully bring your prospects into your marketing funnel. Your marketing funnel for content marketing consists of one of the three stages a buyer can be in.

The high-level sales and marketing funnel stages include:

1. Top of Funnel (TOFU) – TOFU is the AUDIENCE you are trying to ATTRACT
2. Middle of Funnel (MOFU) – MOFU are VISITORS you are trying to CONVERT to leads
3. Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) – BOFU are LEADS you are trying to CONVERT to customers

Connecting with your target audience (personas), creating content that speaks to the prospect based on the customer journey step they are in, and then bringing them into your marketing funnel is an effective content marketing process that supports your main objectives and supports a successful digital marketing plan.

In summary, our advice is to start with a simple plan to identify your sales goals and target market.  Then consider what is important to your prospects at each stage of their buying journey.  Finally, write and promote content that is helpful and supports their goals.  When you effectively align your goals and support your prospects’ goals, you will see success.

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

Please note: DBC Digital is a full-service digital marketing company that provides everything you need to run successful content marketing and digital 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.

We’re pleased to offer a free content marketing consultation. Call today, (303) 357-5757, or e-mail dbc@dbcdigital.com.

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.