How To Start A Content Marketing Campaign

If you’re looking for cost-effective ways to promote your eLearning brand or business online, you must already be thinking about how to start your first content marketing campaign. But is there a way to ensure success if you have never done it before?

It’s not that a content marketing campaign is extremely hard. But it surely needs a lot of research, planning, a targeted strategy, and most of all, commitment. You see, customers now expect companies to deliver value beyond their product or service. And that’s why content marketing is thriving. It’s no longer a buzzword; it has become necessary if you want your business to survive the digital transformation (and get discovered in the SERPs).

Worry not because, this time, we’ll analyze why you can’t afford to ignore the power of a content marketing strategy. In this post, I’m going to share a few easy steps so that you can quickly establish your first content marketing plan and guide your efforts to greatness. With my tips, be sure that you’ll establish a creative, invaluable, and unique online presence for your eLearning business.

What I love most about content marketing is that it allows you to tell your brand’s story in a value-adding manner; you can do so through blogs, lead generation eBooks, hosting webinars, social media, videos, and more. I do hope that you’ll become a huge fan as well!

Let’s discover which steps you can follow to use a genuine voice to tell creative stories and inspire customers to trust your brand while building an evergreen, positive brand reputation.

5 Tips On How To Create Your First Content Marketing Campaign For Your eLearning Business

Creating your first content marketing campaign means planning a strategy and figuring out which types of content (audio, visual, and/or written) you want to use. Also, you have to discover ways to distribute your content to get it in front of the right people.

Content mapping is key and one of the best approaches if you want to achieve your business goals. Obviously, you need to consider plenty of things if you want your first content marketing campaign to attract your target audience. Plus, it is important to keep current customers engaged even after a purchase, especially if you want to take advantage of upselling opportunities.

Now it’s time to share our tips. Please read on to understand your target buyers and manage how you can target them at every stage of your marketing funnels. Here we go!

1. Find Your Audience

If you are wondering what the first step of content marketing is, well, the answer is identifying your audience. And how is that possible? Through research and feedback!

I get that because it is your first time creating such campaigns, you must be excited to blast your content into the virtual world. But give yourself a moment to think about it before you press that “publish article” button.

First off, before even considering what you want to write about, you need to think about who you want to write for. So, to make it simple, you have to find out what your target audience would like to read. Be it your primary customer base or reaching new consumers, your content strategy has to resonate with them. What are their challenges? Understand them and solve their problems through your content.

Don’t be afraid to dream big. Instead, make it this year’s mission to find out what your ideal audience looks like. Spend some time researching and discovering where they like to hang out and spend their online time. What kind of search queries do they make? Also, defining the proper channels will prove vital when deciding where to promote your content. Or it might even help you choose to create X type of content to promote on Facebook and Y type of content to promote on LinkedIn.

Every social media platform consists of different audiences who love consuming content in a variety of forms. Never forget that. All the above will enable you to have a better shot at creating a content plan that will be effective for your audience.

Here’s how to find your eLearning target buyers.

2. Identify Patterns And Customer Behaviors

After determining who you want to target, it is time to find out where and how they spend their time. You’ll get the most out of your efforts if you focus on learning more about their interests and patterns.

For example, you can start by exploring the social media networks where your target audience is more active. Let’s take educators, for example. Maybe some of them like to hang out on Facebook while others prefer to pin relevant eLearning content on Pinterest and not use Twitter that much. In the above example, you get an indication of where to focus your efforts to make a stronger impact. Or, maybe you want to target managers. In that case, LinkedIn could be a more appropriate channel to research interests and patterns.

While trying to figure it all out, make sure that you have active profiles on the sites that seem to be visited the most by your target audience. Also, if your audience is active on other online publishing websites, considering a content distribution network could be a good idea. Such networks have the means to populate your content across relevant sites.

What you need to make sure of is to include SEO-rich keywords in your content. That way, you can easily target your ideal audience base. Don’t overdo it, though; whatever content marketing tactics you implement, focus on them being organic.

Your content marketing strategy should be multifaceted—it takes a combination of forces. By diversifying your first content marketing campaign, you have more to gain. Last but not least, don’t forget to track how your content distribution plays out with analytics programs.

The above insights will teach you how to speak to your content consumers.

Make sure to read our article on how to create eLearning marketing funnels.

3. Set Your Content Goals And KPIs

Above all, take the time and ask yourself what you’re aiming to do with your first content marketing campaign.

Is there a need to increase your customer base by 30%? Are you interested in attracting a younger demographic? Do you want to get people to sign up for more free LMS trials? Are you after more social media followers?

Do spend some time articulating what your objectives are. This will give you more insights into what kind of content you should create. And, if you want to focus on more concrete goals, you’ll have the basis to act on them.

The main thing that I’d like you to keep in mind is that your campaign should have SMART goals and KPIs if you want it to be successful.

So, to get a better idea about setting content goals, you might like to take a look at these:

eBook Release

SEO Research And Content Writing Best Practices For A Successful Content Strategy

Get top tips on SEO content writing best practices to help you reach your ideal buyer personas organically.

4. Define Your Content Strategy With SEO

So, we’ve talked about finding your target audience and about aiming to achieve clear goals with your content. What’s next? Well, if you want to ensure that your content does the job, it has to meet the needs of your audience. In fact, by developing content that solves your prospects’ pain points, you’ll manage to build up your brand’s profile and reputation.

Thus, creating valuable content based on search intent should be a go-to strategy. It’s the ultimate checkmate! Don’t forget to go through the benefits of using an SEO competitor analysis for your content strategy. And remember: focus on your buyer personas.

Furthermore, your content is your brand voice. So, you can leverage it to show personality and attract people that would look up to you. For example, some brands choose to be quirky, others keep it professional, while some go a bit off the cuff.

Of course, marketing has no limitations. Plus, engaging content like the above gets more shares and likes. So, don’t think only about written content. Why not spark things up? For example, you can make sure that whatever you put out there aims to engage the audience and allows room for diversity. Be it hosting podcasts, producing videos, creating infographics, experimenting with animations, etc., try to make your target audience take action.

Truly, I understand that all these sound overwhelming when creating your first content marketing campaign. Fortunately, there are other solutions. For instance, you can source related content from other industry blogs like eLearning Industry. Or you can ask other innovators and leaders to guest-post.

Teaming up with eLearning thought leaders and influencers can expand your opportunities. Trust me, building relationships within your online community is vital. Best of all, it grants you access to yet another audience base.

5. Set Your Budget And Get Buy-In

The main question remains…how do I start a content marketing campaign? Once you identify the best content formats to achieve your goals, start creating a budget. Take everything into consideration and assess what resources you can allocate to execute this strategy. Please make sure to check our tips on how to create a strategic marketing plan.

For example, a great strategy is to invest in getting content writers on your team. Or you might like to take some SEO courses to understand more about search intent. You’ll also need to learn how to use SEO tools to achieve the above. If you can’t do it in-house, you should also consider reaching out to SEO experts for more insights and advice to decide on your topics. Content writing is a skill. Sorry to rain on your parade, but not everyone can write. If you don’t have the skills to pull it through, please assign it to an expert.

Also, it’s vital to create a strong editorial calendar. By doing so, managing your content marketing plan will be much easier. Hence, it’s optimal to map out your content 6 to 12 months in advance. Of course, this allows room for flexibility. Likewise, if you have an important company event or a product launch coming up, you can time-peg your content to your other strategies. Plus, don’t miss out on taking advantage of major holidays or national days relevant to your products or services. Last but not least, building room for evergreen content is also crucial. Mostly because it is more shareable and, of course, because it has a longer shelf life.

But, above all, make sure to explain all the benefits of content marketing to the upper management. That’s how you get buy-in from the c-suite!

Summing Up

So, what do you think? I hope that after this read you have a better idea of how to build your first content marketing plan to reach eLearning buyers.

Deciding your content strategy is very important. And if you don’t invest in it, you might end up wasting time and effort creating content that either won’t reach your audience or capture their attention.

Whether it’s your first attempt with content marketing or you’ve been working on it for a while, you should never miss a chance to revisit your content strategy plan. Successful marketers ensure that their content strategy is up to date. Also, no matter when or how prospects intend to buy, your content needs to be innovative and engaging for your target audience.

On that note…

Do you want to sharpen your SEO content writing skills? Make sure to sign up for our free content marketing course.

If you still believe that content marketing is hard, you can always rely on a trusted content marketing expert to help you out.