Engineering Copywriter Blog

You’ve heard the term, “content strategy,” but what is it and how do you build one? 

A content strategy is a plan outlining how a firm or person will use its content to accomplish its aims. A marketer’s content strategy should clearly outline the methods they’ll use to develop and disseminate content and the results they expect to see. Any engineering firm with a well-defined strategy should be able to take control of its advertising success across multiple channels. And not only does it give them a plan, but it also defines ways to analyze and focus content as the results filter in. The content strategy links content planning, development, and supervision with the company’s business objectives and performance metrics.

Here are six of the most essential elements of a successful content marketing strategy:

1. A defined target audience

Effective content marketing focuses on providing information your audience will find useful; it aims to avoid overt promotional sales messages.  However, in order to create content that is beneficial to your engineering audience, you must understand who they are. The first critical step is to define your target audience. 

To begin with, take a deeper look at your present customer base. Who are your current customers and why do they engage with your firm? Examine their demographics (age bracket, location, profession, and so on) to learn who already gets attracted to your brand or your products. Then, look into who your competitors are targeting. Which target groups have you ignored? Which have your competitors ignored? Are there ways you might tap into those unfilled niches? You don’t want to drop your existing audience by the wayside, but the insights you get from this analysis can help you paint a clearer picture of your additional opportunities. Identify the values and pain points of all these potential audiences and evaluate how you might be of help to them.

2. Clear and measurable goals

Before you can develop an effective content strategy, you must first have a clear picture of what success would look like. This is why it’s essential to come up with clear and measurable goals for your content strategy – they let you track your progress. Your broad goal may be to increase brand awareness, establish a brand reputation, generate leads, or something entirely different, but those ideas by themselves are not measurable. Focus on more concrete goals; try to create 20% more leads than the previous year or receive 30% more positive brand impressions among polled engineers this year than last. Each goal must be precise, achievable, and have a definite deadline. Clear and measurable goals are fundamental to modern marketing.

3. Relevant buyer personas

Buyer personas are just as critical to successful content marketing as to other marketing strategies. No one piece of content will meet your entire audience’s demands. You’ll be drawing from a pool of potential customers of differing job roles and values. Thus, you’ll need to create content that addresses each of their specific requirements if you want to succeed.  When it comes to selecting an engineering product or service, each customer’s objectives may be different. You must create content that addresses their specific needs, and you’ll have a hard time doing so without thorough buyer personas.

4. Diverse range of content

Your engineering blog will be central to your content strategy. This is because you’ll need to write informative blog posts to keep your audience engaged. However, blog posts alone don’t make a complete strategy. Some individuals like visual content. Others prefer audio content. Simply put, not everyone will be inclined to read your blog posts. To meet their needs, formulate a content strategy with options that will appeal to different personas. You could make infographics, ebooks, product demo videos, and webinars to promote your products. You could also write whitepapers and case studies, present podcasts, and conduct interviews with important industry figures.

5. Content marketing platform

Mark Watney once rephrased the old warfighter’s axiom: “No plan survives first contact with implementation.” You could have the best strategy, but making it a reality is no simple task. And your team is guaranteed to be less effective if they lack the right tools.  Moreover, some elements of your content strategy – things like performance measurement – simply can’t be done without technological aids.  You should plan from the start to invest in the platforms that will make each component of your strategy possible.

6. Distribution and promotion strategy

Distribution and promotion are just as important as the content you create. The whole concept of marketing depends on your engineering content reaching as many customers as possible. Put together a robust distribution and promotion strategy long before you launch. Again, success will depend on the research you did ahead of time. Which distribution channels will serve you best? What social media platforms do your target demographics use? How can you stand out from your competition in each respective marketing atmosphere? If your advertising resources are limited, pare your choices down to those channels that are most likely to be effective and concentrate your efforts there.

You should also consider using content syndication platforms and paid social media advertisements to distribute your content. The latter is especially effective for startups. Some companies also collaborate with relevant industry influencers to market their content. Big-name influencers in the engineering world can give you access to their own well-established audiences.

An effective content strategy

You can execute a very successful and planned content strategy once you’ve mastered these six crucial factors. To generate relevant and compelling content, you must precisely define your objectives and target audience, then create a wide variety of content that appeals to them. Remember to invest in tools to handle your content marketing campaigns. Finally, construct a solid strategy for distributing and promoting your content. Drop us a line today if you need help with your engineering content.