How To Create a Content Marketing Plan

In the last year the changes within the internet marketing space (SEO, SEM, Social Media and PR) have forced the Marketing Agencies, Consultants, Startups and Corporate Marketing areas to drive focus to their Inbound Marketing. In this post we will guide you for the initial steps any Marketing area, startup or even consolidated corporate Marketing Agency should follow for the creation of a Content Marketing Plan.

How To Create a Content Marketing Plan using

PowerPoint Templates

In the last year the changes within the internet marketing space (SEO, SEM, Social Media and PR) have forced the Marketing Agencies, Consultants, Startups and Corporate Marketing areas to drive focus to their Inbound Marketing In this post we will guide you for the initial steps any Marketing area, startup or even consolidated corporate Marketing Agency should follow for the creation of

a Content Marketing Plan

What is Inbound Marketing ?

Inbound Marketing is the combined effort of promotion (of a company, brand, product, service, etc.) through different internet channels (ebooks, blogs, podcasts, videos, newsletters, SEO, social media marketing and other channels of content) which help to attract customers The focus of inbound

marketing is bringing customers IN the website instead of the marketer go to “search” for possible

customers Inbound Marketing mantra is to “earn the customer” instead of “buying” the customer

How to Start with Inbound Marketing?

In order to be successful at Inbound Marketing, companies need to invest in content, which if the pushing force for Inbound Marketing campaigns The amount of content generated by companies is increasing dramatically, and consumer are receiving thousands of marketing messages in all of their

internet channels Said this, it is extremely important to plan the content marketing efforts in order to effectively reach the right audiences, add value to them and receive in exchange, their loyalty and their business Tied with the effectiveness, the ability to measure it is necessary in order to gather data, calculate the Return of Investment (ROI) and be able to iterate the process with more information that will help to improve the content and its reach

Content Marketing Plan for Inbound Marketing

Content planning is one of the key success factors for an effective and efficient Inbound Marketing Campaign We will describe a simple four steps process combining general knowledge business and marketing tools that will help you trace the path of your content strategy The management tools described apply to every planning activity and the value is not only driven through the final work product, but for the process itself SlideModel provides a set of Professional PowerPoint Templates where the users can edit the placeholders and iterate over the management tools through the analysis process

The process and management tools we will describe in this post are the following:

 Analysis of your current and past marketing efforts through the use of the SWOT tool

 Definition of clear objectives and how to measure them in order to build SMART KPI’s

 Brainstorm ideas for content, matching it to the stages in the buying life cycle (FUNNEL)

 Create a Plan (Tasks, Resources, Duration) with a PowerPoint Timeline

Content SWOT Analysis

If you want a deeper understanding of the SWOT Analysis and a practical guide to create it with

professional SWOT PowerPoint Templates you can review our previous post “Best SWOT Analysis Templates for PowerPoint“

The Planning SWOT Template is a professional presentation deck designed for showcasing SWOT Analysis results to executive audiences Using the traditional four quadrants layout, the design combines thin curved arrows shapes mapping the four concepts Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

SWOT Analysis is a powerful tool for strategic planning Because of its simplicity and insightful results, organisations around the world choose to include it in their strategy toolset There are several approaches to SWOT Analysis; the most used consists on working out the antagonic concepts:

1 Identify the organisation strengths (Internal point of view)

2 Identify the organization weaknesses (Internal point of view)

3 Identify the opportunities in the context of the analysis (External view)

4 Identify the threats in the the context of the analysis (External view)

5 Mitigate Threats reducing Weaknesses, using Strengths as a lever

6 Amplify Strengths to be able to tackle Opportunities

7 Create new Strengths that enable the competitive advantage over Opportunities

8 Create new Strengths to eliminate Weaknesses

Note that we introduced the context keyword in the approach The context defines where the analysis

is placed In a corporation, context can be defined as the market in which they operate, but if the analysis is being carried out in an internal departments, for example Human Resources (HR), the context can be the workplace

The Planning SWOT Template is crafted in order to allow users to easily replace the placeholders with their findings and conclusions Each piece of the PowerPoint Templates are created with PowerPoint objects, allowing the user to fully customize its appearance

Current Content SWOT

The Content Analysis starts with a simple exercise; present the 5 major strategic strengths and weaknesses of your current content marketing efforts It could be difficult at the first try, but the iterative approach, trying to reach the five points, is vital to analyze your knowledge about the marketplace and environmental situation In essence, you need to set a title for what is working well, and what is not working This deep thinking will trigger in the analyst or group of analysts, several leverages that will allow fresh ideas in future steps of the process

Our Customers are used to work with remote teams, and having a PowerPoint Templates as the

canvas for working through shared environments is ideal You can use some tips of online broadcasting from our previous blog “How To Broadcast PowerPoint Presentations Through the Web“

Using “virtual” sticky notes in the PowerPoint Slide makes it easy to keep the previous ideas and

track the evolution of the SWOT analysis Also, printing the template in a poster and generate an

Agile meeting , working with tangible paper, also triggers interactions and creativity; take the suggestion and try it, it has proven track

Lets describe an example Consider the “Stock Photo Business” where a company sells pictures to

their users The content marketing SWOT could look like this, after a couple of iterations Look at

the ideas and their evolution The team starts to realize the effect of their content strategy The PowerPoint Template shows in one snapshot the full team ideation, and will be extremely easy to showcase later

STRENGTHS

 Expertise in photography -> Photography DOY tutorial are recognized as professional

 Great Bloggers -> Recognized Photographers Blogging at regular pace

 Photography sites linked -> Content Referenced from partners networks with high authority

 SEO Optimized Content drives traffic

WEAKNESSES

 Our content is too focused on “bringing in”, but not on leading to conversion

 Not measurable results blinds calculation of ROI

 Not customizable content disables Targeting the right persona

The second steps moves to the Opportunities and Threats At this point the analysis has traversed the initial iteration that breaks the ice of ideas Now, strategic thinking flows, and opportunities are clearer, and potential threats to them are not any more hidden

 Current Tutorials strategy has no entry barrier to be copied, and depends in paid advertising

 Competition can develop better influencers network

 Content Marketing investments will increase, noise will be generated by the amount of content

Defining Tactics and Actions over the SWOT

Once the SWOT analysis has concluded, is time to summarize the exercise and create an actionable

plan that takes advantage of it Empowered by the strengths take action over the opportunities, and

knowing your weaknesses protect your Content Marketing efforts against the threats

The following example applies for the SWOT Analysis described:

 Change the approach of your Photography tutorials moving towards Edition of Photos in order

 Create a Youtube Channel of free photography tutorials powered by the partners network

 Develop an Affiliate program for Influencers in order to gain fidelity among them

 Take advantage of Bloggers and technology to help personalize content

You can use one of our Text & Tables PowerPoint Templates in order to present the plan clearly visually and add it to your deck

Each of the sections describe the Actions that the plan will execute This template allows clear presentation of the ideas, catalogue them including an Id number and visually engage the audience with top of the line PowerPoint Icons

Define Content Marketing Objectives and Key Performance

Indicators (KPI’s)

After the analysis stage, the next step consists of defining the objectives that maps to the actions

described previously For each objective it will be defined a key performance indicator (KPI) that will

measure the progress toward achieving the objective This methodology is the basic foundation of the

strategic approach to Content Marketing and will provide visibility in order to understand if the

content marketing plan is on track or not.

RACE Digital Marketing Planning Framework PowerPoint Template is a professional presentation

with the steps Reach, Act, Convert and Engage incorporated into a model It describes the steps for a

digital marketing plan, covering the main four steps for effective marketing in the web

The framework, designed by Smart Insights, Dave Chaffey, has helped several internet marketers to

develop effective digital marketing plans, with 4 steps that cover the full customer lifecycle along the

marketing funnel The steps of the model consist of:

 Reach: Get the brand, product or service to be known in the web though different presence

(specialized websites, social, digital press, search engines,etc.)

 Act: Get the just arriving users to interact with your product or service Generate content for

them, provide trial, make them understand your value proposition

 Convert: Persuade the user to become a customer

 Engage: Make the newly customer to become a loyal customer, with a higher lifetime value

The framework provides a guide for the KPI’s to use and which of them apply on each step

The RACE Digital Marketing Planning Framework PowerPoint Template is a 100%

editable presentation, ideal for presenting the created plan, with descriptive slides of each of the

framework steps All the slides are created with PowerPoint shapes and icons, allowing the user to

fully customize the presentation to its corporate identity or branding palette

Impress your audience with this professional flat design presentation

RACE Framework

In order to define clear objectives for your Content Marketing is important to map them through the

marketing funnel To strategically follow this approach we will use the RACE Digital Marketing Planning Framework The RACE framework covers the main four stages of the customer lifecycle along the marketing funnel The RACE Acronym states for:

 Reach: Awareness, drive visits and presence

 Act: Engage Audience with brand Interaction and Visits

 Convert: Achievement of marketing goals

 Engage: Build Customer Loyalty

In each RACE Stage its necessary to define the objectives and KPI’s For this purpose we will use the

second management tool, the SMART Objectives Goals setting framework

SMART Objectives

SMART its a management acronym generally used to guide the process of goal settings in different

management areas (projects, business, strategies, etc) When the SMART principles are followed for goals settings, the chances of success increases The meaning of the SMART acronym is as follows:

 Specific: The goal needs to be as specific as possible It must be clear, unambiguous A

specific goal is short, crisp and concise Specific Goals always answer the 5 “W” questions (What, Why, Who, Where, Which)

 Measurable: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It Goals need to be quantifiable

Progress towards achievement must be measurable

 Attainable: Goals need to be possible, in a realistic scenario

 Relevant: Goals need to matter Managers can choose infinite goals, but only a few will

matter

 Time-bound: Goal need to be achievable in a time frame, that could be planned

How To Work With the RACE and SMART PowerPoint Templates?

As did with the SWOT template, we will explain how to take advantage of Professional PowerPoint Templates, to guide the users strategic thinking through the process in an ordered and structured fashion The process continues from where it was left, the action plan, and places the RACE framework PowerPoint Template in the board The Template provides a matrix with 4 rows; each row representing a stage of the customer lifecycle The analysis team will start placing the different actions in the correct stage of the lifecycle It will happen three different scenarios:

 Action will match a specific stage: Great, this is the best scenario

 Action will match more than one stage: Great too, this is the most common scenario As a

rule of thumb, the team needs to match the most profitable stage in case this happens This kind of “untie” is part of general experience Also, if the Content Marketing is mature enough,

the team could start A/B testing over the funnel stage (advanced stuff not covered by this post)

 Action will match no stage: Great too, this means, the action is not really “actionable” for

your content marketing plan Return the idea to the previous stage for more “idation” iterations

Once your actions are placed along the customer lifecycle, start defining the objectives you want to

reach For this purpose we will apply the SMART criteria on the first objective as an example

Lets consider the action of the creation of the YouTube channel This action is a driver for Organic

Traffic What is what we want to achieve? We apply the SMART Objectives criteria to this action

in the following Slide Template

After all our plan actions have a goal, and each goal has been analyzed through the SMART criteria,

we complete a snapshot of all the analysis conclusions in a RACE Matrix, where each row

represents a stage of the funnel and goals, KPI’s and actions are recorded for follow up