How to set content marketing goals that move the needle

Did you know that 82% of marketers actively use content marketing?

‍Content marketing is no longer a buzzword. In fact, in today’s digital world, a marketer’s toolkit is incomplete without content marketing.

It is simply because the content is a powerful way to reach your target audience, build brand awareness, and drive measurable results for your company.

So, the first step to having a content marketing strategy boils up to creating effective and engaging content. And to take your content marketing efforts to the next level you need to set content marketing goals aligning with your business goals.

Whether you are just starting or looking to modify your approach, setting clear and measurable goals can help you to measure success and track progress over time.

Now, you might be confused as to so many content marketing tips, how to know which one is right for your business? Don’t worry!

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about setting content marketing goals.

What Are Content Marketing Goals? And why is setting goals important?

A content marketing goal is a measurable benchmark that ties directly back to your business objectives. It helps in content creation, gives a direction to follow, and helps you track your progress. A few examples of content marketing goals are increasing brand awareness, generating leads, raising sales, and growing social media followers.

In short, content marketing goals act like a guiding light that keeps you focused on what’s important by making sure you are investing time and effort in the right place.

But how can you achieve these goals?

By thinking like a marketer!

You need to develop an understanding of your audience, research their needs, find creative ways to deliver content that will resonate with them, and create content that is interesting, engaging, and relevant.

At the core, content marketing is all about building your brand by authentically connecting with your audience on a one-to-one basis. And setting goals is the first step toward making it happen.Whether you’re a sales executive trying to hit your quarterly numbers or an email marketer who wants to grow their email list, or a small business looking to start content marketing, having clear objectives will give you a destination while also helping you avoid getting sidetracked along the way.

How to Set Rock-Solid Content Marketing Goals

Content marketing is more than just creating blog posts and coming up with cleverly worded headlines. It’s an ongoing process of collecting data and analyzing metrics so that your content marketing strategy improves with every new piece of content you produce.

You need to be as analytical as possible, or else you risk throwing money at the wall in the hopes that something sticks. So, before you create your first blog post or hire a freelancer to help you flesh out your content strategy, it’s important to set goals from day one. With the writer, keep everything aligned in a payroll system so that your budgets are spent wisely too

Content marketing may look simple and straightforward. But if you dive in a little deeper, you will see that all successful content marketers have clearly identified their purpose, outlined specific objectives for each piece of content they publish, and created measurable standards for measuring ROI on all of their content efforts.

Here are the key points regarding how to set rock-solid content marketing goals.

Define your “why”

Next, you need to understand and define your “why.”

Your “why” is the thing that gives you a direction to follow, and it’s the thing that ties everything you create back to your business objectives.

Why do you want to create content? Why do you want to invest your time and money into content marketing? What do you want to come away with after creating and promoting content? Knowing your “why” is the most important step to setting effective content marketing goals.

Define your audience

A business that targets everyone converts no one!

So, you need to understand and define your audience. Decide who your ideal customer is and what they expect from your brand.

When you know your audience, you’ll be able to create content that resonates with them, which will help increase engagement. And ultimately, it will lead to the success of your content marketing strategy.

So, ask yourself why your audience would want to read your content and what they can actually gain from reading it. Try to figure out the types of challenges your audience is facing and how you can solve them. All this can help you to come up with a content plan that drives more traffic and leads.

Decide on the type of content you’ll produce

Next, you need to decide the type of content you’ll produce.

The type of content you decide to create will depend on your business goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, creating visual content such as infographics, images, or videos may be the best option. As per a report by CMI, there was an increase in the usage of infographics by B2B marketers by 67% in the last four years.

That clearly gives the idea that visual content is more consumed compared to other content types. Now with the introduction of an AI art generator, generating visual content has become very easy.

Now, if you are aiming to grow your email list, creating content such as e-books, webinars, or podcasts may be the best strategy.

While creating outlines, understand your customers’ pain points and what information they want to learn. Also, take into consideration the type of language and voice you want to use in your content, as well as the best platform/medium to publish.

Create a list of ideas based on your audience’s search intent. You can try Writesonic’s AI article ideas generator to come up with scroll-stopping ideas with a click. Here’s how.

Decide on your core messaging

After you’ve defined your audience and know what type of content you want to produce, you now have to decide on your core messaging.

This is the most important part of your entire content marketing strategy. It’s something you want people to take away from each piece of content you create. And this is where you decide on the one or two key takeaways you want readers to walk away with after reading each piece of content you publish.

Your core message is the heart and soul of your content marketing efforts and something that you want readers to remember after reading your content.

Create a content calendar

What are the best times for you to publish content? What types of content should you publish? How often should you publish? A content calendar is the best way to keep track of your publishing schedule.

It’s also a great way to map out your strategy and create a transparent content calendar for your team. Start by mapping out a calendar for at least next 6 months. This will give you enough time to create the types of content you want to put out and set them up for success. Automatic timesheets are a great way to keep track of your time and increase productivity. Also, you may utilise time tracking software to better manage your time and concentrate on your content more efficiently.

Now that you’ve mapped out your content calendar, it’s time to fill it in. Here are the types of content you should be publishing:

• Evergreen content: Content that is timeless and relevant for your customers at any time of the year. Examples include listicle blogs, how-to guides, and tips and tricks.
• Seasonal content: Content that is relevant to a particular time of the year. Examples include gift guides around the holidays and holiday recipes during the fall and winter.
• Trending content: Content that is relevant to a current cultural trend. Examples include pieces on how to survive a holiday party during the holidays and articles on Black Friday shopping.

You can try using Instant Article Writer to generate a 1500-word blog post instantly with a click. Watch how.

Set specific metrics

Now that you know what your goals are, who your audience is, and what content type you’re going to use to communicate with them, it’s time to set specific metrics.

But what exactly does it mean? Well, metrics are the numbers that show the success of your content. It helps to determine whether or not your content marketing strategy is successful.

Let’s say when it comes to website traffic you can set metrics such as how many people visit your website in a week? Or, for social media you can look for how many shares your content receives across social platforms and what is the engagement rate? And so on…

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

The most important part when it comes to setting content marketing goals is to be realistic.

Make sure to set realistic goals and not bite off more than you can chew. Wondering what it even means? Well, in simple terms, you should set goals that are within your reach. Because setting unrealistic goals can result in failure.

Remember, content marketing doesn’t happen overnight. You need to be patient and consistent. Keep your goals realistic and attainable. Most importantly, make sure that you are setting goals that are within your reach so that you can measure your success accurately.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Of course, you need to set content marketing goals but don’t be too strict.

If one of your metrics isn’t working, don’t be afraid to experiment with it. For example, if you set a goal to publish two blog posts per week and you’re struggling to meet that goal, try using AI Article Writer 3.0 to speed up the process.

Apart from blog posts, you can try publishing a video post or social media post. The point is you can experiment with your metrics to try and find out what works best for your business. A large part of content marketing is trial and error.

Find relevant keywords

Keywords are undoubtedly hugely important in the content marketing strategy.

They help you drive traffic to your site and create a path to conversions. But there are a lot of different ways to approach keywords, and it can get tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So, what do you focus on? Long-tail keywords, which are very specific keywords that people are searching for, or broader keywords that are more general? How many keywords do you use per post? These are all things that can trip you up if you’re not careful with the way you approach them.

The best way to approach keywords is to be selective. Start by researching what topics would work best for your audience. Once you have those topics, then you can research the best keywords to use for each post. You want to make sure that your keywords are general enough to receive a lot of traffic but specific enough to rank well for them. You can use AI SEO tools to further optimize your blog content for higher rankings. These tools use natural language processing (NLP) to identify relevant semantic keywords related to your target keyword, providing suggestions for better optimization.

Estimate ROI

Every business cares about the ROI. So, the next most important factor in setting content marketing goals is to estimate the ROI. To gauge content marketing ROI, first, register your company with relevant authorities, utilizing register your company for added professionalism and credibility in marketing efforts.

Break down your content marketing efforts into three different buckets: acquisition, engagement, and conversion.

For acquisition, look at how effective your content is at bringing new readers to your site. For engagement, look at how long readers are there on your website. For conversion, pay attention to how many visitors from each piece of content are actually converting into paying customers. You can try using Google Analytics to track all the details.

Conclusion

Content marketing is an essential tool for businesses looking to grow their audience and generate leads. When executed properly, content marketing can be extremely effective.

With so many different channels and mediums available, it’s important for marketers to set specific goals when planning a content marketing strategy. And the above content marketing strategy guide can help you to set rock-solid content marketing goals that can move the needle.

All you have to do is stick to your content marketing goals and publish the type of content that will help you achieve those goals.