How to Craft a Winning Content Strategy

Content strategy is indispensable in today’s dynamic digital age. From finding new consumers, to retaining existing ones, to constantly engaging them, a sound content strategy is essential.  

Content is also the key to how brands communicate who they are, what their values are, what they offer, and how they interact with their audience.  

In this blog, let’s dive deep into the importance of content strategy, how successful brands and creative agencies in Mumbai go about crafting winning strategies for their clients and how you can do the same.  

Before diving into any strategy, whether that is branding or content or marketing, it is essential to define one’s business/brand goals. 

Defining the Goals: 

Before jumping into defining your content strategy, it is essential to understand this- “what is the goal that we are all to work towards?” What does success mean to your business? And how does this affect the way your consumers see and interact with you? No matter what the goal is, whether that is boosted engagement on social media, maximising sales, optimising the sales funnel, creating brand awareness, creating consideration, retargeting. But it doesn’t stop there. You not only need to set goals, but also ensure they are S.M.A.R.T- essentially meaning Specific, Measurable, Attainable or Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. By doing so, the content strategy you craft aligns better with your goals and therefore, the efforts put into executing the strategy over time, will be intentional and relevant. A branding agency in Mumbai, amongst many others, can help you learn and understand your brand better, thereby, enabling you to set clear goals for your brand.  

Knowing & Understanding the Audience:

Now that we have outlined our SMART goals, what would be the next step? The next step of course, would be to understand who it is that we are crafting our strategy for, aka; recognise, learn and really understand the target audience.  

Some of the important questions that one needs to start by asking a consumer are- Who are they, what are their goals and aspirations, what makes them tick, what enrages them, what are their pain points, and so on. For this, it is essential to use both primary and secondary research methodologies in order to get real, relevant and meaningful insights. Once you have mined the relevant insights, it is now time to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and write for them. Write and create content around all their needs, aspirations, and pain points and that is when the true power of content strategy reveals itself to you and that is how one can begin to make a sound content strategy.  

Among many others, there is a branding company in Mumbai that conducts in-depth research of the audience, category and competition, and uses the insights mined here to craft strategies that help their clients stand differentiated in the market.  

Choosing the Right Channels: 

Once you have a set objective and a clear understanding of who your audience are, the next step is to identify the right channel. How can a brand identify the right channels? It’s simple: ask your customers, listen to them, see how they like to communicate, purchase and interact. In today’s world, consumers and brands alike, are exposed to multiple channels of communications- whether that is through tv, or radio, or social media, or website, or newsletters, or radio and podcasts, there are multiple options to choose from. Your content strategy needs to revolve around exactly the channel or channels that your consumers are actively present on. However, it isn’t that simple. Each of these channels have their own specific content formats, content rules & regulations and therefore, this is yet another factor that is important while crafting your content strategy.  

Consider partnering with a ad agency in Mumbai, known for their seamless execution of branding and campaigns across different channels.  

Getting Started with Developing the Actual Content: 

Yes, this is finally the step where you go ahead and create your content! Each content piece that you write and put out there needs to achieve a certain goal, and needs to provide a certain value. Over a period of time, these smaller goals contribute massively to your bigger overarching goals. You can create content that adds multiple different kinds of value to your overall goals. These can be social value, convenience value, aesthetic value, emotional value, informational value, community value, entertainment value, inspirational value and of course, economic value. Another important thing to keep in mind is to always be authentic to your brand voice, brand values and to what your brand represents.  

While it is essential to understand various formats well and plan content around it, it is also essential to occasionally loosen up and experiment with unconventional formats, including new-age ones like Digital OOH, CTV, OTT, In-game advertising, Podcasts, Video marketing, and many more.  

Most importantly, while you experiment with the content and formats, ensure that you maintain a content calendar or a media plan that can help you plan the content in the order of relevance, priority and value given. 

Fostering Community Engagement: 

Have you noticed how the world’s most successful brands are those that have managed to create a special and genuine connection with their consumers? And why is this so important? It is because continuous, genuine and authentic interactions with your consumers is what humanises your brand. It is never what a brand says alone that creates customer recall, love and eventually advocacy, but also how the brand makes them feel. Brands must always strive to be responsive, interactive, proactive and empathetic while interacting with consumers- whether that is quick responses to social media DMs and comments, or quick redressal of complaints, or proactive consumer surveys and feedback collection. Host live Q&A sessions, polls, contests, or virtual events to encourage active participation and dialogue among your audience members.   

Measuring the Results, Optimising and Iterating: 

A successful content strategy would be incomplete if one doesn’t measure the results, optimise for better performance and results and keep iterating on this process. Content strategy is a continuous process and doesn’t end with just putting the content out there in front of your audience.  

But how to measure the result of your content strategy? By employing both qualitative as well as quantitative tools. Quantitative tools would be such as social listening, facebook and google performance metrics, website traffic, email bounce rate, video completion rate, and so on, while Qualitative tools would involve large-scale consumer tests & surveys, interviews, consumer perception mapping & analysis and so on. Monitoring the performance at regular intervals in a non-digital space and constantly in a digital space allows you to understand what is working and what isn’t, which then allows you to experiment with different kinds of content and understand first hand on how they affect the larger goals of a business or a brand.  

In conclusion, remember that success doesn’t come immediately with your content strategy. It is the sum of all the collective efforts put into keeping it consistent that leads to success.