When was the last time you reviewed your content marketing goals or objectives? It's easy to assume that the main objective is sales and ignore all the rest. However, focusing solely on this big goal means missing out on achieving smaller milestones that also lead to revenue.
While driving email subscribers and demo requests from high-quality content is crucial, there are other objectives worth considering. For instance, retaining current customers and building a stand-out brand are equally important aspects of a successful content marketing strategy.
Content marketing efforts should be diverse and aligned with your company's strategy and direction. By exploring all potential goals, you can identify which ones fit best with your current needs. This approach not only attracts potential customers but also ensures long-term success by engaging consumers effectively.
Take a moment to evaluate your content marketing objectives today—your high potential for growth depends on it!
Table of contents: Top 8 Content Marketing Goals
- 1. Setup long-term lead generation
- 2. Directly impact revenue
- 3. Gain and nurture email subscribers
- 4. Improve customer retention
- 5. Foster customer loyalty
- 6. Build interest groups for retargeting
- 7. Share customer results
- 8. Increase brand authority
Because there are so many things you need to communicate with your audience, there is more than one content marketing objective. So, which content marketing objectives should your company prioritize? Check out these top 8 objectives and take your pick.
To inspire you, here’s an overview of goals B2B marketers achieved by using content marketing.
1. Setup long-term lead generation
SEO is a key reason to make blogging part of your content strategy as you have the chance to retain important rankings and drive meaningful traffic to your website. To do this, you need to release quality, long-form SEO-optimized content frequently and fast.
It’s harder to knock quality off of SERP than to be the first high-quality piece of content. As soon as there are new trends in your industry, you’ll want to be covering them to capture that traffic.
Write long-form content and add multimedia to your posts with images, videos, and quotes. Be sure to update your ranking SEO blog posts every 6-12 months.
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2. Directly impact new customer revenue
If your company is in a space that is doing well right now (remote work technology for example), then this is one of the content marketing objectives you should keep in mind.
You probably want to capitalize on any extra attention you’re getting. Now is not the time for long-ranging SEO plans for very long-tail key phrases that bring in people who are not aware of your solution or the problem it solves.
Now is the time to get the word out about what you do and how it differs from other booming companies.
Check out this example from Loom. They went for the keyphrase “Loom vs Zoom” probably in direct response to the increased search volume for this keyphrase and because of the questions their sales teams and customer services teams are fielding.
What content can you create that will directly impact company revenue? Content marketers often shy away from being salesy, but oftentimes there are content topics that are informative to your audience and help you gain sales all in one.
3. Gain and nurture email subscribers
Alright, so maybe your company is not crushing it right now like Zoom or Loom. Maybe your revenue is struggling, or you’re somewhere in the middle. By gaining more email subscribers and continuing to nurture them, you can keep up a connection with leads for when they are ready to buy from you.
In this email example from Pingboard, we learn about a timely feature to make large remote meetings more personable.
Collecting and nurturing leads is one of the top content marketing objectives. Here are content types to collect leads:
- Quizzes
- Webinars
- Mini video courses
- Email courses
- Ebooks
- Guides
- Checklists
- Freemium plans
To keep nurturing these leads, make sure that you’re delivering value your audience needs, such as real-world advice from people in the same job role or business as them in addition to product updates.
Related article: 20 Content Types You Need if You’re Serious about Content Marketing
4. Improve customer retention
Retaining customers is one of the content marketing objectives that often goes overlooked in the search for all things new.
Don’t leave your current customer base in the dust by only prioritizing content for new customers. Your current customers need you.
The QuickBooks blog is doing an incredibly good job of being a resource for their current customers. They’ve got content that will help their customers stay in business, which of course in turn means that these customers can keep their paid subscriptions active.
This is some of the content they’ve covered recently:
- Business resources during COVID-19 outbreak
- Navigating food delivery for the first time as a local restaurant
- Helpful resources on the US’s Payroll Protection Program
- QuickBooks’ own Small Business Relief Initiative
Even if your company isn’t a place to create an initiative to help your target audience, you can still create resources to make it easy for them to find the help that’s available to them. Even if that help is something simple, like comedic relief.
Related article: How to Create Better Content Strategies for Your Target Audience
5. Foster customer loyalty
People love to do business with businesses that make them feel good. Can your company give back right now? How you can align senior leadership and content together to create a campaign that is inspiring and benefits everyone involved?
Edgar is donated 100% of their new sales from April 20 - 24 to the Freelancer Relief Fund, which was started by the Freelancer’s Union to procure funding from government sources and distribute it to freelancers who needed it during the start of the pandemic.
There are other ways to foster customer loyalty through content as well:
- Showcase simple ways your company is helping people in your target audience
- Humanize your brand with fun content that’s full of personality and puts your real-life team front and center
- Give away special extras such as temporary free or reduced-price access to premium features and services that will help your customers
- Offer a random drawing gift card or credit for your product or service
Find ways that you can show customers that you’re in this relationship for the long haul and that you care.
6. Build interest groups for retargeting
Not everyone will be able to buy your product or service right when they learn about it. They may not have the funds. It may not be the best time.
One of the best content marketing objectives is to use content to build up an audience interest list and then to remarket to this list over time.
Using Facebook and or Google ads, you can remarket to people who have shown some interest in your content, people who have:
- Read your blog content
- Viewed your webinar registration page
- Watched a certain percentage of your Facebook video ad
Content doesn’t always produce immediate sales. You need to be planning ahead and figuring out ways to grow your audience of interested buyers. Then you can have more people in your retargeting campaigns, which tend to convert at much higher levels than other campaigns because it’s not just cold traffic.
To make sure that you’re creating content to save an audience that’s truly interested in your product or service, you need to be very strategic about what you create.
For example, if you work at an email marketing software company, then you don’t want to create an interesting campaign about social media. Your freebie download or webinar should be as closely related to the value and result of your product as possible. That way, the interest you capture is most likely to convert at some point in the future.
Related article: Guide to Organic Marketing: 10 Top Channels to Drive Results
7. Share customer results
In this post from quiz marketing software Interact, we see an awesome result from a power user who was able to generate $100k in revenue from her quiz.
Share customer results through your content, not in a classic case study but more of a “how to repeat this success” style blog post. When you do this, you actually crossover into a whole lot of other content marketing objectives. You can directly gain new subscribers, leads, and customers. You can increase your brand authority as a company that gets results. And you can inspire brand loyalty and increase customer retention because customers who are not yet at that level of success will be excited to double down on your product and use it even more.
However, sharing customer results is an objective that stands all on its own too. You must be communicating the value your customers get from your product, not with your words, but with their own. Do this well and your company will beat the competition’s content out of the water.
8. Increase brand authority
With your content, you can also increase your brand authority. Showcase your brand as the authority in your niche or industry.
There are a lot of different ways that you can pull this off:
- Use your marketing channels (such as email, social, and blog) to celebrate your positive press coverage in major outlets
- Co-market with respected influencers and non-competitors in your space to showcase your company as one that has “ins” with the most desirable brands
- Interview well-known thought leaders in your space and/or invite them as guest collaborators
When you use content to increase your brand authority, you improve the success of all of your other marketing and sales channels. This is something that’s very hard to measure, but the effect is undeniable. With StoryChief we provide our customers with “brand awareness metrics” by automatically gathering all website and social media metrics. This metric is a great and easy way to keep track of your brand authority.
Related article: 10 Brand Storytelling Techniques to Boost Audience Engagement
Why it’s important to align on content marketing goals
When everyone is on the same page with what content marketing is actually supposed to achieve, your company can experience a lot of benefits.
- Smoother collaboration - If everyone is in agreement on company objectives, it’ll be easier to collaborate on content. For example, if everyone on the content marketing team believes that one objective should be to retain existing customers, then the team will make sure to approve some ideas that help customers get better results (not just write about product announcements).
- Employees and ambassadors can share approved content - With a more holistic view of what content marketing can achieve, it’s also easier for employees and other ambassadors to have lots of approved content to share. Especially in the B2B world, employee advocacy is an important strategy that can make sure that your sales team is staying top of mind with active and inactive leads. When you see this as an important objective, you can create content with sales in mind, instead of just focusing on driving more MQLs.
- More accurate KPI tracking - When your team is aligned on content goals, it’s also easier to set and track your KPIs. You won’t be measuring a narrow view of what content can offer, but will instead be measuring all of the content’s potential. This can help the content marketing team show ROI and advocate for more resources.
- Overall faster production - Alignment nearly always means faster production. That’s because there will be less disagreement during the briefing and approval stages. Content can move through the cycle faster. And when you couple that team alignment with a content marketing platform like StoryChief, then you can release quality content much faster than your competitors.
- Higher ROI - Ultimately, when your team is aligned on the company’s objectives for content marketing, it’s easier to make smart decisions, allocate your budget, and achieve real results.
Content marketing is definitely a long-term game, so even as things are changing day to day, don’t forget to prioritize the goals that will hold steady years in the future.
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