A content marketing campaign checklist can save you time, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
For example, the checklist will motivate you to discuss the workflow process which is priceless in and of itself. Too many organizations focus on “putting my head down and busting my hump until the work is finished” – and that can be terribly inefficient.
Another reason you need a checklist is because that workflow process will identify how to start a campaign, how to know the work on the campaign has been completed and how to know that all the key steps in between have been accomplished.
For those of you rolling your eyes – tell it to legal the next time you forget to run that campaign past them for review.
What’s the goal?
A clearly defined goal that is approved by all key staff is critical to effective and efficient content marketing – yet there are those that skip this part and end up investing a great deal of time, energy, and money creating a white paper or e-Book or webinar simply because they were told to do it.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Are you trying to attract new customers? Motivate qualified leads to make that purchase? Entice existing customers to upgrade or maybe refer others to your business?
Don’t let any talk about a campaign start without starting with “What’s the goal?”
Define your objective.
Make it measurable and within a specific time frame, please.
To generate 100 new qualified leads by June 31st, 2019.
To generate 50 new qualified leads via customer referrals by June 32nd, 2019.
If the goal is to increase awareness within your target audience, make sure you measure awareness before you start the campaign so you can establish a measurable objective for the campaign. And then measure again once the campaign is completed.
Select your audience/segments
Who and where are they in their buying process with you? And be specific, none of that generational segmentation, please.
If you haven’t clearly defined consumer segments or business segments, please do so first because it will have a significantly positive impact on your results.
Budget.
Make sure you have a budget, and if you don’t have a budget stop to develop one.
And if you haven’t developed a content budget before, here are a few hints to get started.
First, map out what you think you will need to do. Weekly emails? Monthly webinars? Video? E-books, white papers, product info sheets?
Then, figure out who will be creating that content – internal or external resources – and what they will need to create it.
For external resources, call around and pick their brains.
Make Google your BFF and you will find information like this. And this. And even this.
Select channels, tactics, and strategies.
Based on your knowledge of your audience/segments, and knowing what stage of the buying process they’re in, you should know where they go for information and what information they want.
Will the campaign be several months long? If so, do you want to start with social media (networking) and owned media (email), then bring in traditional and digital paid media (TV, radio and PPC, social media influencer)?
Kick-off.
Based on everything above, you should know who needs to be involved in the campaign – so invite them to the kick-off meeting so they are involved from this point forward.
This is where all of the above is clearly presented to those that will be creating and distributing the content. And it’s their chance to share any modifications or enhancements they feel, based on their experience, makes sense.
Tasks, owners and timeline.
Part of the Kick-off Meeting is the creation of the project timeline complete with tasks, owners and milestones. This ensures everyone knows what is expected of them and when to expect the work to come across their desk.
As you can imagine this drives efficiency and productivity.
Check out this short video on my Content Marketing Editorial Calendar and Production Schedule.
Identify data needed to determine success & the Process for Capturing, Analyzing & Reporting
Many marketing departments are great at discussing the campaign but aren’t all that wonderful at talking about what data is needed to determine success and how to capture that data so it can be analyzed for reporting on campaign performance.
Having worked with and for organizations where this is a weakness, I can personally attest to the problems this lack of focus on data and analysis causes.
Make sure both of these items are on your checklist and addressed when kicking off your content marketing campaigns.
