Minimum Viable Content Marketing Strategy Example

 Content Marketing Strategy Example for SMB: Health Snacks Subscription Company Why We’re Doing This: This content marketing strategy is focused on developing the following business goals for our brand: 1. Increase monthly subscription customers for our grain­free snacks. 2. Increase inbound traffic and brand visibility with qualified gluten­free, paleo, and diabetic consumers. 3. Generate increased links to our website and potential search keywords. 4. Increase customer loyalty by creating content that builds engagement with our existing customers. How We Will Define Success and Failure: For the first 12 months of this program we have the following goals for each stage of the customer purchase process: ● Visibility: ​
Our goal is to generate 30,000 visits to the website over the next year, a 300% year­over­year increase. We would consider 20,000 visits (a 200% y­o­y increase) an adequate performance considering the current traffic volume to the website. 40,000 visits or beyond would be a great success. ● Engagement: ​
While we have a small early stage newsletter list of 300 customers, we would like to increase this to 1,000 or more subscribers. We know from existing results that newsletter subscribers tend to make more repeat purchases than non­newsletter subscribers. We know that 20% of sessions in the past 12 months has been returning visitors. We’d like to maintain that return rate across the next year, even with the goal of increasing traffic by 300%. ● Conversion: ​
We’d like to increase subscriptions and one­time sales from non­paid channels by 300% each. This would be $XX,XXX in subscription revenues (versus $XX,XXX in 2014), and $XX,XXX in single sales revenues (versus $XX,XXX in 2014). Less than a 50% increase in overall revenue from non­paid channels would be ROI negative and would be considered a failure in light of the budget for this content marketing program. ● Retention: ​
We’d like to maintain or increase our average subscriber retention of X months, and an average repeat purchase rate of 20% on non­subscription purchases. Our Target Audiences & Where They Spend Their Time: We have 3 primary sets of buyers: Gluten­Free, Paleo, and Diabetic consumers. Segment #1 ­ Gluten­Free Eaters: Based upon Google Display Planner’s demographic data of the top 10 gluten­free websites, our audience here is 75% female, and around 45% are between the ages of 25­44. Our Google Analytics demographic data shows similar averages for website visitors landing on our gluten­free related landing pages. From our research, we think the bulk of our gluten­free audience is split between mothers in their 30’s looking to eat healthier, and an older 45­64 audience of empty­nesters. Audience information from LivingWithout’s advertising kit states that there are 18­20 million gluten­sensitive Americans, and 15 million Americans following a gluten­free diet, and provides the following data on their subscribers, which we believe are representative of the gluten­free consumers most likely to purchase our products. Glancing at top gluten­free products on Amazon, we see these users also commonly purchased other varieties of gluten­free and organic products, ​
Keurig K­cups​
, ​
positive mood supplements​
, ​
baking equipment​
, and ​
natural cleaning​
and ​
natural beauty products​
. Segment #2 ­ Paleo Dieters: Based upon Google Display Planner’s demographic data of the top 10 gluten­free websites, our audience here is similar to our gluten­free audience, but skewing much younger: A similar analysis of top Crossfit blogs, a major proponent of the Paleo diet, skewed even more heavily female at 85% of audience members, and 59% of total audience between the ages of 25­34. Demographic data from the media kit at http://paleomagonline.com/​
confirms similar demographic data: Glancing at top paleo products on Amazon, we see these users also commonly purchased paleo cookbooks, ​
exercise equipment like ab rollers​
, Stephen King novels, ​
vegetable spiralizers​
, ​
various paleo/gluten­free wraps​
, ​
grass­fed and antiobiotic­free beef sticks​
, ​
protein powders​
, ​
ghee (“paleo butter”)​
, ​
The Sandlot on DVD​
, ​
information on lifting weights for women​
, ​
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult​
, and ​
books on Thyroid conditions​
. In ​
Facebook Audience Insights​
, we see an audience of 250­300k monthly Facebook users over 18 in the US who like “paleo” topics, overwhelmingly female, with interests in the following categories and related pages: Personal Blog Rubies & Radishes​
­ ​
Nourished Kitchen Book Arts/Humanities Author Blogger Health/Beauty Paleo Comfort Foods Real Food Liz Diane Sanfilippo​
­ ​
RobbWolf.com Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations Paleo Grub​
­ ​
The Paleo Secret​
­ ​
The 21­Day Sugar Detox​
­ ​
The Paleo Diet Website Paleo Recipes World​
­ ​
Mark's Daily Apple​
­ ​
Eat Drink Paleo​
­ ​
WOD Nation​
­ ​
Box Basics Media/News/Publishing Eat ­ Fit ­ Fuel​
­ ​
WOD Talk Health/Wellness PaleOMG​
­ ​
The Paleo Mom​
­ ​
Nom Nom Paleo​
­ ​
Paleo Leap​
­ ​
Cavegirl Cuisine Segment #3 ­ Diabetes­Friendly Dieters: Our Diabetic audience displays different characteristics than our gluten­free and paleo audiences: We believe we can drill down further by comparing demographics of Type 1 vs. Type 2 diabetics, however Type 1 only constitutes 5% of diabetics across the U.S. The ​
media kit for DiabeticLivingOnline.com​
and associated print publications suggests a largely middle­aged to retired female audience, primarily living with Type 2 diabetes. Our look at Facebook Audience Insights for most diabetes­related interests also skews extremely heavily towards women over 45, and highlights the following interests: Health/Wellness Diabetic Connect​
­ ​
Diabetes Daily​
­ ​
Diabetes Well Being Health/Beauty Hope Paige Designs​
­ ​
Glucocil​
­ ​
WeightNot​
­ ​
SYSTANE Lubricant Eye Drops Medical/Pharma Diabetes Innovations US​
­ ​
Medtronic Diabetes​
­ ​
Face Hep C​
­ ​
I am ProHeart​
­ ​
Aleve Product/Service AARP Member Advantages​
­ Community We are Diabetics​
­ ​
Managing Diabetes​
­ ​
We Love Birds​
­ ​
PrayAmerica​
­ ​
Spirit of the Holy Land​
­ ​
Make the Connection​
­ ​
Diabetic Alert Dogs by Warren Retrievers​
­ ​
Alzheimer's Awareness Travel/Leisure Clothing Interval International Woman Within​
­ ​
Chico's Low VA Rates Where Hope Grows Company Movie Media/News LittleThings.com​
­ ​
Diabetes Hope​
­ ​
Qpolitical​
­ ​
Diabetes Support​
­ ​
Liftbump Who Will Do The Work: ● 20 hours per month from business owner ● 20 hours per month from part­time marketing assistant Topics We Will Focus On: ● Empowering our audience to enjoy their dietary restrictions with lifestyle tips and recipes. ● Focus diet types: diabetes, gluten­free & celiac, & paleo. Promotional Channel Plan: Owned ● 1 hour per month updating internal links on the website to reflect new content additions. ● 3 hours per month spent on monthly newsletter in mailchimp. ● 1 hour per week spent curating 3rd party content, and scheduling in Buffer for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. ● Printed copy of certain content pieces to be sent with product orders. Earned ● Curation ­ we’ll share content from top blogs in each of our audience categories as a method of getting on the radar of each site. Paid ● $250 per month to be spent distributing content on Facebook to members of our target audiences. ● Weekly or daily giveaway contests to build newsletter list ­ estimated cost of $300 in monthly mail & product costs When We Will Publish: ● Based upon the time available from both team members, we plan to produce 1 weekly post to be published Tue­Thur. ● Newsletter will go out once monthly, with the past 3­5 posts from our site, and 3­5 links to great content we read that month. ○ As we grow our list, we’d like to segment the newsletter for our 3 audiences. When We Will Measure Results & Revisit Strategy: ● We’ll measure the following goals month­over­month and year­over­year on a monthly basis: ○ Revenue, transactions, and average cart value (New vs Returning customers) ○ Revenue per traffic channel ­ linear multi­touch attribution ○ Revenue per landing page group in Google Analytics ○ New email subscribers. ○ Traffic by medium. ● We’ll revisit content approaches and formats quarterly depending on what is working best. ● We’ll revisit overall strategy and audience segments annually.