Do you know the difference between content marketing strategy, content plan or content marketing?

Most people use them interchangeably, but each term has a distinct purpose in your marketing strategy.

Content marketing strategy, content plan or content marketing: What are the differences?

Key questions need to be asked at different levels of your strategy and planning so that you can better understand the differences.

Content Marketing Strategy – The Why:

• Why are you creating content?
• Who do you serve?
• How will you help them, which no one else is doing?
  • What are the gaps not being served by your competitors?
• Where is your audience?

Content Strategy – The roadmap:

• What do you want to achieve?
• What topic will you cover for the gaps?
• What is your brand voice and style guide?
• How will the content be published?
• How will you track the effectiveness?
• What is working or not for you?

Content Plan – The creation or execution:

• Who is responsible for what?
• What will you create to cover the topics? (i.e. video, text, etc.)
• What call to action will you use?
• When will you publish?
• How will you share your content?
• Overall, how will you execute your content strategy?

Every business should have a content marketing strategy.

Many businesses are going about things blindly without structure in their work and what they are trying to achieve.

Your content marketing strategy should be reviewed regularly.

A good time to review and change your strategy is when the following activities take place in the business:

• Launching a new clinic or business
• Change to business goals or targets?
• Failed to hit targeted business metrics

The elements of a content marketing strategy plan.

#1. Why are you creating content?

There are three broad reasons why hearing clinics may choose to get into content marketing.

1. Generate more sales
2. Attract customers you want to serve by
3. Being the go-to person for the industry
4. Lower marketing cost
5. Brand awareness among your target customers

Your why should align with the business goals

You want synergy between your reason for making content and your overall business goals. Your content marketing strategy should help you achieve your business goals.

#2. Who do you serve?

Here, you will need to describe the type of people you serve. In the hearing care business, there are five overarching groups of people that have different needs.

1. Retired older adult with natural progress of hearing loss
2. The child with hearing loss
3. The person who is born or grew up with hearing loss
4. The working professional adult with hearing loss
5. The audiophile, passionate musician with hearing loss
6. The family and friends of a person with hearing loss

Most clinics target all of them but then communicate to none personally. Each individual has a unique need and desire. For your content to resonate and achieve your goal and purpose, you must be clear about whom you are targeting.

Where are they in their hearing loss journey?

There are multiple stages to the hearing loss journey and how people will like to interact with your clinic.

1. In Denial – They attribute their situation to other problems that have nothing to do with them.
2. Acceptance – This person is slowly realizing and accepting their hearing loss. They start exploring hearing aids. Maybe their family and friends have helped them realize the problem.
3. Problem Encounter – This person will go about life, with or without hearing aids, but they will hit obstacles that question their confidence or abilities to continue.
4. The Expert – This person has a book of knowledge and consumes everything about hearing loss products and services. Fear of missing out is their driving motivator. They want what’s best and live a full life.
5. The Stigmatized – This person has internalized their hearing loss as something wrong with them. They are attracted to support that continues to help them hide their hearing loss.

There are multiple stages in buying hearing aids. For every product and service, there are common stages humans typically follow that would also apply to people with hearing loss.

1. Problem Unaware – They don’t know they have a hearing loss or are in denial.
2. Problem Aware – They know they have a problem that needs addressing. They don’t know much about hearing aids and what they can do for them.
3. Solution Aware – They had an idea of how they could address their hearing loss. They may be exploring the difference between cochlear implants and hearing aids. They might be looking at specific hearing aid brands or what are the available hearing clinics in the area.
4. Product Aware – They know what hearing aid features they want based on available options, but they may not know what brand would match their hearing loss. In other cases, they are learning what hearing clinic best serves what they want.
5. Most Aware – They know about your service and competitors and decide who to go to.

Knowing these various stages and personas will guide you in determining the type of content and where you will concentrate your efforts.

#4. How will you help them where no one else is?

If your competitors are doing it right, they will have a strategy with clearly defined groups of people they are targeting, and their content will match. The groups and content they are not serving are an opening for you to fulfill.

Maybe your competitors are all over the place. This ineffective strategy can work to your advantage, too, and where you will find gaps.

Scanning what your competitors are doing. You want to be creating content that stands out. So, examine what content people you seek to serve or attract are looking at now.

Choose the type of content categories.

You want to think about the broad topics that will be important to your clients. Here are a few common ones, but you want to ensure you are not repeating what’s already out there. Avoid sameness to stand out.

• Hearing aid usage – Daily practice to get the most out of your hearing aids.
• Hearing aid brand – The latest model of hearing aids.
• Hearing aid selection – Deciding what hearing aid is best.
• Behind the scenes at the clinic

#5. Where is your audience?

It is important to be close to where the people we want to serve. So understand where they are currently consuming content, whether related to hearing loss or not, and focus on areas where they are most likely to be.

Look at the channels where you could place your content and how these target personas already consume the content. Do they like videos, images, blogs or articles?

Your content marketing strategy will help form your content strategy.

By answering the questions to develop your content marketing strategy, you can narrow your focus with purpose.

With these answers in hand, you can start to look at your content strategy to explore the details and roadmap based on the specifics of your strategy.