C.O.P. C.A.R. Content Marketing is a little acronym that we have been tossing around the Magnetic MarCom office for awhile now.

It spells out (pun intended) a framework of steps that clients must wrap their heads around, and universally adopt throughout their respective organizations, in order for their newly devised inbound/content marketing plan to be given the necessary time and attention for it to begin showing results.

Let’s take a closer look into what exactly makes up the C.O.P. C.A.R. acronym and a solid starting point for any content marketing strategy…

Create

Optimize

Promote

Convert

Analyze

Repeat

Create – This one is simple enough, right? Well, we would urge you to keep in mind that you will need to create a bit more than blog posts and social commentary. For instance, we would strongly encourage you to first, create a persona for your ideal customer. After all, who are you writing these blog posts for exactly?

Only then can your content begin to develop the needed focus for carving out a nice sized niche within your industry. People want to know what your blog is about, so they can quickly determine if it is a fit for them. If your posts cover everything from card tricks to financial advice, this will prove difficult. 

Optimize – What key words are you working towards “owning?” Start with a rock-solid keyword tool (HubSpot’s is great, Google’s is a nice free “second opinion”), and decide where the “low-hanging fruit” is for your industry. The idea is to find relevant keywords, or “long-tail” phrases that both receive adequate search volume per month, but without so much established competition for these words/phrases that it is too difficult to rank well. 

Promote – This is where most new inbound marketers drop the ball early on. You (or your client) are now a content producer, and like any other content producer you must promote your very best work. Television, for instance, can be a good place to look for inspiration. Count how many places you see any given network make mention of their most popular (or new) programs both on their own channel, and in other media outlets…it’s a lot, FYI.

For this example, your website is your own “channel,” and social media, PPC, guest blogging, blog comments, etc. are your extended media outlets. Get out there and let people know what they are missing out on!

Convert – This is the bread and butter of inbound and content marketing. Creating the right types of offers for your visitors no matter where they are in the buying process is critical to generating enough leads to survive. The right offer can multiply your results by as much as 10x or more. So, always be testing something.

Creating multiple offers for various client sub-groups will become more important as a new client moves forward. Having offers for those at different funnel “levels” allows for smaller-sized companies to better allocate their sales efforts.

Analyze – This is really building upon the idea that you should “always be testing something.” Most marketing begins with research and making a best guess as to what your clients/visitors will react best to…that’s perfectly acceptable. But, once you have gathered this baseline data, it’s now time to begin using this information as the benchmark from which you will test, and improve upon, your results.

Repeat – Continue to create optimized content, promote your best material, build and test offers. The name of the game here is not just consistency of content…but consistent and incremental improvement of you lead “flow.” When done correctly, inbound and content marketing takes work (albeit not the back breaking type), but over time the residual effect of these inbound efforts will create a steady flow of leads with the need to do less and less.