Setting Content Marketing Goals for Your Copy

Whether you like it or not, content plays a massive role in marketing.

Content marketing is one of the most vital, most effective marketing campaigns for businesses even before everything turned digital. Consider advertisements in newspapers, radio, and television – all those won't be possible without copywriting.

Things have not changed much even now that marketing and advertising are online. It's just become more challenging because nearly anyone can publish their own content and results can be quantified through data: engagements, conversions, and even page rankings. Content is now playing a more critical role in brand awareness and promotion.

Why do business goals matter when it comes to copywriting?

Business goals matter for copywriting and content marketing because the goals tie every single copy to a bigger picture. The business goals shield lights to content creators on how to align their daily work to the business.

Align Content Marketing Goals to Business Goals

After setting goals for each of your copy format and materials give it a sense of purpose, you are no longer writing for the sake of having fresh content on your website or social media anymore.

Setting content marketing goals starts with going through your organizational goals.

• What do you want to achieve as a brand?
• How much can it contribute to your company's revenue and reputation?
• Who are the target audiences?

Common content marketing goals

• Brand Awareness
• Brand loyalty
• Build Trust
• Customer Education
• Customer Engagement
• Conversion

It’s likely that content won't be able to address all of those goals. But content is powerful. Whilst it may not often be a direct generator of revenue, it is a strong vehicle for nearly all your marketing efforts and business goals.

It is essential to set goals specific for your content to ensure each copy you produce is a steppingstone to attaining company goals. Each copy should serve a purpose, no matter how short or how simple.

Create Content Category Canvas for Different Goals

Once you have set content goals, list down some topics that you want to talk about and have a clear mind of how these topics complement your business goals.

The best thing you can do is look into your audience's needs. The following questions address the buying cycle of your audience.

• What are their current problems?
• How can your product or service provide a solution?
• What will convince them to purchase?

The buying cycle starts with awareness. It is when they know and recognize what their pain points are and become aware of you. Next is evaluation, wherein they look for solutions to their needs and choose which one is the best option out there in the market. Lastly, the purchase – the final step; your goal.

After creating a list of topics, review each of them and categorize which topic goes well with which format. Note that not all content topics are suitable for each format. Some copy is best intended for podcasts or vlogs, while others are for social media posts or blogs.

Match the topic to a format that suits it. Also, evaluate if a particular topic can be done in multiple formats so you can reuse it in the future.

For example, you can have a podcast and create short, 1-minute video scripts for social media posts out of the critical points of that podcast's transcript. You can publish it simultaneously (the social media post promoting the podcast) or in the future when you go back to your audience's buying cycle.

Compare and Match Content Topics to Your Goals

Now you have both your content goals and your list of topics and have assigned them to specific formats, it's time to compare and match them accordingly.

Match each item of your topic list to your content marketing goals. At this point, you might find out that some format doesn't match any of your goals. In that case, change the format to something that would work best for your goal.

As mentioned earlier, a single content is not a fit-all solution for your goals. This step will make it clear for you. One content for one goal is enough; hitting two birds is a bonus.

There might be goals that you want to prioritize (i.e., increasing sales compared to engagements), but that doesn't mean that most of your content should be focused there. If you think that there are too many contents addressing one goal, adjust to make sure you have things balanced out.

Content Marketing Goals for your Copy

Ask yourself: what results do I expect from my copy?

Refer back to your organizational and marketing goals to know which of these can be addressed by and through your content.

However, do remember that your copy is not a fit-all solution in achieving these goals. If it ticks off just one box of your marketing goal, then it is serving its purpose. Suppose it ticks more, much better. But do not force one copy to achieve all goals.

We created a list of content marketing goals for your copy to give you an idea of which one you can do to attain your overall goal as a brand or company. We divided them into two: descriptive goals and numeric goals.

Descriptive Goals

Descriptive content marketing goals are those you want to achieve without a necessary metric as a basis of success. These goals focus more on what you want to achieve for your audience – providing solutions for the pain points – and hoping to gain customer loyalty and even referrals.

• Brand awareness
• Create an impact/send out a message
• Building audience trust
• Customer/brand loyalty
• New connections/partnerships*
• Updating old posts to making them relatable and usable for the current time
• Understanding customer objections
• Developing new ideas
• Creating a right balance with your content to match buyer persona
• Understanding target audience
• Keeping up with trends and changes

Numeric Goals

On the other hand, numeric content marketing goals refer to reaching a specific metric – be it engagement, sign-ups, sales, etc.

Creating these goals means that you need to choose specific metrics that would address an organizational goal, set specific goals for each metric, and track each's progress.

• Increasing revenue
• Lead generation
• User engagement
• Returning visitors
• Content repository (amount produced, meeting deadlines, and overall cohesiveness) *
• Team efficiency
• Website traffic
• Content/sales conversions
• Product sign-ups
• Finding and creating a baseline RPM

Produce Copy with the End in Mind

The steps we suggested is not fool-proof. There is so much room to improve and customize, which depends on your marketing and organizational goals.

The point is the content you produce should have a purpose. Intend to write copy with the end in mind. And if you set your content writing to that principle, you will have a greater chance to achieve the success you aim with content marketing.

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