3 Ways Doing a Content/SEO Audit Helps You Build Next Year’s Marketing Plan

Building a marketing plan is essential. It helps guide your marketing team to meet specific goals and gives other departments visibility about what your marketing team is doing.

Whether you focus on product marketing, events, thought leadership or a combination of all of the above, knowing how all your upcoming campaigns can and will fit together is integral for success.

Yet, too often, marketing teams skip over an important part of building the marketing plan. They dive right into what they want to produce for next year without checking in with what’s already there.

A successful marketing plan takes a look at what your current marketing campaigns are doing. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time, but part of creating a yearly plan is determining what stays and what goes.

The best place to start building a marketing plan is by conducting a content and SEO audit. Here are three ways it can help:

Determining what your audience is reading

While creating content is one piece of marketing, so is distributing content and repurposing content, and getting your customers/prospects to engage with it.

One of the first questions I ask marketing teams when discussing content is: What are the top read pieces on your website right now? Many of them don’t know. That’s why it’s important to do a content audit. Looking to see what is actually being read, how long people are reading it, etc., gives you an idea of what people are doing while on your website.

You may be surprised to see what is currently trending. There may be a random blog from two years ago getting a lot of traction. You can make sure you have fresh call-to-actions (CTAs) on those blogs, directing viewers to the pages you want them to look at most.

Find New Ways to Repurpose What You Have

Creating new content takes time. Doing a content audit reminds you of what content you have. It helps you figure out different ways to distribute your best content. If three blogs deal with a similar topic, you can repurpose that information. Try creating a white paper, putting it into a PowerPoint, or setting up a webinar. You already have the bulk of the content ready, so with just a little fine-tuning, you have multiple ways to reach prospects.

Use SEO to Fill in the Blanks with Value

Sometimes after conducting your SEO and content audits, you realize that you are not getting the traction you want on particular aspects of your business. For instance, say you are a manufacturer, and your goal was to start ranking for the heat treatment process. So, you created ten articles throughout the past year. You’re all set, right? Not necessarily. That’s how an SEO audit can help. By checking in on your articles’ performance, you can see that maybe using the keyword “heat treatment process” isn’t getting the traction you want. You may need to rework your articles and focus instead on the keyword “heat treating” and see how that works.

Conclusion

Without conducting content and SEO audits, your content marketing plans can lack focus or go in the wrong direction. Sometimes it just takes a little step back to move forward and check-in on how your current campaigns are performing, then build your plan from there.

Do you need help with your marketing plan? We can help. Check out our marketing service offerings.

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