5 Most Important Stages in the Content Marketing Process (Infographic)

Did you know that only 29% of B2C marketers and 26% of B2B marketers think that they are very or extremely successful at content marketing?

Shocking, isn’t it?

After all, almost every marketer uses content marketing to some extent or another. And yet, only a small share of them are actually successful in their efforts.

Marketers face a number of challenges that affect their success rates with content marketing. Some fail to create content that their audiences like, while others fail to generate leads from their content.

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Most of these challenges can be overcome by optimizing your content marketing process. If you have a clearly-defined and smooth content marketing process, then you can ensure that these challenges never arise in the first place.

Let’s understand this with an example:

Let’s say that your audience is not engaging with your content because it is not relevant to them or is not engaging enough.

Now, this challenge can be effectively resolved if you do audience research before creating content. If you know who your target audience is and what they like, you will be able to create more useful and relevant content for them.

A content marketing process ensures that you do this. In fact, audience research is the first step in any marketer’s content marketing process. Thus, if you have a well-defined process, this challenge will never arise for you.

Similarly, a lot of these challenges can be completely avoided simply by carefully designing and adopting a content marketing process.

Want to know more about the content marketing process and what it entails?

Read on to learn more.

What Are the 5 Stages of a Content Marketing Process?

Here are the five stages of a content marketing process:

1. Content Research and Planning

This is the planning stage where you conduct research and formulate your content strategy. It includes what types of content you will create, by whom, which channels you will use for publication, how frequently you will publish, etc.

2. Content Creation

During this stage, you start creating content based on what you planned in the previous stage. An important part of the content marketing process, at this stage, is keyword research. You need to find relevant industry keywords and topics to create content.

3. Content Scheduling and Publishing

Once you have your content ready, it is time to publish it. By this time, you should have a content calendar ready as it organizes the process and provides a clear direction. You can use automatic scheduling and publishing tools like Plann to further optimize your process.

You cannot just publish content and expect people to find it and engage with it. You need to promote your content, make sure it gets the desired visibility and reach.

5. Analysis and Strategy Revision

The content marketing process is not complete until you analyze your performance, identify areas for improvement, and revise your strategy. This way, you keep improving with time and your content marketing process becomes more efficient.

To learn about these five stages of the content marketing process in more detail, check out this infographic.