I believe there are three essential elements to every successful content marketing plan.

1. You must understand your goals – where do you want to be in 3 to 5 years, what are your specific business and marketing goals? You want to spend some time either workshopping this within your agency, or if they are personal goals think long and hard where you want to be

Some examples of your goals may be:

• Do you want to position yourself as THE real estate thought leader in your area?
• Do you want to raise awareness of yourself or your agency?
• Do you want to increase your prospect database?
• Do you need to nurture your existing database through the selling journey?
• Do you need to convert appraisals to listings?
• Do you need to convert customers to evangelists?

Content should never be created just for the hell of it, it needs to support at least one core marketing or business goal.

2. You must have a clearly defined audience – you need to work out who you are talking to and of course who you want to be talking to.

Make sure you have a strong understanding of:

• Your audience’s demographic (age, gender, where they live)
• What websites they visit?
• What social media channels they use
• Who their influencers are
• What their pain points are? What do they need help with?

3. You must have a clear mission statement

Again, drawing on Jo Pulizzi’s from the Content Marketing Institute, having a clear mission is another critical element of your strategy. He says,

“The majority of your content should support your goals, but must always support your mission.”