Are campaigns and content marketing plans the same thing? Yes and no.. . but mostly no.
If you've worked with us before, you'll know we often speak in terms of "campaigns" and "pillars." While these may sound similar, they serve different purposes within your marketing efforts. A campaign is a short-term, highly focused initiative, while a content marketing plan is a long-term, ongoing strategy designed to generate sustainable results.
Today, we talk about the differences between the two, but ultimately, how campaigns support your content marketing plan and how everything must work together with a focus on long-term strategies.
Understanding What a Campaign Is
When we talk about a campaign, we're referring to an organized, highly structured series of actions and content to accomplish a clearly defined business objective within a specific period. To put it simply, a campaign is a carefully plotted course with detailed planning that often includes an array of deliverables and milestones to measure success.
For example, assume you have a new property in your portfolio that you're excited to put on the market. To attract potential tenants or buyers, you would likely put together a comprehensive marketing campaign to showcase the property's features and advantages.
In this campaign, you might include various types of content and marketing activities to create a well-rounded approach. For instance, you could create blog posts about the neighborhood's amenities, safety features, and why it's an ideal location. You might complement this with social media posts on platforms where your target audience hangs out, sharing visually appealing photos or videos of the property.
Emails could be sent out to your existing client list, providing them with exclusive first looks or special offers related to the new property. Adding a pillar page on your website that centralizes all this information could also be highly beneficial, serving as a one-stop shop for anyone interested in the property.
You might even choose to create engaging videos that give virtual tours of the property, allowing potential tenants or buyers to get a feel for the space without being there in person.
Each piece of content or activity within this campaign would be designed with a targeted Call to Action (CTA) to guide the audience toward a specific next step. This could range from "Get a Free Rental Analysis" to "Download our Free Make-Ready Checklist." The CTAs not only encourage interaction but also make it easier to measure the campaign's effectiveness.
What Makes Up a Content Marketing Strategy?
When it comes to a content marketing strategy, one of the most critical distinctions to make is its ongoing nature. Unlike a campaign designed for short-term impact within a specific timeframe, a content marketing strategy is your long-term roadmap. It's a well-thought-out plan that orchestrates a variety of loosely related activities with the overarching aim of achieving enduring success for your property management business.
In essence, your long-term strategy is the master plan that sits at the core of all your marketing activities. It coordinates and integrates various campaigns you might run throughout the year, ensuring that each one achieves its short-term objectives and contributes meaningfully to your long-term goals.
For instance, if one of your long-term objectives is to position yourself as the go-to expert in property management within a particular geographical area, then each campaign you conduct should somehow contribute to building or reinforcing that expertise.
Content Marketing Builds Long-Term Relationships
Compared to a campaign, a distinguishing feature of a content strategy is its focus on relationships over transactions. While campaigns often aim for quick wins like immediate traffic spikes or swift conversion rates, a sound strategy goes beyond that. It works to cultivate a deep-rooted connection with your audience.
This relationship-centric approach is not just about selling a service; it's about becoming a trusted advisor to your audience, offering them valuable insights, solutions, and consistent quality that meet their needs and expectations over time.
Additionally, in an effective content marketing plan, you'll typically find a greater emphasis on inbound marketing tactics. Inbound marketing aims to attract customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them, unlike outbound marketing, which fights for the audience's attention. This method is far more conducive to building trust and fostering a long-term relationship with your audience.
For example, instead of bombarding your audience with sales emails, you'd provide them with useful content that helps them solve problems or make better decisions related to property management.
You Need Both, But They Must Work Together for Long-Term Gains
While it might be tempting to focus on quick wins through isolated campaigns, especially when you're dealing with immediate business needs, it's crucial to understand that those are just one part of a much larger picture.
Yes, campaigns can produce immediate results, like a sudden influx of website traffic or a boost in short-term revenue. These are important and can provide your property management business with the instant gratification that often feels like progress. However, such gains can be fleeting if not properly anchored within a broader, long-term content marketing strategy.
The true magic of effective marketing for your property management business unfolds when campaigns and strategies function in harmony, complementing each other rather than existing in isolated silos.
Picture this: You execute a brilliantly crafted campaign that drives impressive amounts of traffic to your website. That's fantastic, but what happens next? If these visitors find a single useful article but nothing more, chances are they'll leave and may not return.
However, if that campaign is part of a long-term SEO content marketing effort, those visitors will discover a wealth of relevant content that answers their questions, addresses their concerns, and steadily guides them down the funnel toward becoming a loyal client or customer.
Campaigns Are Gateways to Lead Generation and Nurturing
Your campaigns serve as entry points, or gateways, into the more expansive world of your brand. Once the audience has stepped through that gateway, your overarching content marketing strategy takes over, sustaining their interest and deepening their engagement with your brand over the long term. This ongoing relationship is nurtured by continuously providing valuable information, problem-solving advice, and high-quality service, which builds trust over time.
Then, as trust grows, so does customer loyalty, enabling you to achieve a single transaction and foster a long-lasting relationship that can lead to multiple transactions, positive reviews, and customer referrals.
When building a property management company, long-term relationships are often more valuable than one-off interactions. Consider the lifetime value of a customer who returns to you again and again or the powerful influence of a satisfied client who becomes an advocate for your business, sharing their positive experiences within their own networks.
This long-term relationship-building is what a well-planned content marketing strategy aims to achieve. It doesn't negate the importance of individual campaigns; rather, it gives them a context and a long-term purpose.
How to Create Campaigns That Support Your Content Marketing Plan
So, how do property managers build campaigns and a successful content marketing strategy that delivers the traffic and leads they need for growth? Here are a few steps to include in your process for creating content that supports your business goals.
Define Your Goals
Before you embark on any campaign or even a long-term strategy, you need to define your goals.
What do you hope to achieve? Is it increased traffic, higher engagement rates, or better SEO content rankings? Remember, when creating your content marketing goals, they must also align with your long-term business objectives.
Know Your Audience
Understanding who you're talking to is half the battle.
Is your audience made up of seasoned property owners and serious investors looking for management services to build big portfolios, or do you specialize in serving landlords with one or two properties? Do you work with both types of property owners?
Knowing your audience helps tailor your message for maximum impact. Create buyer personas for each type of person you target with your services and message.
Conduct Keyword Research
Keywords are the bread and butter of any successful online marketing effort. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to find relevant keywords to help you rank better in search engines.
Plan Your Elements
From long-form content for your property management blog and social media posts to emails and pillar pages, plan out what type of content you'll use for your campaign. Make sure they're all interconnected and aim toward your targeted CTA.
When you create content, make sure it aligns with a campaign and overall strategy to build your property management website traffic.
Create Topic Clusters
A topic cluster is a group of interlinked articles or content pieces that provide comprehensive coverage of a specific subject. These clusters can help improve your SEO content visibility and keep readers engaged.
Plan the Content Calendar
Organization is critical when executing your campaigns and long-term strategy. A well-thought-out content calendar helps keep you on track and ensures you never miss an opportunity to engage with your audience.
Delivering content consistently is a crucial aspect of successful content marketing efforts. So, creating a calendar and publishing content on time, based on the schedule you set, is essential.
Track and Analyze
This might be the most crucial part. Property management companies must monitor metrics like traffic, engagement, conversions, and SEO rankings.
Use this data to fine-tune your approach and adapt your strategy for more long-term success.
Create and Execute a Successful Content Marketing Strategy With Expert Help
If you read "long-term" and were immediately discouraged by the idea of creating a blog post every week for the rest of your life to support your marketing efforts, please don't be disheartened. While inbound marketing and content strategies can take a while to deliver the volume of leads you need, it is the most effective way to create reliable, sustainable growth and traffic to your website (and, ultimately, close more new business).
You can still focus on what you do best — managing your property management business — with expert help to create and execute a successful content marketing plan for your business growth. If you're committed to seeing long-term success with your property management business through an effective content strategy, Geekly Media is here to help. From planning and execution to tracking and analysis, we do it all for property managers!
Start by reaching out to speak to a team member or request your free (exclusive) copy of our in-depth resource, the "Property Management Content Marketing Planning Template."
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