This week we continue our conversation about content marketing looking at ways we can learn from best-in-class performers. Today we tackle how taking the time to create a content marketing strategy can significantly influence the success of your campaign.
In case you missed our last post, 3 Ways the Most Successful Content Marketer’s Create Content, you can find it by clicking here.
The Importance of Creating a Strategy
It may seem that creating a strategy might sound redundant, time-consuming, and unnecessary. Studies show that only “44% of B2B marketers have a clear idea of what successful content marketing looks like” (Source: Content Marketing Institute/ Marketing Profs, 2015). If you want to improve or create successful content marketing campaigns, you may want to consider having a content marketing strategy in place.
If you already have a marketing strategy in place, it is important to note that this strategy is quite different from a content marketing strategy (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015). Content marketing is defined as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience- and ultimately to drive profitable consumer action” (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015).
A content marketing strategy clarifies:
- how you will create content;
- how you will engage your audience;
- how you will promote your material; and
- how you will measure your success.
As a matter of fact, “32% of the most effective marketers have a documented content marketing strategy” (Source: Content Marketing Institute/ Marketing Profs, 2015). Meanwhile, “28% of B2B marketers have a documented editorial mission statement” (Source: Content Marketing Institute/ Marketing Profs, 2015).
Outlining a strategy assists in the creation of goals and helps you benchmark your progress throughout your marketing campaign. This strategy will ultimately allow you to stay on track and reinforces your original objectives.
Creating a sound content marketing strategy can be difficult if you’ve never done it before, especially since there is no universal or academic template for developing this strategy (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015). Arguably then, the hardest part about creating a content marketing strategy is determining what is going to work for you and what you’re looking to achieve with your campaign.
The most important contribution that a plan offers is reflection as you may refer back to your strategy often to understand what is and isn’t working (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015).
Are you new to the world of content marketing? May I suggest you read our post, “The Current State of Content Marketing”.
Define your Objectives
First step? Define your objectives. Goals of content marketing can include: gaining awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy for your product, service, and/or company (Source: Appinion, 2015).
In order to set your goals, you must first ask exploratory questions relating to what it is you want to achieve, such as but not limited to: “Why are you doing this at all? What is content going to do for your organization? Create awareness? Generate leads? Improve loyalty and retention?” etc. (Source: Convince & Convert, 2014).
The best way to think of an objective is from the perspective of achieving goals (Source: Econtent Mag, 2015). While crafting objectives starts from an introspective analysis (what you want to achieve), it is extremely important to incorporate the experience of potential buyers in your strategy.
Customers don’t like blatant advertisements being pushed on them (Source: Appinion, 2015), and though accomplishing goals is a priority, you must be careful to do so in a way that is subtle and doesn’t make buyers feel like you’re pushing your brand on them (Source: Appinion, 2015).
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Define Your Audience
A well-defined audience (target market) is vital for the creation of engaging content, and requires that you understand their pain points first (Source: Brainrider, 2014).
Some popular audience categorizing tools include creating sales profiles, buyer personas, and best customer models (Source: Brainrider, 2014). A buyer persona is defined as a conceptual representation of your ideal (and current) customer, based on market research and data about your current customers (Source: Hubspot, 2014). Buyer personas great as the can provide valuable insight on pain points, and in turn help you to create more engaging content for your buyers at every stage in their decision journey.
Buyer personas also help avoid having audience targets that are too broad or narrow. Having a broad audience will result in content that is too general and doesn’t give the buyer the information they are looking for (Source: IABC, 2015). On the other hand, if your audience is too narrow, your content will only be valuable to a very small percentage of buyers (Source: IABC, 2015). Buyer personas therefore help you create a content marketing strategy that is balanced.
If you’re interested in learning more about buyer personas, you may enjoy our post, “What is a Buyer Persona and How does it Influence Digital Content”.
Creating & Promoting Content
Creating Content
The creation of content is central to a digital content strategy and marketing in general (Source: Mention, 2015). Findings show that 73% of the most effective B2B marketers plan to produce more content in the future, with an even greater proportion, 81%, of the least effective marketers also indicating so (Source: Content Marketing Institute/ Marketing Profs, 2015).
One of the most common mistakes by marketers is using content marketing strictly as a means to sell. While selling is an underlying concept, buyers are looking to your content as a form of education, entertainment, and a way to determine whether or not you’re trustworthy (Source: Act-On, 2015). Buyers are looking for content that provides value to them at every stage in their decision journey. Outlining a strategy that determines the type of content you are going to produce is one way to ensure that you are not only creating quality and valuable content, but also creating content that buyers can use at each stage of their decision journey.
Strategizing can be accomplished by creating a content calendar. When creating a content calendar, marketers plan in advance for the types of materials they will be producing, and when they will be released. A content calendar can also help you to generate materials around your own events and external dates that might be relevant to your company or your audience (i.e., major holidays) (Source: IABC, 2015).
(Image Source: MPull, 2015)
It’s important to keep in mind that just like the rest of your plan, you must revisit and revise your content calendar frequently. When it comes to content marketing and the internet, it is crucial to remain relevant and up to date. If you’re planning far advance, it’s not uncommon for some content to be expired by the time that you are ready to use it.
Understanding the decision journey can help you make more engaging content for your buyer. To learn more, I invite you to take a look at our post, “The New Decision Journey and Appropriate Digital Content Stages”.
Promoting Content
When it comes to creating a strategy, regardless of your content, success is dependent on your promotion of that strategy. If audiences don’t have access and/or awareness to your material, you’ll struggle to have a successful campaign (Source: Mention, 2015). Consider the time and effort you put into creating it, why wouldn’t you want to ensure that people actually see it? Creating quality content is only half of the equation when it comes to crafting a successful strategy.
That said, if you create a sound content marketing strategy, eventually promoting your content will become a breeze! How? Content marketing, when done consistently, enhances your SEO, and increases the likelihood of viewership and engagement from the target audience (Source: Sensible Marketing, 2015). Learning to speak like your ideal customer is a proven best practice (Source: Sensible Marketing, 2015). Remember to avoid salesy speak and use common keywords throughout your digital content that buyers would use in a Google search.
Content management promotion can be a lot harder than many think! We uncover how to change that in our post, “Content Management: Digital Sales Success Through Social Media”.
Content Management Solutions
To further enhance your strategy, content management software can enhance the creation and promotion of your materials. Sales enablement gives marketers the ability to create, edit, maintain, share, analyze, and remove any type of content regardless of the medium. This makes producing and distributing content to your audiences quicker and more effective. By using content management tools, you are also eliminating the costs that would be associated with maintaining and creating content designed for specific devices.
Sales enablement software is a great tool when it comes to building a strong content marketing strategy given that it makes modifying your strategy much easier. Predicting the needs of your customers can be difficult and requires some trial and error until you expose the desired recipe. Through sales enablement solutions, marketing can effectively tailor campaigns that address each touch point in the buyers decision journey.
Confused as to what is sales enablement? We dive deep into the world of sales enablement in our post, “What is Sales Enablement: Sales Enablement Definition for 2015”.
Measure / Evaluate Content
Most importantly, when creating a content marketing strategy you must determining how you’re going to measure your efforts and evaluate the effectiveness of your content. Even 53% of the most effective B2B marketers are feel challenged with measuring content effectiveness (Source: Content Marketing Institute/ Marketing Profs, 2015).
What most people don’t realize is that when it comes to content marketing, you’re not going to see results automatically. Building up a strong strategy takes time.
If you’re consistently developing great content for your audience, you will see a stronger ROI compared to other forms of marketing because there is a greater long term payoff (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015). So how do you know that your strategy is effective if you don’t automatically see the results? According to Meditative, KPI within the marketing funnel should be tracked in order to determine if your strategy is working in terms of generating sales pipeline activity (Source: Meditative, 2015).
At the end of the day, the strongest indicator to determine if you're on the right track is the engagement your audiences have with your content (Source: Meditative, 2015). The more engagement that you see, the more successful your digital content management strategy is.
Sales Analytic Software
The best sales enablement solution can further enhance your content marketing strategy by giving you a comprehensive visual of your customers across all channels and market segments according to their behaviors, preferences, and demographics. Through sales analytic software, you can better determine the ROI from your marketing efforts by tracking all marketing campaigns.
Through data analytics, you can track the success of your content marketing strategy, you can improve and optimize campaigns faster, and you can better recognize competitive advantage.
Interested in learning more about how to measure your KPI with the help of sales enablement? If so, I suggest taking at look at our post, “The Devil is in the Details: Sales Enablement KPI”.
Taking the time to create a content marketing strategy can significantly influence the success of your campaign. By defining your objectives and audience, pre-determining how to effectively create and promote content, and measuring your progress, you are sure to be a content marketing success in no time!
Interested in learning more about effective use of content metrics? May I suggest you take a look at our white paper below, “Using Data to Impact Marketing Campaigns”.
