Develop an effective content marketing programme

In recent years we’ve seen a fundamental shift in the dynamics of buyer-vendor interaction. Buyers are becoming increasingly more self-directed. They are using a broader mix of online channels and their purchase decisions are incorporating more peer input than ever before.

Whether we like it or not, we’ve moved towards a buyer-oriented, anticipatory and dialogue-based mindset and we as marketers need to adapt.

It is therefore crucial for us to look at the way we rationalise our content. We need to start asking the question, “What content should exist in a given medium at a given time, based on the dialogue we should be having with a buyer?”

With this in mind, organisations should look to build integrated ‘content engines’ that consistently produce compelling content for each stage of the buying cycle. This should include thought leadership to help build interest, educational content to assist lead generation, case studies to support sales, and social media content to develop ongoing relationships and increase brand awareness.

The starting point must be detailed planning and a solid strategy. To help frame your approach, here are six simple steps to driving relevant, valuable and timely content.

1. Understand your audience
The first step to delivering powerful content is to understand who you’re targeting and what they care about. This is where buyer personas come into play. Through this mindset you put yourself in your audience’s shoes and get inside their heads.

The key to developing personas is to focus on specific roles and understand how those roles buy, what the main motivations and pain points are and to who they turn to validate purchase decisions, be it their peers, industry analysts or the media. 

2. Map your content to the buying cycle
Once you’ve established an understanding of your audience, the next step is to determine what content is needed at each stage of the buying cycle in order to move them further along.

Although the buying phases will vary depending on the nature of your business, think about the various questions or concerns that each buyer persona will have at the various stages. Each question or concern represents an opportunity for you to share content.

You then need to undertake an audit of your existing content to understand what already exists and what needs to be created. Create a matrix with your buyer personas along the first axis and the stages of the buying cycle along the second axis. Then map your existing assets to the relevant cells and rate them based on quality. This will help you to identify where the gaps are and where existing content needs to be strengthened.

3. Commit to creating valuable, relevant and timely content
All of your preparation and planning will go to waste unless you keep your audience firmly at the centre of your thinking when creating your content.

Here are some key questions that you should ask yourself throughout the process:

  • Does the content help answer the audience’s questions at the particular stage of the buying cycle?
  • Is it clear how my business can help address their concerns?
  • Is there a strong call-to-action?
  • Has the content been written in a way that’s appropriate to the delivery channel?
  • What will make this content worth sharing?

4. Extract the maximum value
Creating valuable content is certainly no mean feat; it requires a great deal of planning and coordinating. You should always strive to extract the maximum possible value from each asset.

For example, you could take a single white paper and create a series of articles, webinars, blog posts, ‘how to’ guides and podcasts from it, thereby extending its value and lifecycle.

However, when repurposing content, ensure that you don’t recycle the same piece again and again, and avoid simply distributing the same content in different channels. From the outset, devise a plan to reuse content and think about how you can customize it for a particular audience, channel  or stage in the buying process. 

5. Make it easy to find and share
Once you’ve developed the content you then need to plan who will distribute it and where, with your decisions being driven by your buyers’ preferences. This is where the work you’ve put into researching and developing buyer personas will pay off.

One of the most common mistakes is only providing a single home for content. You need to make it as easy as possible for your audience to share your content through various social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.   

6. Measure the impact
If you’re going to create all this content, you should be tracking it in some way. You need to know which assets or content categories are being accessed and shared, and therefore the most valuable to your audience.

For each piece of content, decide if you want to measure things such as web traffic, conversions, views, downloads, placements, or some other measure. Ensure that you’re realistic about what is measureable so that you’re not setting yourself unachievable goals.

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