A recent survey by Aberdeen Group revealed that 95 per cent of marketers are either using or considering content marketing. Of those already using it, there was a clear split between those who focused simply on quantity and those who also focused on aspects such as quality, relevance and timing. And there was a marked difference in their results.
The latter group reported a higher percentage of marketing qualified leads and revenue attributable to content marketing efforts. They also enjoyed year-on-year growth in content marketing’s contribution to revenue. Overall, the best-in-class group was realising a revenue contribution from content marketing five times higher than that of their peers.
So what does it take to ensure your content efforts make a tangible and significant commercial impact? Whether you’re about to embark on content marketing for the first time, or want to enhance existing activity, these four tips will help you sharpen up:
1. Develop a strategy
Most content creation activity starts out on an ad hoc basis. However, best-in-class organisations quickly move on to a more strategic approach. Simply creating content isn’t enough. Success hinges on its quality and how well it meets the needs of the audience at different stages of the buyer journey.
Maintaining a steady stream of quality, relevant content for the long-term is not easy. It requires planning and concerted effort that draws on both customer insight and subject matter expertise.
A key differentiator between brands that just use content and those that use content well is that the latter tend to take a more data-driven approach. They understand an effective content strategy is as much about data science as creativity. There is a strong link between the use of data and analytics in content marketing and resultant revenue.
2. Capture data
In order to improve your content marketing over time, you need to learn about the people who are engaging with it. As a starting point, introduce registration forms so people have to give up a little information before they can access premium content such as whitepapers. The trick is to start small with perhaps two or three fields. This provides a good foundation for progressive profiling. After someone has registered, try to capture a little more information each time they access a piece of new content.
Having definitive and clear data about your target audience allows for better targeting and segmentation, as well as fine tuning of your message. Supplementing demographic and firmographic figures with more detailed information about a prospect and their organisation can help. For example, knowing about the technology environment at a company can help you adjust messaging based upon the technology that’s currently used.
The focus should be on gathering as much information as possible. Over time, trends will appear and you can leverage insight to tailor messages for different audience segments. This can also form a blueprint for wider activity targeting additional organisations with similar characteristics.
3. Track content consumption
There is a deluge of content on the internet today. If you want to cut through the noise you need to continually improve your craft. Real-time data about how and when visitors are engaging with your content can provide a platform for this.
Track content usage data and store it for future analysis. The insights you gain will help to customise messages and deliver more engaging experiences. When you have a better understanding of the type of content people tend to engage with at different stages of the buyer journey, you can get smarter about how and when you present it to other prospects. This knowledge is a powerful asset to help drive lead generation and further improve revenue.
Make a case for investing in systems and processes that keep you informed and enable you to refine your efforts. If you know exactly which content drives conversions, you can start to build an environment where every piece of content is evaluated objectively in terms of its financial contribution to the organisation. This enables a more focused, targeted and measured approach where budget is invested wisely in the right content, not wasted on a high volume of ineffective content.
4. Strive for advocacy
Once you’ve got a good core of strategic, intelligent content the next stage is to actively encourage advocacy among users. This relies on creating content users value and rate so highly that they want their own peers and connections to associate them with it.
Make advocacy easy by adding social sharing buttons. Monitor the type of content that tends to get shared. And feed this insight back into the process, so that future content is optimised for a better likelihood of engagement and sharing. If you can get this right, your content marketing efforts will accelerate and a snowball effect will be achieved.
Since most marketers already use content marketing, or are planning to use it soon, the environment is going to become increasingly cluttered. Don’t let your organisation become just another content-churner. If you want to realise tangible commercial benefits from your content marketing, find an appropriate balance between the creative aspects and the science of data. If you can harness data in a way that enables creative to work more intelligently and intuitively, you will foster engagement, drive action and achieve advocacy. Content marketing doesn’t get better than that.
