Competitive content marketing is a footrace…Generating, publishing and managing content can be resource-hungry process.
Even if your company is committed to only a modest schedule of blogs, articles or case studies, someone has to create the content and ensure that it is posted and replenished on a regular basis.
And here’s the trap. You look at your rivals. You can see they’re blogging, posting videos and using social media to strike up a two way conversation with their customers and there’s an immediate fear – and its mostly justified – that content marketing strategy equals competitive edge. So the pressure is on to create your own content, perhaps starting with a regular blog by the CEO or video product reviews.
Developing a content marketing strategy? – A marathon, not a sprint:
At this point it’s important to step back, take a long and deep breath and establish some objectives. A content schedule might look like a ‘must have’ in the face of competitive pressures but unless you are absolutely clear about why you are publishing and what you need to achieve then not only will your strategy be less effective than it should be, you’ll also be unable to assess the success of your campaign. And unless you can measure success you won’t really have the tools and information to drive further improvements.
So the starting point for any content strategy is the establishment of goals. Not fuzzy ‘nice to have,’ goals but ‘big hairy audacious goals’ that will make a real and measurable difference to the performance of your company over the short, medium or long term.
Ambitious goals not only underpin any content strategy by providing the ‘raison d’etre’ but they also energize the process. When the goal is seen as important in the context of the wider business, that in itself drives the development and publication of compelling content.
A well-designed and executed content marketing strategy can deliver across a range of commercially important objectives.
These include:
1. Establishing your business as a thought leader, industry influencer or important source of information.
This can be hugely important in industries such as software and IT where customers are getting to grips with new concepts – for example, deliverable via the cloud. By becoming a source of information, a supplier builds brand awareness and trust among potential customers. But this is not a tactic confined to cutting edge industries. In the retail industry, a camera shop or musical instrument shop might feature reviews or instructional videos that create value around the basic sales proposition. And if a camera shop takes the time to show potential customers how to take great pictures, that in turn will build trust, loyalty and ultimately drive sales in the longer term.
2. Driving leads
However, the purpose of your content strategy may be much more direct. You may see content as a way of driving leads. For instance, when an accountancy or law firm creates content explaining the latest change in financial regulation or tweak to employment law the purpose is both to educate but also stimulate contact. The article provides the understanding of the issues. An email sign-up is the route to finding out more.
3. Driving Sales
Equally content can drive sales by providing reviews, updates and news of new products on the market.
4. Building a Community
Content marketing strategy lies at the heart of social media strategy. At one level you can certainly use content distributed by, say, Facebook, to drive sales. Arguably, however, that ultimate commercial goal is best served in the shorter term by building a community of loyal followers and ambassadors. Content is the currency that will drive likes on the company page. As such the goal may be to simply increase the number of likes by 300% over a given period while also increasing engagement by providing compelling material that encourages interaction and sharing.
5. Provide Customer Service
Content can also be a hugely important customer service tool. For instance, by providing instructional videos around complex gadgets you not only provide a value-add for the customer but also, potentially, deflect calls from advice lines.
Once you’ve defined these goals you can put figures on them. A 5% increase in sales or leads, 300% more engagement, 100% more traffic, 1000 people added to your email database and so on.
6. Defining the Conversation
By establishing goals you also define the nature of the conversation you want to have with your customers and the nature of the content itself. Put simply, a company seeking to drive short-term sales is likely to deploy a different kind of content from one that is seeking to establish itself as a thought leader.
But the nature of the content will also be defined by your customers and their needs as filtered through the prism of the wider marketplace.
Main photo credit: Michael Mandiberg/flickr cc
