I’m a digital hoarder. I love great content! *Immediately rushing to click the Pin This button*. I devour informative articles, and sometimes, I share them simply because they have an interesting headline. While I love great content, I don’t have the patience to watch an informational video. However, I enjoy funny video clips!. To a content marketer, I AM the ideal audience- always ready to absorb small bits of information!
Content Marketing is used to provide prospective and existing customers with information relevant to your product or service line. When Content Marketing is efficient, the content itself aids the sales process without coming across as a traditional sales tactic. Although most marketers acknowledge that Content Marketing is important, many don’t have a solid understanding of the five fundamentals of successful Content Marketing.
1. Devise a Strategy and Stick to It!
“70% of marketers lack an integrated content strategy”*
A Content Marketing strategy focuses on ways to engage your audience, using content to move prospects and customers through the stages of the Buyers Journey. According to the Content Marketing Institute a Content Marketing strategy is “an outline of your key business and customer needs and a detailed plan for how you will use content to address them. There are four key steps to developing a strong Content Marketing strategy:
1.Create Buyer Personas.
2.Identify Keywords that Your Buyers Use.
3.Choose the Types of Content Your Buyers Like.
4.Determine Content Frequency and Distribution Channels.
2. Organization, Organization, Organization!
Keeping the entire Content Marketing team in sync during every step is not an easy task. When you develop a strategy and create a plan, implement a solid workflow to manage the development and delivery process from start to finish.
You need to start right now! Review and document your current state. Next, align your planned activities with your strategy. One approach to organizing your team is to leverage a content management system like Oracle Content Marketing (OCM) that allows you to manage the workflow, keep all comments in one place, and most importantly, OCM provides an audit trail for tracking changes.
3. Know What They Want (and Need to Hear)!
Your audience is already talking every day! Are you listening to them? Deploying the right content at the right time results in improved lead generation opportunities, and creates a customer-centric approach to sales.
How can you find out what the audience wants to hear? The first step is to conduct a content audit. This will catalog your existing content and align it by persona and relevant stage of the Buyers Journey. I have found this step to be an eye-opening exercise when I walk clients through their audit results because it identifies gaps where content needs to be created or repurposed. The audit becomes a blueprint for developing campaigns that successfully move contacts through the Buyers Journey until they are ready to engage with sales and beyond.
4. Media Format Matters! Really!
Individual tastes and preferences vary. I already told you that I love funny clips, but I don’t like to watch videos. Some prefer to read content while others enjoy listening to podcasts during their daily commute. Consider the findings from Go Gulf when you create plans within the media platform of your choice.
Business2Business Community What & Why People Share On Social Media (Infographic)
5. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel! (Use Best Practices)
Industries and audiences may vary, but fundamentals of delivering successful content are universal. Always use Proven Practices! What attracts and engages the audience? Ensure your content reaches your target audience by:
- Using posts with images
- Preparing your content in advance (Who is the audience? What is the keyword? In what format?)
- Make it easy to share (If you want me to share, make sure I can!)
Oracle Content Marketing (OCM) can manage every step of your company’s Content Marketing process making it easy to execute, evaluate, and adjust Content Marketing delivery. At Tegrita, we use OCM for this blog! To find out more about how Tegrita can help you optimize your content strategy, or if you are interested in OCM, contact us!