Calling all marketers: it is time to abandon old habits when it comes to marketing content and embrace change. Over the last ten years, you have been flooded with the term “content marketing”. Even though it seems that everyone has their own definition, we can agree that when it comes to implementing “content marketing” with the aim of reassuring and engaging our prospects, it is sometimes better to do less.
We tend to think that content marketing simply means creating content. But then what? What do you do with all that content? Marketers must be aware that content is only the starting point, and that strategy should not be reduced to clicking the “publish” button.
You may be surprised to learn that 60% to 70% of the content written by B2B marketing departments remains unused, according to SiriusDecisions. That is a rather alarming figure if you work in the world of marketing and process implementation. According to a recent report published by Forrester, most companies do “content marketing”, which leads to duplicated efforts, which can be costly and may result in inconsistent customer experiences.
If your “content marketing” strategy for this year consists of producing more content simply for the sake of adding content, it may be worth reconsidering. It is not about stopping content production, but rather about thinking about how to offer something meaningful and relevant to your customers. The goal is to better manage and control the customer experience, while maximizing your teams’ resources, results, and working time.
Here are 3 tips to improve your content marketing strategies:
1- Organize and prepare your content according to your community’s interests.
Before investing more time in content, first analyze what already exists in order to determine what can be reused: webinars, white papers, podcasts, email campaigns, business cases, etc. By doing this exercise, you will realize that you have more content than you might think. For example, the start-up Trendkite began by analyzing its blogs in detail. In one month, the company launched a content hub, “PR Forward”, and quadrupled the number of sign-ups. It also made it possible to multiply MQLs by 4 and the number of demos by 3. “We have a new brand blog, which has become the main entry point as well as the main source of demand, and all of that with little promotion and without reinventing our marketing,” said David Cardiel, adding, “we skyrocketed our subscription rate simply by improving navigation and access to our products.”
2- Check that your content supports the customer journey.
If you want your customers to stick around, you have to give them a good reason to do so. Your content must support your inbound strategy and meet customer needs. Look closely at your marketing data to find out which content is the most engaging and which activities improve ROI. “Ultimately, we want people to move from one piece of content to another and request a demo of our product,” says Cardiel. “We made that easier while equipping our sales team with a better follow-up strategy.”
3- Share your content within your company.
Do not let your business and sales teams search for information on Google only to end up finding answers that already exist in your content. Your content should be easily accessible and shared. It is marketers’ responsibility to ensure that the right content is used to help the prospect progress to the point of conversion. To understand which content will continue to spark customer interest, marketers must include teams in their processes.
The key, then, is not to stop creating content, but rather to focus your attention on the opportunities that will allow you to influence your audience toward content that is relevant to them.
