For the past several years, content marketing has been all the rage and has been viewed as a discrete discipline within marketing. With no disrespect to the great folks at Content Marketing Institute who have done amazing work in helping marketers better understand the value of content, it’s time to quit developing content marketing strategies and start developing plans for how content supports marketing strategies.
In a recent study by SiriusDecisions, B2B CMOs indicated two of their biggest challenges in addressing changing buyer behaviors is lack of buyer insights and developing content that satisfies buyers’ needs throughout their decision-making process. Barbie Mattie, senior research director for SiriusDecisions, shared her perspective on why the content alignment problem persists. “Companies still have the mindset that they want to do product launches and push their products. They want to sell how they want to sell, and they don't want to change the focus, addressing how the buyers want to buy. So I think that is the overarching problem. And because they can't solve that massive shift to audience-centricity, lack of aligning the content to the buyers' needs is an output of that.”
This orientation of “selling how we want to sell” is exacerbated by thinking about content marketing as a discrete discipline. Marketers are focused on what they want to publish and on pushing the content they want to promote. But here is a better way to approach this.
1. Start with the buyer - Understand your ideal customer profiles. Develop insights into who they are, what matters to them and what what conversations they are already having. Map how they make their buying decisions and understand who else is part of the decision committee. For business buyers, these may be other departments. For consumers, this may be a spouse or trusted advisor. By taking an empathetic approach to buyers as people, you will have a much higher likelihood that they will want to engage with you.
2. Create a connection plan - Identify the touch points that matter most to buyers at each stage of their journey. Do they discover new ideas by reading journals, attending conferences or watching TV? Do they explore their options on various websites including yours? Do they read ebooks, watch videos and check your ratings as part of their evaluation? Do they eventually talk to a salesperson before making the final purchase decision? Documenting and prioritizing the key touch points will be the core of your marketing plan.
3. Develop a content plan - Once you know the important touch points, you can plot the content needed to help a buyer progress to the next stage and eventually to a successful outcome. In addition to the form of the content (video, digital ad, white paper, web page…), craft the content themes that intersect with what buyers want to hear and with what you want to say.
4. Create compelling content - After you have developed buyer insights, your connection plan and content plan, you can now start creating content assets. Without these preceding steps, you will be practicing what I call “random acts of content”. For each asset, you’ll want to prepare a creative brief to guide the creation process. But get ready for changes in how you produce content. With emerging AI-based engagement tools that help personalize experiences for each individual, you’ll need to create content components that can be dynamically assembled in real-time.
5. Measure the impact - Producing content is not the end goal. Producing results is. Establish feedback loops to assess how the content is helping move buyers and generate results. With feedback, you can continuously learn and optimize your programs to generate better returns on your marketing investments.
With this more strategic approach, marketers can plan how content supports the achievement of their business goals instead of creating an isolated content marketing plan.
