So where are you looking for your marketing content?
Whether you have writers on staff or enlist a trusted vendor to turn your product information into marketing content, there’s a way to ensure an endless supply of grist for the content marketing mill. Here’s how to do it:
Look to the outside
When you put out content, you’re attempting to establish your organization, and its voice, as one that deserves to be listened to amid everything else that’s available to read. So:
- Be the expert in your industry. Whether digital or print doesn’t matter, but your library of trade publications should be vast. You and your staff should be voracious readers.
- Know what your competitors are putting out. If you’re being bested in a search engine, it’s likely that your content is less than or less on-target than that of your top competitors. Use them as a benchmark.
- Consider what your customers are reading. If you serve multiple industries, that means mapping out what customers in each of them are reading and care about.
- Go beyond the basics. What overarching concerns do your customers have? What is the “T” in their SWOT analysis? Content that offers solutions to their threats can help your content either put or keep you on their radar.
Look to the inside
Now, pay attention to your own story. What are your offerings? Are you putting together pieces of content that focus on each individual solution you have? Try this:
- Go down your list of products or services. When was the last time you generated content on each one?
- List the types of customers and audiences you have, either by industry, by niche, or by the type of product or service they buy from you.
- Examine your customer journey. There’s a message you can give to each customer at each individual step of the journey.
- Look at your calendar. Seasonal items, trade shows, launches, or forecastable industry shifts can shape what you need to be talking about and when.
- Look to the past. Recycling is good for the earth—but it works well in content marketing, too. Not every customer reads every piece of content. Those who do may forget that content. Not only is it OK to repeat your messages, it’s wise to do so.
Hone your ideas strategically
After considering the variables above, you should be swimming with content marketing topics. An expert versed in content creation could take three products for three different types of customers and generate more than 100 content angles based on where those customers are in their journey. And we haven’t even gotten into what types of content can be generated, those being articles, infographics, videos, and memes to name a few.
So, this is where you turn from quantity to quality. Here’s how you might go about that:
- Get input on your SEO. Search engine optimization isn’t just a way to appear higher in search rankings. It’s also a good indicator of how well your content is performing with your potential customers. Look to a strong SEO partner to evaluate how Google’s algorithms are treating your content. That should provide insight into where to steer your content next.
- Look to your funnel. Where are your prospects getting stuck? You can address pinch points by choosing which content to accentuate, or even formatting your content differently.
- Tap your staff. Product line and service line managers have important insights into what your customers value most. They could share those insights to help you create on-target marketing content. Since they’re closer to actual use of the product or service than a marketer, they also have a better feel for what customers might find interesting, versus what they already know and take for granted.
- Finally, formalize the process of content selection with periodic meetings to explicitly discuss your content. This should include a review of your SEO benchmarks, what content performed the best, and what subjects need addressing most based on your sales challenges.
Most marketing professionals have difficulty deciding the direction of their content, simply because the possibilities are so vast. Listing the sources of content ideas—both internal and external—can help define the universe of possible content. From there, it’s about making sure the content fits with how you’re cultivating your customer relationships to grow your business.
ddm offers strategic approaches to content marketing and can help create focused content that resonates with your customers. Learn more.