Content Marketing: What Content Marketers Should and Shouldn’t Do
Website design By BotEap.comThe content marketing business is fundamentally built on the premise that “content is king” and rightly so, but with multiple social media platforms to market to, you’ll need to keep posting content on a regular basis. This could be blog posts, podcasts, eBooks, videos, or more to ensure you generate enough eyes. But more content may not be better or necessarily effective if a comprehensive content marketing strategy is not implemented. The volume of content is just one of many things to consider when thinking about
Website design By BotEap.comNick Westergaard shares with us how he shapes his content strategy by referring to and relating to Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 poem “The Elephant’s Boy.”
Website design By BotEap.comI have six honest servants (They taught me everything I knew);
Website design By BotEap.comTheir names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
Website design By BotEap.comQuestions: what, why, when, how, where and who
Website design By BotEap.comWe can also use these six men to come up with our content marketing strategies. The five W’s (and H’s) can go a long way, especially in simplifying the content creation process. It’s important to focus on the WHY, WHOM, and WHAT to lay the foundation for business-focused content that’s engaging with your target base.
Website design By BotEap.comWHY: “Start with the why” is Simon Sinek’s now famous mantra that makes so much sense in today’s Why is your business? Why do it?
Website design By BotEap.comContent marketing can help you achieve specific business goals and your WHY needs to be answered by one of them in each of your real world scenarios.
Website design By BotEap.comBranding: Are you looking to establish familiarity with your brand or create/recreate your brand image within your industry or market segment?
Community Building: Is your goal to build a community around your product or service that allows for a free flow of information and feedback?
PR – Looking to tailor your content for PR events and promotions?
Market Research: Are you looking to measure market feedback on a particular topic, analyze the data, and use it to your advantage?
Customer Service: Do you want to offer service-related content to engage and connect with your existing customer base?
Lead Generation: Do you want to build traffic based on inquiries and generate leads for new sales? Website design By BotEap.comWhich brings us to Who (m) or WHOM, which refers to the public to which it is addressed or to which it already serves. Your content has to offer some kind of solution, it has to satisfy a need in the lives of your customers. This would mean that you need to find out the preferences of your customers and find out what is really important to them. This can be achieved by reviewing quantitative demography and qualitative psychographics. Website design By BotEap.comUltimately, based on your business objective (the why) and figuring out your target audience (who), you are in a better position to decide WHAT form of content you need in that scenario. It’s all about creating content that aligns with a simple strategy: what’s best for your brand? Website design By BotEap.comKipling’s first three service men, the Why, Who and What provide a simplified foundation for a strategic framework that you can use to come up with the right content that meets the needs of both your audience and your business. Now we can go into the details with the rest of the servants – WHEN (period and frequency) – WHERE (internally or externally, what platform) and finally HOW (action plan, how will you measure success) Website design By BotEap.comIt would help to have an innovative mindset to ensure that your content not only gets attention but also keeps it. It’s not just about arousing curiosity, it’s also about drawing your customer into an action or reaction they’d like. Of course, you will have a variety of metrics to evaluate your posts: page views, video views, duration of watch time, social shares, etc. but remember to optimize for your mission rather than metrics. Website design By BotEap.comB2B Content Marketing Mistakes Website design By BotEap.comNow that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at some common B2B content marketing mistakes so we can steer clear of them. According to research involving more than 5,000 B2B shopping participants across 12 industries, the top three mistakes that undermine a company’s content marketing strategy are… Website design By BotEap.comToo much “thought leadership” in the content.
Most marketers use their content strategy in B2B marketing scenarios to demonstrate their levels of expertise and “thought leadership” in their industry. While they may believe they are perceived as “experts,” CEB research shows that simply representing an “intelligent perspective” does not have a significant impact on customer decision-making. Rather, it’s good content that informs customers about new developments in your industry and opens up new ways of looking at your business. It should give them a compelling reason to consider a change and take urgent action. Website design By BotEap.comToo much “personalization” of the content
While there is a school of thought that personalizing content to suit each stakeholder in your buying group is the way to go, this strategy has been shown to fail, especially when multiple stakeholders have a say in the buying decision. In fact, trying to personalize content for each member often hurts the likelihood of a higher quality sale, and this is because different stakeholders have different priorities and see solutions from their perspective. This leads them to opt for a “lower price” solution than would be ideal for their business. Therefore, an effective content strategy should focus on the bigger picture and offer a more collective solution that points in your direction. Website design By BotEap.comContent that does not allow measuring the purchase process.
Marketers use content to engage customers and encourage them to buy from them. However, very often, when they see some engagement with their content, they assume that there is an interest and view such engagement as a step in the right direction – “the path of purchase progress” – and as a result, pass the opportunity on to the customer. sales team, but to no avail. Instead, you’ll be better off designing content that can map out the levels and timing of engagement on the path to purchase. This can be done by including the questions customers are most likely to ask at each step, and then creating marketing content that answers each question along the way. Website design By BotEap.comThese mistakes above are pretty common and it’s time we paid attention and parted ways with standardized content that seems to focus on “thought leadership”, “personalization” and “consumer metrics” but may not get you the results. what are you looking for. Website design By BotEap.comSo, looking back on what we discovered, the ideal content marketing strategy would enlist the help of Kipling’s six service men to lay a simple but clever foundation for developing their content, and then consciously avoid some common mistakes they make. content marketers today. Website design By BotEap.comContent marketing in today’s world is not just about creating a mechanized funnel to drive business, but also about creating opportunities to add informed insights while encouraging and urging your customers to follow your revenue path with a purchase or sale. eventual.
Community Building: Is your goal to build a community around your product or service that allows for a free flow of information and feedback?
PR – Looking to tailor your content for PR events and promotions?
Market Research: Are you looking to measure market feedback on a particular topic, analyze the data, and use it to your advantage?
Customer Service: Do you want to offer service-related content to engage and connect with your existing customer base?
Lead Generation: Do you want to build traffic based on inquiries and generate leads for new sales? Website design By BotEap.comWhich brings us to Who (m) or WHOM, which refers to the public to which it is addressed or to which it already serves. Your content has to offer some kind of solution, it has to satisfy a need in the lives of your customers. This would mean that you need to find out the preferences of your customers and find out what is really important to them. This can be achieved by reviewing quantitative demography and qualitative psychographics. Website design By BotEap.comUltimately, based on your business objective (the why) and figuring out your target audience (who), you are in a better position to decide WHAT form of content you need in that scenario. It’s all about creating content that aligns with a simple strategy: what’s best for your brand? Website design By BotEap.comKipling’s first three service men, the Why, Who and What provide a simplified foundation for a strategic framework that you can use to come up with the right content that meets the needs of both your audience and your business. Now we can go into the details with the rest of the servants – WHEN (period and frequency) – WHERE (internally or externally, what platform) and finally HOW (action plan, how will you measure success) Website design By BotEap.comIt would help to have an innovative mindset to ensure that your content not only gets attention but also keeps it. It’s not just about arousing curiosity, it’s also about drawing your customer into an action or reaction they’d like. Of course, you will have a variety of metrics to evaluate your posts: page views, video views, duration of watch time, social shares, etc. but remember to optimize for your mission rather than metrics. Website design By BotEap.comB2B Content Marketing Mistakes Website design By BotEap.comNow that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at some common B2B content marketing mistakes so we can steer clear of them. According to research involving more than 5,000 B2B shopping participants across 12 industries, the top three mistakes that undermine a company’s content marketing strategy are… Website design By BotEap.comToo much “thought leadership” in the content.
Most marketers use their content strategy in B2B marketing scenarios to demonstrate their levels of expertise and “thought leadership” in their industry. While they may believe they are perceived as “experts,” CEB research shows that simply representing an “intelligent perspective” does not have a significant impact on customer decision-making. Rather, it’s good content that informs customers about new developments in your industry and opens up new ways of looking at your business. It should give them a compelling reason to consider a change and take urgent action. Website design By BotEap.comToo much “personalization” of the content
While there is a school of thought that personalizing content to suit each stakeholder in your buying group is the way to go, this strategy has been shown to fail, especially when multiple stakeholders have a say in the buying decision. In fact, trying to personalize content for each member often hurts the likelihood of a higher quality sale, and this is because different stakeholders have different priorities and see solutions from their perspective. This leads them to opt for a “lower price” solution than would be ideal for their business. Therefore, an effective content strategy should focus on the bigger picture and offer a more collective solution that points in your direction. Website design By BotEap.comContent that does not allow measuring the purchase process.
Marketers use content to engage customers and encourage them to buy from them. However, very often, when they see some engagement with their content, they assume that there is an interest and view such engagement as a step in the right direction – “the path of purchase progress” – and as a result, pass the opportunity on to the customer. sales team, but to no avail. Instead, you’ll be better off designing content that can map out the levels and timing of engagement on the path to purchase. This can be done by including the questions customers are most likely to ask at each step, and then creating marketing content that answers each question along the way. Website design By BotEap.comThese mistakes above are pretty common and it’s time we paid attention and parted ways with standardized content that seems to focus on “thought leadership”, “personalization” and “consumer metrics” but may not get you the results. what are you looking for. Website design By BotEap.comSo, looking back on what we discovered, the ideal content marketing strategy would enlist the help of Kipling’s six service men to lay a simple but clever foundation for developing their content, and then consciously avoid some common mistakes they make. content marketers today. Website design By BotEap.comContent marketing in today’s world is not just about creating a mechanized funnel to drive business, but also about creating opportunities to add informed insights while encouraging and urging your customers to follow your revenue path with a purchase or sale. eventual.