Six Tips to Ensure Your B2B Content Marketing Efforts Are Not Wasted
Content marketing can be the backbone of
a successful business. Crafting useful and informative content that appeals to
your target audience and helps them resolve their pain points is precisely what
can help you sell your offerings.
Surprisingly, however,
not every business focuses its efforts on content marketing. According to the
latest content marketing research from MarketingProfs and Content
Marketing Institute (CMI), only 37% of B2B marketers have a documented content
marketing strategy.
The same study found
that 38% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy that isn't
documented, and 25% of B2B marketers don't even have a defined strategy for
their content marketing efforts.
If you are a B2B marketer
who places a high value on content marketing, and you have a strategy to
support your assets, you are already ahead of the game. But are you taking the
right steps to ensure that none of your content marketing is being wasted?
Here are some actionable
tips that will help you make your content marketing efforts pay off and help
you effectively achieve your goals.
1. Build your content strategy around your mission statement
Creating and marketing
content is not rocket science, yet a lot of marketers often lose sight after a
while and have a tough time getting back on the right track. That is why you
should build your content strategy around your mission statement: You will have
a guide that you can easily follow.
Your content
marketing mission statement will capture the essence of your content
strategy and help you create high-quality content that converts. It will point you
in the right direction and help you deliver real value to your readers.
Accordingly,
your mission statement must be focused on your target audience's needs and pain
points—not on your products or services.
Include
your mission statement on your website so your customers can easily see it. It
goes without saying that you should always deliver on your promise and
consistently provide quality and compelling content that your readers will find
useful.
2. A content calendar is a
necessity
After
creating your blog and learning the blogging basics necessary for
making your blog effective, you need to create a content marketing plan that
will guide you toward your goals. That plan should include a content calendar
to give you clear insight into what, where, and when you will publish.
A
content calendar will help you stay organized by detailing every piece of
content that you will create in a certain period of time. It will help you
schedule your content creation and distribution, helping you to stick to that
schedule to maintain your blogging consistency.
Your
content calendar will both save you time and prevent you from being repetitive
by giving you a clear view of the topics you will need to tackle each month.
If
you're not publishing a lot of content, Google Calendar might be just
the right platform for you. But if you're publishing a lot of content, use a
tool to help you seamlessly manage all your content marketing tasks. For
example, Asana has a great editorial calendar feature that can help
you stay on track with your content and increase productivity in your content
marketing team.
3. Prepare a content
brief
A
content brief is an essential part of your content creation process because
your content writers will use that brief as a guide to deliver high-quality
content that compels your readers to return or take action.
Your
content brief should contain information about your vision and everything your
brand stands for. It should contain the goals, purpose, and objectives of your
content so your writers can fully understand what you want to achieve. Include
information about your target audience as well, because, after all, you're
crafting content for them.
Also,
address important specifications in the brief, such as the voice, tone, and
style you want your content to have, to help your content creators inject your
brand's personality into every single word they write.
All
of that is especially important if you outsource your content creation and
need to help the writers understand who you and your audience are so they can
perfectly tailor the content to your and your readers' needs.
4. Establish and keep
track of your KPIs (key performance indicators)
If
you don't define your KPIs, how will you know whether your content marketing
efforts are paying off? Your KPIs are metrics that will help you measure the
success of your content marketing strategy. They will help you see how your
content is performing so you know whether you are hitting your targets.
Define
the key metrics that will show you where you stand with your goals and
objectives, and track them regularly. For instance, you can track your blog
subscriptions, time on page, bounce rates, conversion rates, traffic, page
rank, sales, revenue, and anything else directly related to your defined
business goals.
Once
your KPIs show you that you've achieved a certain goal, you will know what
you're doing right and what you may need to focus on a bit more.
5. Get feedback from
the people it's intended for
Many
B2B marketers mistake criticism for negative feedback when, in fact, it
represents constructive feedback that can help them learn and improve. Feedback
from your target audience is the best source for improvement, which is exactly
why you should encourage your readers to give you their honest opinions
regarding the quality of your content.
Enable
comments on your blog and social media channels, and encourage discussions that
you will also take part in. Take every piece of feedback into consideration to
help you make better decisions that will lead to higher engagement and customer
satisfaction.
Email
is one of the best ways to gather customer feedback, but social media and
comment boxes on your blog are also useful. When collecting feedback, explain
why it is important and how you will use it.
And,
most important, show your audience that you are effectively listening to them
and that their feedback provides your business with great value.
6. Identify optimal
content channels
It's
not the smartest idea to distribute your content on every possible channel.
Your target audience certainly doesn't use all the available channels, so
there's no point in wasting time and effort marketing your content on platforms
that won't bring you results.
Instead,
identify the content channels that will help you reach the right type of
audience and expand your customer base. Where do your target customers spend
most of their time online? Which channels do they prefer for reading the type
of content that you create or plan on creating?
Once
you figure out what those best lead-generation channels are, you can focus your
content marketing efforts there.
Those
six tips may seem a bit basic at first, but they are essential for helping you
achieve content marketing success.
Start
with your mission statement to develop an effective content strategy. Then
create a brief and content schedule to serve as a guide, and measure the
performance of your content by keeping track of your KPIs and collecting
constructive feedback from your readers.
All the while, share your content on the right social channels, where you will regularly communicate with your followers and entice them to check out your blog to see what else you have to offer. Capture their attention and keep engaging them, and you will hit the bullseye with every piece of content you produce.
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