From the moment we wake until we finally peel our eyes away from our screens at bedtime, we’re inundated with content.
Blog posts, videos, graphics, ebooks, social media posts, podcasts — there’s seemingly no end to the terabytes of information we’re served (and willingly consume).
Now add in tools like ChatGPT and our new era of AI-assisted B2B content marketing.
That’s all competition!
With so much content swirling around the web, how can you possibly create assets that stand out, capture audiences’ attention, and guide your prospects down the path to purchase?
To discuss this challenge (and how to solve it), we recently sat down with a panel of content marketing experts for our webinar, The Art & Science of Content Marketing. Here’s a few highlights and words of wisdom from that discussion:
Assemble your content marketing dream team
To produce high-quality, consumable content that drives conversions, you need the right talent.
Whether you’re hiring new employees or amassing resources you already have within your organization, it’s crucial you look for professionals with a few specific skills.
According to content consultant Katie DeMatteis, great content marketers are comfortable working across departments. They can equip demand gen, product marketers, sales, and other teams with the content they need to create success and teach them how to use it effectively.
Additionally, Katie says content teams are responsible for ensuring a cohesive brand voice in tone in all communications.
Mark Brozek, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at ZScaler, agrees. He added that content marketers should have excellent written and verbal communication skills and a knack for collaborating with all parts of the marketing ecosystem and sales.
Besides that, he points out that to create content that resonates, you also need to listen to customers and understand their needs.
What makes a standout content marketing team?
- Collaborators with stakeholders in your marketing and sales ecosystem
- Brand guardians with the ability to enforce en effective brand strategy and safeguard your brand identity
- Great listeners who are attentive to what customers need, to create content that resonates
So while superior writing skills, expertise in social media, and a proficiency in content management tools are all necessary for the job, that’s not enough to drive consistent success.
Today’s content marketers must collaborate with other teams to produce valuable assets and promote and evangelize content marketing inside the organization as well.
Develop an effective content marketing strategy
Once you have the talent in place, the next step to content marketing success is developing effective content strategies.
There are several steps involved in this process:
1. Set your mission
Who are you trying to reach?
What value will you deliver to your audience?
What do you hope to achieve, and by when?
It’s crucial you’re clear on all of these items before you move forward. This step lays the foundation for your success.
You have to make sure that you’re creating content that your audience wants to be consuming. Otherwise, you could have ‘the greatest content marketing program ever,’ and it just won’t resonate.
2. Establish KPIs
This is how you’ll determine your success.
For example, your key performance indicators might include metrics like these:
Content marketing goals and metrics to track:
- revenue targets
- site traffic
- search ranking
- engagement metrics like shares, mentions, and comments
- number of subscribers over time
Charles Waltner, Head of Content Marketing at Illumio, further adds on about the value of measuring your subscriber count.
I think that fundamental growth of subscribers is a great baseline to really see how you’re doing over time
Get 2-3x more downloads with content syndication
3. Determine the appropriate channels and content types
To find out which content marketing channels and formats to direct your efforts on, think about these questions:
- Where does your audience spend time?
- On what social media platforms are they most active?
- What types of content performed best in the past?
- What types of content are competitors using that seem to drive success?
- How can you create a multichannel and integrated approach to keep prospects in the funnel?
Here, Mark also suggests identifying large pieces of content you can break up into smaller bits to maximize your effort.
What are the big pillar pieces that we can make and then atomize into a bunch of derivative pieces of content, so you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel?
And he’s 100% right, considering that repurposing content is the top trend this year, as we found in our B2B marketing trends report.
4. Produce the content
Next, it’s time to begin creating your content assets.
Make sure you’re careful in how you allocate budget and other resources and strive to prevent scope creep.
Plus, one of our best tips here is to really go big on quality, such as by producing content with:
- Original market research and new data, such as a state of industry report
- Thought leadership, whether they’re your leaders or experts in your field
In terms of how to scale production of quality content, there are plenty of market research tools that can help take some weight off your team, like ViB Research.
Discover the latest trends and statistics — and the key actions B2B marketers and leaders need to take today.
5. Distribute and promote the content
After you’ve completed your content, it’s time to publish and promote.
Whether you’re publishing on owned, earned, or paid channels, promotion is essential to engagement.
4 content distribution strategies to add to your content marketig mix:
- Get direct content downloads or with B2B content syndication platforms
- Repost content in bite-sized formats, such as carousels, quotes and videos, on your social media platforms
- Consistently update your lead lists such as with newsletters and email marketing campaigns
- Promote your content to new customer segments by partnering with B2B data providers
And while you’re here, check out some of our useful guides on how to evaluate the right partner to support your content syndication marketing or demand generation activities:
6. Measure your results
Simply put, how did your content perform?
Tie it back to the KPIs you previously established.
And remember, not hitting your goals is compeltely okay. What matters iterating and fine-tuning your strategy over time.
Take Google for example, who explored 15 content syndication vendors as part of their content distribution strategy.
Today, they’re seeing results like this:
Read the full story here: Security operations platform generates 4x more pipeline with content syndication
While many organizations look to ROI to assess performance, we also particularly like this tip from Samuel Chapman, Director of Content and Brand Experience at Aprimo.
According to him, you should also consider ROE – return on effort.
You have to have your finger on the pulse of the return on effort that went into producing a piece of content. It could get as many impressions and other engagement numbers as you like, but what was the labor that went into that?
Final thoughts: Investing in a winning content marketing strategy
As you establish and grow your content marketing efforts, it’s vital to continually seek opportunities to expand and change in response to your audiences’ habits and behaviors.
As marketing evolves, so does the content we have to create.
Additionally, consider where you can be disruptive.
Given the sheer volume of new content published every day, it’s critical you look for ways to grab your audiences’ attention with something unique and highly relevant.
Don’t simply echo content that already exists — create something fresh.
[Content marketers are responsible for finding] creative ways to pattern disrupt and get people out of the endless scroll.
And if you can grab someone’s attention for even a moment, you can create a lasting connection that could inevitably turn into a sale.
For more insight into creating content marketing success, including valuable advice on creating specific types of content and how to drive engagement, catch the replay of the webinar, “The Art & Science of Content Marketing.”
If you are interested in learning about ViB and our effective marketing programs, contact us.
