7 Powerful Strategies for Building a World-Class Content Marketing Plan.
It’s Monday. For most people, it’s one of the best days of the week and for others, the worst day of the week. You are preparing reports for a meeting at 11 am but realize there is no blog post scheduled for the day and even, for the week. The big reason is, there was no content marketing plan guiding the flow of content within the marketing activities.
This is something many businesses go through. They start out developing marketing goals for the year and hope for great results without putting in place the necessary KPIs. As weeks turn to months, it becomes a daunting task to consistently generate content that contributes to achieving those goals. After a while, the content numbers dwindle and become zero. Soon, everything comes to a grinding halt.
No post goes out on the blog, social media updates reduce because the momentum has diminished. Marketing goals become overwhelming because the machine needed to achieve those goals is poorly created.
Which brings us to the important solution for discussion in this blog post.
7 Powerful Strategies for Building a World-Class Content Marketing Plan.
1. Get buy-in
Creating content doesn’t just happen because your target audience needs it. There must be a carefully thought plan for the creation, evaluation, approval, publishing, and feedback of any piece of content.
All these need to be taken into consideration right after you have clearly identified the needs, ills, and problems of your target audience.
whatever it takes.
2. Define the owner.
First, determine who the content manager is key. He should have the required certification, skill, and knowledge to handle the responsibilities that come with his role.
There has to be someone that totally owns the content, not just anyone that can do it.
The mission of the content team and manager is to make the sales team look like geniuses. This is successfully achieved by the quality of content that is published and the response of the team to feedback from the target audience.
The sales team will always want to work with us and that will increase sales and salaries.
If you want to get an idea approved you call it sales.
If you want to get an idea rejected you call it marketing.
3. Insourcing.
Do not outsource your content to people that do not know the ills and pains of your business. This is a great untapped. Great product ideas always come from within the team simply because they have worked the business with you.
The same thing applies to your content.
It’s always the best idea to insource content ideas from your team members because they know your target audience better than the guy on Fiverr or Elance.
It comes down to the buy-in of the sales team. There are 4 types of content producers in every organization.
– Writers – These are people that need to be heard and have great stuff to write about.
– Actors- These are the guys and gals who are good on camera but find it very hard to write an article.
– Talkers – These guys may not be good on camera but they are subject matter experts. They are great analyzers of a particular topic.
– Questioners – They hear the customers’ and prospects’ fears and worries and are constantly coming up with ideas for sales. They are the ears of the company to the customers.
Once you are able to leverage the power of the team a lot of things will change
4. Start At The Bottom.
When a question is asked, you answer. That’s basically how life works right?
Never leave a comment or any kind of feedback without a response. The better you get at doing this, the more chances you have at increasing the probability of them transacting with you.
The essence of the bottom of the funnel is what we call the big five:
Here are a few questions to give answers to when using these 5 factors.
• Cost – how much does it cost?
• Problems – what problems does it solve? can it solve the problem I am having?
• Comparisons – what other alternatives are out there? what are the pros and cons of the different products? what does one have over the other?
• Reviews – what are people saying about these various solution providers?
• Best – Having gone through the 4 above, what option is best for me?
Many transactions begin with doing research using the 5 factors above. It’s first an emotional action before it is a logical one.
Once you can use these ultimate five factors within your piece of content, you can influence the buying decision in any industry.
5. Make it your greatest sales tool
At every stage of the customer journey, the content has always been the greatest sales tool.
It now boils down to this – How does your sales team see or use it?
Truth is, most sales teams don’t intentionally use content in the sales process.
Well, they should. Educating potential customers over a consistent period of time gets them to know, like and trust you. It doesn’t stop there.
6. Start obsessing over VIDEO now.
– By 2021, 90% of content consumed online is going to be video content.
– How much of the content on your website right now is video/visually-based content?
Increase video Joie.
It will get to a point that if you don’t show it (not write it), it doesn’t exist.
• Consumers and buyers don’t care about whether or not you go on camera. They care about trusting you and being comfortable enough to give you their money for your product or service.
• If we are obsessing on camera today we just might be ready for virtual tomorrow.
7. Measure it. Prove it. Show it.
A mentor of mine once said, “I want to be 5 years ahead always in my industry, so that I can say I won.”
• To evaluate this, you’ve got to measure every activity within your marketing goals.
• Have some key metrics for measurement if you want to develop and get feedback on the right piece of content.
Be the best teacher in the world, doing what you teach and everything will change.
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