It started as a whim, really. You could use content to market your brand, tell your story and intimately connect with your community. Guess what? It worked. Today, marketers are developing processes and strategies around content marketing. Go figure. And here’s the thing—content marketing has gone way beyond a tactic; it is often central to the entire awareness, engagement and conversions strategy. You can make it work too. Here, Henry Bruce, SVP Marketing at Contently, shares eight steps to building a sustainable, high-performance content marketing strategy to operate in:
Step No. 1:
Map your own journey as carefully as your customer journey — You must understand where you are in your content journey and what you should focus on to improve. You may have the tech tools you need but no strategy; whereas others know what kind of content will move the needle but are unsure how to create it efficiently.
Step No. 2:
Align content marketing goals to business goals — It is important to find the pulse of what your audiences expect, and leverage technology to drive the right content to the right customer at the right time.
Step No. 3:
High-performance content marketing needs high-performance content marketing tools — Have a technology platform that keeps a documented strategy top of mind. A good platform should surface relevant content at points of need to address challenges. Good content supports the overall strategy, builds relationships and drives purchase consideration.
Step No. 4:
Build content driven by the buyer’s journey, not by functional teams — Don’t operate in silos. This results in brand fragmentation, an inability to scale content team production and a lack of strategic differentiation once content is activated across channels.
Step No. 5:
Storytelling is still key — There are four keys to storytelling that should be on your checklist: tension, fluency, relatability and novelty. Consider how content can be used to build engagement with a number of audiences, including your employees. This ends up driving company-wide alignment and buy-in for common goals, which compounds the benefits.
This article appears in the new January/February 2019 issue of Connect magazine published by NextPage, which can be found online here. If you would like a free print subscription to Connect, please click here.