Content is arguably the most important element within your marketing strategy, yet marketers often grapple with constraints including limited budgets, tight timelines or insufficient skillsets. Many also lack support – 35% of B2B marketers report that their organization doesn’t have a person dedicated to content marketing full time.
These internal challenges run parallel to buyers’ ever-growing need for content. Buyers are searching for information to make business decisions and won’t wait for your organization to provide it. Instead they’ll go to other vendor sources for the answers they need. With these challenges in mind, we’ve outlined four strategies marketers can use to work through everyday constraints.
#1 – Prioritize Quality First
No matter the limitations you face, you need to prioritize the quality of your content above all else. Buyers have a lot of options when it comes to content, which means you may have a limited window to distinguish yourself versus other competitors in your space. That means putting your best foot forward with higher quality content – even if it means producing less of it. If your content is low quality, it doesn’t matter how much you create or how many channels you populate it with – buyers simply won’t engage with it.
There are a few important questions to answer to keep you on track when crafting content: “Does this deliver value to buyers?”; “Does it inspire or educate?”; “Is it easy for buyers to consume?”; and “Does it have a compelling message?” If you have access to first party data or sources of behavioral purchase intent from quality partners, even better to help you further refine content to match the needs of your buyers.
#2 – Play to Your Strengths
When creating content, there’s a range of mediums and content types to choose from. That doesn’t mean you should try do it all. When developing content, it’s most effective to focus your energy on one or two areas, depending on your limitations. Consider what content format best engages your buyers. The format you choose should also be one that you execute on at a high quality, as mentioned above.
#3 – Make Technology and Reporting Work for You
If you often find yourself short for time when developing content, it may be worthwhile to review your ongoing projects and consolidate where necessary. Consider where there are opportunities for technologies and systems you’re already using to further save you time. For example, if your organization is already using project management software, understand if there are ways to customize to keep yourself on track. If not, there are a number of free tools available that can help.
Make sure you are leveraging any reporting at your fingertips to analyze the effectiveness of your content in inbound and outbound channels. Work with your marketing and sales colleagues to find this in marketing automation systems, CRM, website analytics, social media monitoring systems ,etc. Understanding how your buyers are responding to specific assets, messaging or promotion will help you more efficiently determine modifications necessary to improve performance.
#4 – Reuse and Re-Imagine Content
In addition to creating new content, you likely already have a library of assets to pull from. Take inventory of that existing content and identify assets that can be reused or repurposed. If you have a popular E-book, you can repurpose that content into a short video highlighting three key takeaways or rewrite the title and introduction to address a new audience. These changes can be small or greater, but will give your content a second life.
Content marketers will always be curbed by time and resource constraints, but these challenges don’t have to stand in the way of creating compelling content for buyers.
This is the third installment of our “Creating Content” series. Check out the first two blogs discussing the challenges of creating content that engages buyers and creating more personalized content.
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