Develop and Integrated Content Strategy

For the modern b2b company, content lies at the heart of their sales and marketing strategy. “Produce high quality content” is a piece of advice you will hear most frequently. It is easier said than done. Simply hiring a highly capable content marketer and sitting back while the top class content rolls in is unrealistic.

There are a number of best practices involved in developing a cohesive content marketing strategy.

• Define Your Target Customer: Take the time to identify what your target customer looks like. One way to do this is by examining your existing customers as well as your target customers. Speak to your customer facing employees as you build an accurate buyer persona.
• Refine Your Value Message: Having established the challenges your target buyer faces, you should look to develop a clear and precise value message to incorporate into your content. Your value message should differentiate your product from your competitors as well as address how your product solves the specific challenges faced by your target customer.
• Work Closely With Sales: Marketing should work tightly with sales as content strategies are developed. Sales talk to leads and customers every day and are in tune with needs, trends, and expectations. Give sales a voice in your content strategy to help highlight which gaps need to be filled. Ask sales about some of the frequently asked questions they hear and what types of content could help them close deals.
• Make Sure Your Content is Accessible to Sales: Lost and inaccessible content can ruin even the most well thought out strategic content marketing plan. The unfortunate reality is that, this situation is not unusual by any means. Research from SiriusDecisions and The American Marketing Association has found that up to 90% of marketing-produced content goes unused. Unworkable infrastructures unsuited to the high volume of content generated by marketing departments today are, to a large extent, responsible for such high rates of inefficiency. Companies that have invested in solutions that create yet another content repository have not fared much better as content sprawl is an inevitable truth in a fast-growing company. Instead, companies should look to eliminate silos by employing next generation sales content management software which ensures content is accessible regardless of where it is stored.
• Deploy Content Analytics: The last step on the way to a winning strategy is to close the marketing sales feedback loop by deploying content analytics software. Look to supply your reps with content that is proven to close deals rather than content somebody has a hunch about.