Most marketers no longer need to convince that content marketing is a key strategy for engaging customers – but too many organizations are trying to maximize returns by driving more content through more channels at faster speeds faster. Such an approach has no strategic basis and is doomed to failure.
Why do marketers do it? This is partly a technical problem. The phone number list options for channeling more content through more touchpoints are growing every day. Cloud platforms, dynamic web pages, a host phone number list of social media channels, and countless other innovations aim to help marketers automate processes and scale their efforts. Just press another button and increasingly powerful tools will make the magic of marketing a reality.
The phone number list fundamental goal of content marketing is not to deliver brand information to the organization's primary audiences; it's about driving specific business results. Any effort to accelerate content that fails phone number list to also deliver positive – and measurable – results in sales, revenue, and profit is no strategy at all. More often than not, this crucial nuance is overlooked and therefore organizations do not fully benefit from their investment in content.
Accelerate demand, not noise
According to the phone number list 2014 ANNUITAS survey, just 2.8% of B2B marketers with enterprise-wide responsibilities are satisfied with the phone number list effectiveness of their demand generation programs.
From a content marketer's perspective, this is a devastating statistic. Demand generation is fueled by content, and since the phone number list ultimate goal of marketing is to increase demand for an organization's products or services, such a high rate of dissatisfaction implies a considerable waste of potential value content marketing. In fact, Sirius Decisions claims that 70-80% of all marketing content is never used.
Define the key elements of a customer-centric strategy
An effective content marketing strategy relies on three main components: buyer insights, content consumption patterns, and content architecture. Failing to incorporate any of these three elements into the phone number list content marketing strategy will ultimately cause a demand generation program to fail, and increasing the phone number list wrong tactics will cause it to fail even faster.
What drives buying behavior?
Buyer profiling is certainly nothing new, but understanding the phone number list behaviors that make a real difference to results is surprisingly lacking. Demographic information and other routine data points are not enough to understand how to be heard above the noise.
The phone number list real challenge is to develop a deeper understanding of how buyers think, what they need and what we need to say to get them to choose us. Who are they? What roles do they play in the buying process? What is important phone number list to them individually and collectively as a buying committee? What are their pain points, challenges and purchase triggers?
Understanding the phone number list buyer's journey to purchase is the final cornerstone of developing a strategic plan. Aligning content consumption patterns with insights into buyer pain and trigger points provides the phone number list framework needed to develop a predictable path to purchase. With a clear roadmap, it is then possible to create a content architecture to engage, nurture or convert buyers based on where they are in their own buying journeys.
Only after a written content marketing strategy aligns buyer behavior with key stages in the phone number list buying process should any content development begin. Amplifying content that doesn't resonate with buyers in a meaningful way is far more likely to increase marketing costs than it is to drive pipeline and revenue.