Three key set-up steps to help ensure you create content that makes a difference.
Much is written about how to create great content and much
of it is sound advice. However, many
marketing professionals and small business owners struggle to get the results
they are looking for. The normal
day-to-day demands of the job leave little time to dedicate to the task.
Creating content itself requires much
preparation, research, word-crafting and endless editing amongst other things.
This article looks at why some struggle and how real progress can be made by
ensuring the groundwork is in place right at the outset.
1 – Alignment with business objectives: what are you looking to achieve?
Many pundits correctly say that the first step in any
content development programme is to align with business goals. That’s true, but it really needs to be
specific. It’s usually not enough to
talk about aligning to the high level goals of an organisation. It’s more about meeting the annual target for
a profit centre – perhaps increase product Z sales by XX% in twelve months in
the West region, or maybe cross-the-chasm from early adopter sales to run-rate
order volumes of XXX.
Documenting the objective in these terms will ensure the
correct focus and identify how success will be measured. That is what the business expects of the
content. Succeeding here builds careers!
A dose of realism in terms of timescale is needed too. Content may be required to build awareness,
educate and inform, handle objections, and persuade someone to take an
action…in an environment where the visitor is in control.
Stakeholders need to be managed to understand that one item
of content alone will not be able to compete with a face-to-face environment in
terms of the speed of conversion / progression.
Managers need to have a realistic understanding of how a
series of assets can work with other parts of the business process in order to
meet the stated business objective.
Getting agreement on this interaction should also help identify the KPI
points so that each stage of the process is monitored and measured, and true
accountability is introduced!
Getting these ground rules in place first will help smooth
the development of the content that needs to be created.
2 - Audience Requirements:
This usually consists of two parts. First, document your
audience. In B2B that tends to consist
of at least one role at C level and many others at more operational
levels. It’s about identifying decision
makers, influencers and any others involved in the procurement process.
The trouble is, it varies by industry, enterprise size, and
even “divisional personality”. What do
they need at each stage of the buying process?
How can this be provided in a way that maintains your competitive
differential?
It really is an art-form, gathering input from Sales and
having it re-shaped by those with a more reflective, strategic focus. Yet it is fundamental to the whole content
development process, and it really does need to be written down!
Having created the audience requirements document, the
second part of the process is to align existing assets / content to each player
in the buying process. Does each asset satisfy
their needs? What gaps exist? Do the assets effectively handle objections
at each point of the process?
Testing is the only way to prove this but that requires
time, budget and resource. This will be unrealistic
for short term projects but is a must in initiatives likely to last more than
twelve months in a competitive marketplace.
3 - Content Plan and Delivery:
Most marketing professionals tend to be constrained by time and budget. If your content is to be effective and
measurable, a planned approach will be essential, otherwise odd bits of money will
be thrown at tasks on a whim and unlikely to align with the overall objective.
As mentioned above, being clear about the objective and
documenting the audience requirements are the first key steps to have in
place. When you then overlay the time
and budget constraints, the hard decisions can start to be made about what
assets, specifically, need to be created to address the most critical
requirements and how they will interact with other parts of the sales and marketing process to
deliver success.
Finally, the relevant content needs to be “in place” and
distributed at the right stage. That may require training staff how to deploy it, considering media options, utilizing traditional events, webinars or any number of other communications routes. It is surprisingly easy for great content to
“fail” because it has not been made available in the right way at the right
time to the right audience.
All three steps are interlinked and it is essential that the
whole end-to-end process is managed like a strategic project. The good news is that after you have followed this process successfully the first time, it will be easier and
faster to apply the process again. Much
of the groundwork will be in place, staff will understand how it all works, and
the business can become more agile.
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