What do you do if your organization is skeptical about the benefits of content marketing?

Like everything else in marketing, data is king. Start by ensuring you have tracking mechanisms in place, so you know who is engaging with your content. Then you have to run the math: what percentage of leads from your content (downloaders etc) are converting to sales accepted leads, to sales qualified leads, and most importantly, to opportunities and wins? Statistically, how much more likely to MQL or convert to an opp are heavy content consuming organisations, compared to low-consuming organisations? How does the opportunity velocity and win rate compare for heavy-consumers vs low? Once you've done all your math, you'll know what proof points you can offer to convince skeptics.

It can be a challenge to educate non-marketers on the value of content marketing initiatives, specifically brand awareness. The stark reality is that if potential buyers aren't already acquainted with your brand prior to entering the market, your chances of being chosen are slim, with odds less than 5% (Source: Dale Harrison's aggregated findings from Gartner and HBR). To secure a spot in the initial consideration set, proactively establish your brand's presence & differentiation. This is precisely where the tangible benefits of content marketing manifest. Position content strategically where your target audience frequents, offer insights BEFORE their needs arise, and be memorable.

Educating Colleagues on Content Marketing; Approach: Defining Content Marketing:Clarify that it involves creating valuable content to engage a specific audience. Long-term Relationship Building:Emphasize that it aims to build strong relationships through relevant high-quality content. Benefits Emphasis:Highlight how content marketing can boost brand loyalty, engagement & overall business growth. Skepticism Alleviation:Educating about content marketing benefits can dispel doubts & encourage organizational buy-in. By clarifying purpose & advantages of content marketing, businesses can foster understanding, support & alignment across teams paving the way for successful implementation & reaping the benefits of content marketing initiatives.

1. Free trial of any SEO tool (keyword research) 2. Show how much traffic competitors have 3. Apply benchmarks to calculate CR from the blog post 4. Show them the numbers If they are not convinced, run.

Showcasing competitors' investments in content marketing is highly impactful. Couple this with search traffic and share of voice when demonstrating the value of content marketing.

Demonstrating Content Marketing Value through Success Stories Approach; Showcasing Industry Examples: Present case studies demonstrating successful content marketing impact. Highlighting Positive Outcomes: Emphasize improvements in brand awareness, customer engagement & sales. Tangible Illustration: Real-world success stories make content marketing benefits more apparent & relatable. Persuasive Demonstration: Using successful examples can effectively convince skeptics of content marketing's value. By highlighting case studies with clear positive outcomes, businesses can provide tangible illustrations of the benefits of content marketing, making the concept more convincing and compelling to skeptics.

It's important to include performance metrics alongside your examples, specifically metrics that align with and support the larger goals of the business. For example, if you company is trying to increase leads for new business, show examples of how content marketing can do that. Put together an action plan to present: 1) A proposal for content to create 2) A plan for how/where will promote it to our target audience 3) An estimate for what you think the campaign can achieve for the business, based on industry benchmark performance metrics 4) ...and the resources (time, people, budget) required to accomplish this. Then follow up on the performance to prove the value/impact on the business.

Content marketing is a long-term game, that many companies will see as ineffective or too money-consuming. Businesses, like humans, look for instant gratification, quick money, and tangible results. Content marketing is delayed gratification, sustainable money, and not always tangible. The best way to educate, inspire, and encourage your company to adopt content marketing is by showcasing success stories and pitching a potential plan to serve as a pilot project. HubSpot is a great resource for such presentations and my content marketing agency "Naktublak" could also be of great help, especially for Arabic content.

Search queries on Goolge then give them stats on the first-ranking pages. For example you can show them how X page has attracts 1K leads. Then do the math and calculate how many leads or prospects they can gain.

Assuaging your organizations apprehensions regarding content marketing necessitates a tailored dialogue. Should ROI be the focal point of concern, illuminate content marketing's cost-efficiency & its potential for yielding greater engagement vis-à-vis conventional marketing avenues. Alternatively, if apprehensions are resource-related, convey how content marketing can be adapted to align with the resources at hand ensuring a valuable return without overextension. Remember addressing organizational hesitations about content marketing involves demonstrating its cost-effectiveness & flexible scalability, which can reassure stakeholders of its value & feasibility.

If ROMI is at the core of all marketing activities, many of these concerns can be mitigated before they arise. "Sell to the PNL" is always the best practice. Additionally, quantifying and communicating the potential losses that could occur in the absence of Content Marketing can also be effective.

Nowadays, ROI reigns supreme. Some may perceive marketing as an expense rather than an investment. It can be challenging to convey that our marketing content generates value. By engaging our targets effectively, we foster brand loyalty, encourage repeat purchases, and ultimately generate greater value.

Instilling trust in content marketing strategies requires the establishment of concrete, attainable goals that resonate with the broader ambitions of your organization. Establish objectives that detail the contribution of content marketing to organizational targets whether thats boosting web traffic, lead generation or amplifying digital interaction. These goals serve as both a strategic blueprint for action & a metric for gauging the success of content marketing initiatives. So remember that crafting clear & realistic goals is fundamental in validating the role of content marketing within an organizations overarching objectives, providing a clear direction & measurable outcomes for these efforts.

Never make any business move without setting SMART objectives, because how you perceive success is different from how others perceive success and progress. When educating and pitching content marketing to your leaders, make sure to draw a clear roadmap with certain KPIs they can follow and assess based on them. This will help them say: "Let's try content marketing, why not!" Instead of always labeling it as non-sense.

Identifying the outcome your wish your content marketing to deliver will help to decide what content you create, who for & where this is shared. Reflecting on your customer relationships & your sales funnel/customer journey alongside is useful. In my experience reviewing outcomes against the goal regularly is absolutely necessary, our audiences needs & platform needs change rapidly, regular review allows us to adapt and refine our content.

When you're setting objectives it's very important to ensure that your objectives are aligned with the organization's objectives. For example, if one of your organization's strategic initiatives is to extend the lifetime value of customers, your content marketing efforts would be well spent in ways designed to welcome and keep new customers on board. If one of the organization's strategic objectives is to build market share in a certain geography, your efforts need to be aligned with this. You can't sit in isolation and come up with "generic content marketing objectives"; you need to make sure your content marketing objectives are aligned with overall business objectives.

Set the objectives and goals based on the organization’s strategy and goals. Adjust along the way using the right KPIs. It will be hard for the organization to dislike the objectives. They might dislike your work tough.

Validating Content Marketing with Pilot Programs Approach; Small-Scale Initiative: Start with a low-investment project to demonstrate content marketing benefits. Clear Outcome Potential: Choose a campaign with measurable results to showcase the impact effectively. Building Buy-In: Use pilot programs to gain support for larger content marketing initiatives. Data-Driven Reporting: Monitor & accurately report results to strengthen the case for content marketing. By demonstrating the impact of content marketing through pilot programs with measurable results, businesses can effectively validate the value of content marketing strategies to skeptics & stakeholders within the organization.

Empowering Staff through Content Marketing Training Approach; Demystification through Education: Training helps staff understand & appreciate content marketing practices. Value Perception: Educated teams are more likely to recognize the value of content marketing contributions. Skill Enhancement: Training covers content strategy, SEO & analytics for successful content execution. Program Success: Equipped with skills, teams can effectively implement & contribute to content marketing endeavors. By providing education on content strategy, SEO & analytics, businesses empower their staff to understand, appreciate & actively contribute to content marketing efforts ultimately leading to program success & improved content performance.

Passing knowledge contributes to your collective success at the company. Don't keep your learning for yourself, agree with your colleagues or manager on a way to share this education with your team members with a plan to practice what you are learning. Don't be afraid or intimated when it comes to training staff, consider tapping into this new power you have and develop it for the greater benefit of everyone in the company.

When all else fails, nothing beats a live emotional meltdown during the monthly company all-hands to get your point across about how great content marketing is.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. If your leadership don't see the value in it, despite your attempts to put forward a data driven business case, then you have a decision to make. Is it worth raising again perhaps by getting others onboard or will you leave it be? I've fought this fight and I'm an advocate for an area of marketing that isn't the most popular until they see the results. Some are immovable others just need to see the data (perhaps with third party input).

In a world driven by ROI, advocating content marketing efforts can be challenging! How can you link a sale to a month's worth of social media posts that were never liked or commented on, but noticed? Nurturing isn't measurable. If you're not sure about the benefits of content marketing for your own business, think of it as the way that you keep the steady flow of clients through the doors. And if you work for someone else and they don't believe in you or your work, it may be a good indicator to find somewhere else that does.

Their reason of skeptisim about content marketing need to be understood first - is it the return on investment (ROI), the time and resources required, or its effectiveness in your specific industry? 1> You can start with a small content marketing program (for live case study of management) by yourself focussed on a specific topic or audience segment with clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). 2> Track parameters like increasing website traffic, generating leads, or improving brand engagement. 3> Demonstrate the impact of each parameters to increase sales thus increasing ROI. 4> If your management still not convinced, then its time to take decision.

Eis uma coisa que a maturidade da idade me trouxe: estamos todos em lugares diferentes de experiência e conhecimento. A melhor forma de instaurar uma nova cren?a mais saudável e rentável é colocar as duas a funcionar lado a lado e mostrar, com evidências, a que sustenta melhor os resultados pretendidos. Por isso, nestas situa??es a minha recomenda??o é: por um período de tempo manter as duas estratégias em simultaneo. Manter a política de conteúdo habitualmente mais comercial em que o cliente/empresa acredita e ir somando pitadas de conteúdo mais alinhadas com uma estratégia que serve o cliente e uma conex?o relevante e de longo termo. Passo a passo ir partilhando os resultados e deixar que a decis?o naturalmente se revele.