Clients can be…frustrating…I get it.

It’s not their fault. They are excited. They are motivated to “move the needle”. They want results and they want them yesterday. They see their competition succeeding across the digital ecosystem and wonder why they are not seeing the same results.

So, they call us and ask us to perform magic – “get us on TikTok! Make a video! Get it on Instagram! Get me followers! Increase our conversions!” All great motivators and goals. But they focus on the tactics ---- and forgo the strategy.

Clients suffer from what I call being Tactic Happy It’s a term I often use with clients when talking about developing their content marketing strategy. I tell clients to NOT get tactic happy.

You see, too often brands start at the end - meaning they focus on the tactic (video, blog, infographic, white paper and so on) and not on the strategy. In order for your audiences to engage with your tactics and make them resonate you MUST first figure out WHO you are talking with and WHAT you want to say to them and then....and only then, can you even begin talking about HOW to say it (the tactics!).

A strategy does not take months…..but it does take weeks. It is time well spent. A strategy forces a brand to stop, think and plan. And it makes them take stock and look where they have been. Therefore, one of the first tasks for established brands is the Content Audit. This is something we can sell!

Many brands have been online for years and there is so much legacy content out there. Content that is old, outdated and inaccurate. And guess what? That content is live and indexed – meaning it is findable – which could be brand damaging.

So….we need to educate brands to take the time to find out what they have....figure out if they can repurpose it with a new tactic - an old white paper turned into a short form animation. Get rid of outdated content. Find the evergreen content….. Stop creating so much new content and start looking at what you have and see if it is still useable....

Then we can take them through the rest of the strategy and figure out the WHO and WHAT and then by all means – get Tactic Happy – when the time is right.