Content "Distribution" is the new King

The adage "content is king" is a widely accepted principle among practitioners of inbound marketing, indicating that producing high-quality content will lead to increased visibility, higher search engine rankings, and numerous opportunities for engagement. While this approach may have been sufficient in the early days of online inbound marketing, the evolution of the field has revealed that superior content, while crucial to the success of a content strategy, is not sufficient in isolation. Instead, a holistic approach that includes distribution, measurement, and optimization is necessary to achieve optimal results.

Consider the scenario of unexpectedly stumbling upon a song or book that resonates deeply with you, despite having been created years or even decades prior. One might wonder how it is possible to have missed such a seemingly perfect fit for one's interests and preferences until this point. This phenomenon raises questions about the efficacy of the channels through which we discover and consume media, and the extent to which serendipity plays a role in our experiences of cultural artifacts.

Despite the quality and diversity of the content being produced, a significant proportion of it fails to reach its intended audience due to the overwhelming volume of information to which we are exposed on a daily basis. This phenomenon, referred to as "content shock," presents a formidable challenge for marketers, who must contend with the proliferation of 4.5 million blog posts, 82 million Instagram posts, 754 million tweets, and 5.6 billion queries on a daily basis. The type of content is immaterial in this context, as the sheer magnitude of available information renders it difficult for any given piece of content to stand out and attract the attention of its intended audience.

Given the abundance of content and the difficulty of cutting through the noise to reach one's intended audience, it is essential to devise a strategic approach to content distribution that maximizes the likelihood of the target content being seen by the desired audience. But how can this be achieved? What measures can be taken to ensure that our carefully crafted content reaches its intended recipients?

Content distribution has long been recognized as a critical but often elusive aspect of content marketing. While some businesses may rely on incomplete or superficial buyer personas and customer profiles, and a limited range of channels that have had mixed results in the past, more sophisticated approaches to content distribution do exist. These approaches, which are documented in a variety of publicly available frameworks and strategies, seek to provide a more systematic and effective means of getting content into the hands of the intended audience. In this context, I will outline ten lessons drawn from my own experience and proven to be effective across a range of content campaigns, with the goal of providing a concise and practical guide to optimizing content reach.

1.??????Content Distribution is the most critical part of the Content Strategy. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” These wise words amusingly stand correct for content marketing as well. “If you have six hours to produce a piece of content, you should spend the first four hours thinking about the distribution channels”. This is because the “quality” of the content will always be up for debate; some of your prospects may never like the content you produce but as long as they discover and engage with the content, it’s a job well done. Of course, we don’t want to be sharing junk with our prospects but don’t hold back content thinking your prospects won’t like it; let your audience decide what they like or don’t like about your content and focus on the distribution. The distribution part should be the first thing to consider in the ideation process.

What does the Search Query “Buy ETFs” tell a financial corporation about which content distribution channels to use??

2.??????Try out permutations of Content Types and Distribution Channels. Just don’t keep posting eBooks and product brochures on your website because that “has worked in the past”. Remember that past success is a guide, not a framework. You must experiment with all content types and the distribution channels available and see what works. I once worked with a B2B SaaS client who thought that video content and YouTube were useless because their audience was not there. However, I did research to see which channels their buyer personas and ICPs were on, and I launched a YouTube channel; as of today, in June 2020, they have 60K subscribers with millions of video views. However, not all content kinds are created equal, and only you can choose which type works best for your organisation based on data. For e.g., Video is the content king these days, but it may very well not be for your business. Similarly, all distribution channels are not created equal and are not a universal fit for all content types. You must select the right distribution channel for the content type.

3.??????Establish the ROI per Content type and Channel. This is necessary to get hard data on what content type works on what channel and why. If you don’t have this, you are navigating blindfolded and setting yourself up for failure. Marketers have a habit of measuring content success on soft/vanity metrics such as CTRs, page views, etc. but unless you can directly measure conversions and get sales to agree on the ROI, you are on the wrong path. Setting the right goals and KPIs for measurement is critical in calculating the success of the content campaigns so make sure sales and marketing are aligned on goals and KPIs and you exactly know what success looks like in dollar terms for every channel. You can measure a ton of different metrics for success, but the most important factor is the ROI which you should be able to measure after alignment with sales.

Many metrics to measure, but which is the most important for your business?

?4.??????Customize the Content for every channel based on Channel Feedback, or in other words, create different channel distribution strategies for different content types.?The content needs to be channel-specific and it must consider the feedback loop to produce updated and better versions. An eBook might work well for a PPC campaign, but the same content produced as a video might flop on YouTube. Remember the channel-specific nuances and how it responds to the type of content you produce. This is the reason the same exact content post on LinkedIn vs Twitter will get you vastly different engagement rates, so channel-specific customization becomes necessary.

5.??????Figure out which channels are Scalable. Nearly all companies I have worked with love blogging and SEO as an inbound channel. But do you know that 93% of all blogs never get a single backlink? As for SEO, it is the most difficult and sophisticated inbound channel, with an army of SEO specialists & content writers required to rank for high-value keywords. Other marketers will try to go viral, but 99% of B2B & 97% of B2C Content never goes viral. Yes, a funny TikTok video will go viral, a Tweet criticizing the president can do the same, but you will never see an email thread of a product brochure being enthusiastically spread around. So, make sure you know the limits of the distribution channel and whether it is scalable or not for your business. If doing one webinar a week is getting you 1 lead a week it doesn’t mean you will get 10 leads a week if you do 10 webinars; however, you might get the same 10 leads if you 3X increase your PPC budget.

6.??????Distribute Content based on Buyer Personas and Behavioural/Buying Stages. Now, this seems to be a no-brainer, but I have seen most companies falter in the execution part. With multiple segments, multiple touchpoints, multiple channels, multiple buyer personas, and multiple behavioral/buying stages (research, evaluation, etc.) the sheer number of content variations you must produce becomes cumbersome unless you have a big content team. There is no one size fits all piece of content but that is what a lot of companies use for content marketing in the guise of omnichannel and multi-segment campaigns. I often get asked if multi-segment campaigns are effective. The answer is of course yes, but only if you have the manpower to produce that many variations of content. If you don’t have the manpower, then it’s better to focus on a single persona, a single channel, or a single behavioral stage rather than “blast and pray” campaigns with generic content.

Is the framework in alignment with your internal content distribution strategies?

?7.??????Give your Best Content out for free on at least one channel. Gating content has long been the preferred method of choice for marketers to build their prospect database. How else are marketers supposed to turn visitors into prospects and start tracking them? Now this seems counter-intuitive but keep in mind that there must be at least one channel that is open to all and works as a brand-building platform for your business. Every channel you use has a branding element behind it; this is the reason celebrities promote their concerts differently on Instagram than they do on Facebook or Twitter. Research has repeatedly shown that unnecessarily gating content can backfire. For e.g., less than 5% of B2B visitors trust the content they see on social media whereas 87% of the same group trust it if it's from an influencer. Decide on the channel which you think can produce the most amount of goodwill for your business and don’t gate content there; use that channel to build your brand and trust with your audience. However, make sure your indexing and internal links are working correctly because you would need those to translate the goodwill in organic SEO.

Does your content campaign data accept or reject this matrix??

8.??????Decide the tone of your content based on the Distribution Channel. Since the start of Covid-19, numerous marketers including myself have advised businesses to integrate “empathy” and “compassion” in all their messaging and communication. Although true as a rule, it still is dependent on the distribution channel you are using. In outbound channels such as email, empathy and compassion would be a core component of the messaging but on a PPC landing page, this would be toned down as the visitor is searching for a direct link to a direct query and not so much interested in anything other than solving the problem. Imagine a friend asking you for a loan; your tone will change based on whether you are in the office, the gym, a church, or his son's birthday party. So always figure out the “Job to be Done” by the prospect and how your tone might affect it depending on which channel you are using.

9.??????Don’t recycle Content across the same channel. Recycling and re-purposing content has become a new fad for marketing teams who lack manpower but are under pressure from management to produce content. To be honest, I have seen it work to an extent but placing the recycled content on the same platform in multiple variations is a bad user experience. The same webinar recycled as an eBook and a whitepaper and placed on the website is not a good practice. Instead, use the eBook in a PPC campaign and the whitepaper in an email campaign.

10.??Focus on Building a Community that can amplify the content for you. This is the single biggest catalyst for expediting your distribution. I have seen companies push their product updates and content offerings desperately upon users through emails and webinars with no engagement and I have seen other companies leveraging their communities to share their product updates and service offerings with minimal effort. Building a community allows companies to get quick feedback, amplify their content voice, and achieve content inertia. Make building a community a part of the content strategy master plan as it will pay great dividends in the long run.?

To summarize, the old saying "build it and they will come" does not apply to content marketing. To maximize the impact of your content marketing efforts, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of the distribution channels that will be used and the expected return on investment for each. In the world of inbound marketing, it is not the content itself but rather the effective distribution of that content that reigns supreme. Therefore, it is critical to prioritize the planning and execution of content distribution in order to ensure that your efforts are successful.