Content strategy's the why, not the how

Last week I gave a presentation on creating a B2B content strategy for the Digital Marketing Institute in Munich. Here are the highlights of what I presented and you can find the full presentation here:

Content strategy's the high-level vision that guides content creation to engage a specific audience and deliver against defined business objectives.  It’s what you do before you start creating content to make sure you are focused on producing content that supports your business strategy.

Content strategy is your why, as in why are you creating content, what need will it serve, and how will you measure success? Your who, what, when, how and where constitute run of the mill content planning, i.e. all that stuff that happens in the outer circle around the strategy. If you create content without a clear why, you run the risk of creating too much content or content that doesn’t convert. 

There is no shortage of content you could produce. Content strategy helps you decide what content you should produce based on clear priorities, so you have less content with higher conversion.

A few first principles

Before getting into the detail, let’s start with a few basics. First, content strategy isn’t about coming up with a million cool new ways to talk about yourself, it’s about asking yourself honestly and simply who your ideal customer is and how your content will help them. Second, to be credible, you must be authentic and have evidence to back up your claims. And finally, nothing you as a marketer can say about your solutions will carry the same weight as a customer saying it, so customer content should play a VIP role in your content strategy.

Great content tells a story

Your brand is competing for attention, and the best stories win. Your content should tell a story that invites the buyer to start a journey with you. If you aren’t a natural born storyteller, you can always borrow the Pixar story structure:

Once upon a time there was a (company/ executive/ team …). Every day, (how things used to be). One day (a problem/ catalyst) happened. Because of that, (there was a huge problem). Because of that, (they had to change). Until finally (they tried your solution) and lived happily ever after (saved the world, grew 3x, etc.).

In a good story, the after state is far better than the before story, and in a great story, there was some cataclysmic epiphany or event that was avoided - or some amazing superpowers realized - thanks to your solution. Great stories inspire and help people connect to your brand.

Before you get started

Free templates abound to help you define your content strategy but to use them effectively you need to do your homework around the key elements that make the difference between a successful content strategy and an underperforming one. You can read my blog post 7 Steps to a Great Content Strategy for more information but here's a quick recap.

Brand:

You must ensure a consistent brand experience across all content, both visually and also in tone.

Great quote: ‘When you have a great idea that seems entertaining but has no obvious connection to your brand or business strategy, then you’re not really engaging in marketing at all.’ Jason Miller, Head of Content and Social Media EMEA, LinkedIn

In other words, if you don’t sell flying cars, don’t create content about flying cars. Sure, flying cars are more attention grabbing than boring business solutions, and you may get more leads but chances are they won’t convert because you’ve chosen a topic that has nothing to do with your value proposition. 

Buyer:

The ultimate decision to buy or not to by will be informed by a business case but the people driving or influencing a purchase decision are motivated by a few basic things:

• Help make my life easier
• Help me be more successful
• Help me make the business case

The job of helping your buyer starts with content, supported by customer evidence. Defining buyer personas goes beyond superficial generalizations like ‘has 2 kids’ or ‘enjoys Jamba juice’. To truly help them, you need to understand their pain points, KPIs, expectations, potential objections, and how you address the three dimensions above. Although you can generalize to a certain extent, there will be key market differences so it’s important to involve local field organizations in defining local personas. 

Buyer readiness is another key dimension to consider in your content strategy. My blog post 7 Steps to a Great Content Strategy discusses how to align your messaging and content to buyer readiness. 

Creating the right content for campaigns:

There are essentially only 4 types of campaigns, each of which is best served by different types of content. Brand campaigns require very short, high quality, catchy content that invites people to engage with your brand. Inbound content must offer more value, in order to represent a fair exchange for content details. ABM content should be more tailored to the specific business and offer valuable content such as customer evidence or a free research report. And promotions are an opportunity to be innovative and invite interaction, in order to peak interest and stand out from the crowd. 

Channels:

As you define the why (strategy), who (personas), what (message), and how (content), you also need to define how you will reach your target audience, i.e. the where (channels). Here again there are market differences so it’s important for the field organization to co-own channel strategy.

A rule of thumb is that a good channel strategy invites people to engage without interrupting them. Videos that play automatically and up ads are intrusive so make sure your channel strategy isn’t paying good money to interrupt and annoy people. 

Another consideration is channel fit, i.e. just because your target persona has a Facebook account, they probably don’t use it to read white papers so don’t be surprised if that channel and content combo underperforms. When defining your channel strategy, don’t just look at price and presence, also consider the most appropriate channel(s) to reach people with B2B content. 

Goals:

If you are lucky enough to have marketing analytics that make it easy to see how content performs across all channels and touchpoints… Ha, ha, who am I kidding? This is where I should start to waffle about AI, but instead I’ll just say that an important component of content strategy is defining how you will measure success, i.e. pipeline growth, nurture, awareness, objection handling, etc., because success in one dimension may look like failure in another. If your main KPI is # Leads, your content strategy will likely consist mainly of downloadable assets that require contact information, and you will be tempted to create content that is unconnected to your brand to keep those contacts coming.

Be smart about your goals, not just SMART.

Test before you invest:

A friendly word of advice: Before you spend a lot of time and money on asset creation and paid promotion, start small with blog posts and organic social. It is definitely worthwhile to cultivate an organic social media following with valuable and engaging content, which is a topic in its own right, and once you’ve done that you have a perfect test ground for new ideas. 

For example, my content team at Basware created a messaging framework and inexpensive content for three campaigns (see buyer readiness above) and conducted AB testing for highest engagement via organic social media, generating over $3m in leads in only 5 months at $0 CPL, representing about 10% of total leads. Not bad as lean experiments go.

Once the initial testing has pointed out where the biggest impact lies, you can invest more time and money in asset creation and paid promotion.

You can read about the role Catalysts, Customers and C-Suite play in closing business in The Three C's of Closing in Enterprise B2B but here's a quick recap:

So, there you have it. Basically, it all comes down to this:

• Define your strategy and what success looks like
• Identify which audience(s) you will be addressing
• Ideate and test your key messages
• Create content that will fit planned campaigns and channels
• Promote and amplify, involving the entire organization
• Measure and course correct, if necessary
• Nurture your leads with select content

BONUS Best practices infographic:

Here are some additional resources and information.

CMI: Developing a Content Strategy

Jason Miller: The difference between content tactics and strategy

LinkedIn: Sophisticated Guide to Content Marketing

Vanessa Calas: 9 Types of Content Marketing

Laura Schroeder: SEO’s the Cart, Not the Horse

Charles Warnock: Why Most Content Marketing is Ignored

Sunil Gandhi: Content Marketing Upsurge for CMOS

Aaron Welch: 4 Types of Marketing Campaigns

Jessica Foster: Beyond Keywords What Really Matters