Making Content King Again

Making Content King in Marketing for 2020 and Beyond

It’s become an all too common phrase – “content is king”. And if we were to look at the efforts and investments marketing teams make with content, we would be inclined to believe that this is true. After all, nearly 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing as a part of their overall strategies. But just like the royal family of Britain, the true deference and respect to the sovereign is in name only and rarely in practice.

Power of the King

This is evident when we realise that while a majority of B2B marketers make use of content, they don’t do so at its full potential. This is why only 52% of organisations only have a small or “one-person” marketing team, only 41% of organisations have a formal content marketing strategy, and 32% of marketers believe their content creation workflow to be below average. It’s not enough to simply proclaim content as king without leveraging its full power for success.

This is exactly how most businesses’ treat content – with praise and the appearance of respect but grant it practically no actual powers - a surprising and disappointing fact. Especially when we consider the real power and benefit that content marketing possesses. The fact remains – content IS king. But what is missing is the organisational understanding on how to leverage the King’s power.

Content Strategy Built on Quality

Quality content deployed within a strategic content marketing plan wields great power as a direct contributor to sales and revenue, as well as a means to ensure higher site rankings compared to volume publishing. In fact, research shows that content marketing has been shown to provide 300% more leads as traditional marketing, while being 62% lower in cost. But such goals can only be achieved if marketers are willing to proactively re-examining how they orient their content marketing strategies.

It’s also important to remember that content is the indispensable tool that conveys the story of a brand and the business. But it can only do so if it’s aligned with other marketing activities. For a story to work, it needs to have continuity and consistency, which means that content marketing can’t be deployed in isolation. A quality content strategy has to act as the back bone of all other marketing levers, such as Analyst Relations (AR), events, digital, and even account-based strategies if it wishes to achieve the highest level of results at an optimum level of investment.

The real challenge here isn’t getting content to work for business, rather, it’s for organisations to understand how to deploy content marketing. It’s only by using high-quality content and revising how marketing teams measure success can content be reinstated to its rightful throne. Once teams become aware of the pitfalls and traps on their content journey, only then can they take the steps that help them cut through the noise and communicate an impactful business message.

Avoidable Pitfalls in Content Marketing

Like any effective strategy, content marketing requires a greater degree of finesse and nuance than most people comprehend. For example, most content marketing teams approach their target audience on a macro level, developing content that spans the globe without taking in to account localised specificities. And while a business may span global markets, content holds the potential to connect with people on a local level. This is already well understood in B2C domains, where 80% of marketing leaders decree content localisation as essential when entering new markets, while 71% of them have shown marked sales results as an outcome of this approach. This is true for B2B domain as well but is unfortunately often overlooked.

Additionally, the largest flaw in most content marketing strategies is the over-reliance on the wrong metrics as a measure of success. The effectiveness of a content piece is usually measured in terms of “likes” or “impression”, which is a critical fallacy. This approach focusses priorities on meeting target volumes of digital connections, but it doesn’t account for the quality of these connections. In this regard, marketing teams need to be extra cautious of metrics as they can be artificially enhanced through paid services which completely undermines the specific quality of the content itself. These purchased results result in a net waste to the overall marketing strategy. With paid-for outcomes, teams feel as if they’ve achieved their designated targets but there are rarely, if any, business benefits. This is particularly true for the B2B category where overall targets are generally low which means metrics alone can’t generate real business success.

Another aspect of content marketing that is misled by metrics is the need to produce content broadly rather than in a specific context. A common example of this is the all too often misunderstanding between content management and content marketing. And while many marketing teams think of them as interchangeably, they couldn’t be more different. The focus on organising, planning, producing and release content pieces within management is an integral part of the marketing process but it doesn’t amount to the same as content marketing strategy.

Organisations risk numerous problems with this approach as they under-invest in the actual creation and strategic planning of the content itself. As a result, the focus falls on generating certain volumes of content which inevitably dilutes quality, cannibalising focus between pieces, overwhelms the target audience, and leads to an erosion in the quality of relationships between audience and brand. This is perhaps one of the biggest pitfalls in most content marketing strategies as it leads to additional efforts for limited returns on investment.

Steps to Kick-Off Your Content Journey

1.    Identify Your Goals

What many marketers choose to ignore is the fact that the process of content marketing begins well before any content is actually developed. This requires marketers to establish a clear focus of their goal, which includes specifying their target audience, determining the nature of the content to be used, and the expected benefits they wish to derive.

2.    Determine Performance Indicators

Effective marketers can only iterate and improve their plans if they’re able to measure their execution. This requires them to establish specific metrics that allow them to chart their progress. And while paid-for metrics may seem to be the pitfall to avoid, there are other metrics, such as SEO, traffic, revenue, and sales, which can offer more tangible and effective analysis.

3.    Understand Your Audience

Once the goals and performance indicators have been set, marketers need to take an in-depth look at their audience demographics, interests, personas, feedback, and behaviours. These details become critical in informing how each content piece is oriented and deployed for maximum impact and reach. This can help marketers develop a conversational engagement with their target audience using meaningful content for a more interactive and long-lasting relationship. And with the advent of social media platforms, it is also becoming possible for markets to develop a conversational relationship with the audience which can help foster a loyal base. And while this is typically more true for B2C companies, there are a few major B2B firms that have cracked the code on social media, such as GE, Salesforce, and MAERSK.

4.    Assess Distribution Channels

With digital, the means of accessing the target audience simply continues to increase. From traditional email to social media, marketers need to decide which channels are most suited to their audience and their industry segment. This can also help marketers determine which types of content are most effective on each channel and help them marshal their resources more in an optimal manner. For example, podcasts have emerged as a popular new segment in the content marketing arena with a near tripling of popularity, making it an essential channel to focus on for long-form audio content.

5.    Leading with Quality

The advent of advanced search engine algorithms requires content developers to follow certain specific parameters for digital success. Effective content tends to be rooted in high-quality content but is also takes into account factors like topical relevance, backlinks from reputed sources, and natural keyword density. Enough can’t be said about how important quality can be when undertaking a strategic approach to content marketing. While volume produces the short-term illusion of success with higher hits and metrics, it’s actually well-paced high-quality content that build long-term business relationships.

Ultimately, the challenges of the digital ecosystem are only going to get more formidable, but with the power of content, marketers can not only achieve their business metrics but also build meaningful relationships between the audience and their brand. And in reality, it is this unique power of content that still gives it a royal status in marketing today.