Although consumer-focused brands certainly run the most visible content marketing campaigns, companies like Coca-Cola and The Four Seasons aren’t the only ones finding success with content strategy. Brands that speak directly to other businesses are also utilizing content to learn more about their clients and create more effective (and more cost-efficient) marketing campaigns.
Here are five easy ways to implement content strategy into your B2B marketing campaign this year:
1. Focus on the “strategy” in “content strategy.”
Although your sense of urgency can drive you to start creating content immediately, a thorough audit of your audience – including when and where your clients spend time online, what topics they read, and what tone inspires them to engage – will help you refine your content to better achieve your goal, whether you seek more subscribers to your newsletter or simply more online sales.
2. Tap into your clients’ buyer persona.
Your clients have a different persona in the office than they do at home. They’ll therefore respond to different writing styles for business content than they do when they’re catching up on Buzzfeed. Recognizing what tone will best convey your expertise and desire to help clients solve their business problems will make your content more effective.
3. Create a content calendar.
Half the battle in running a consistent content marketing campaign is deciding what to write. A content calendar outlines your topics in advance, giving you a guide to follow when your mind is on other aspects of your business. Your calendar can also serve as a library of future ideas, including articles you’ve read for reference and keywords you’d like to remember. Need a good template? We’re happy to share ours. Just ask!
4. Know how to share.
The biggest challenge after consistency for many marketers is knowing where to distribute. This crucial part of content strategy not only determines your reach, but also how well your content will be received (that is, how motivated your audience will be to act). Savvy content strategists look not only to popular social media channels, but also to the blogs their audience reads and the newsfeeds they watch. A proactive approach can lead to guest blogging opportunities and more chances to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
5. Implement once, measure twice.
As all marketers have found in preparing their annual reports, an ounce of tracking is worth a pound of action. Measuring the impact of your content allows you identify which strategies led to increased sales and what efforts you can skip in the next campaign. The ability to refine your approach with every campaign, honing in on the topics inspire action and where to reach new potential clients, is what sets content strategy apart from content marketing.
Can’t get enough content strategy? Keep in touch.