Marketing is a field that is always evolving to keep up with customer behaviors. In the more recent years, content marketing has risen to become one of the most efficient ways to influence these behaviors. Creating a relevant content experience for a customer has never been more relevant, or important than it is now. And yet, only 37% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. 37%. In this article by Brody Dorland, Dorland provides 5 tips to better improve your content and elevate it to meet audience expectations. Here is a brief overview of his tips:
Build a Bolder Vision:
Dorland states that instead of putting out content because it seems relevant or embraces a current trend, it is important to build a long term vision that is bold, and rooted in the needs of a specific audience. Taking the time to plan a content strategy will pay off in the long run, as you will have had time to think about how the content relates to your objectives, what is its long term meaning and how it will attract and retain an audience.
Slow Down:
People are consuming information every second of everyday, and it is leaving them so inundated with material that things begin to lose importance. On the marketing side, people are so hurried trying to get out content that they are unable to plan. Slowing down allows marketers to publish more impactful content. In this case, quality is better than quantity.
Embrace Emotion:
Many B2B marketers are under the impression that because their target audience is different than those of B2C marketers, that an emotional campaign will be too risky. Dorland believes the opposite stating “embracing emotion in marketing translates to greater customer empathy.” While adding emotion to your content and marketing may make you seem empathetic, it is also very important to understand your audience before entering emotional territory.
Strive for Relevance:
Marketing has always been very number driven, but now it has taken on a whole new level with keywords, analytics and trends. marketers have become obsessed with filling their content full of SEO keywords and other trackable aspects in order to reach the most people numerically. Yet, some still struggle to attract an audience. Instead of focusing on the analytics, the focus should be on producing content that is relevant to your audience.
Ask “why,” “what if,” and “what’s next”
Curiosity makes us better people. When we ask “why” instead of “how” it opens up corners of the mind and we see things in a different light. Creating content that is relevant and appealing requires marketers to ask the tough questions, in order to discover the answers.
Asking the following questions¹ about a piece of content will ensure that you have explored its potential impact from all angles, and analyze if and why it will have your intended impact.
Why?
- Why did a piece of content perform well?
- Why do you love, hate, like, believe in something?
- Why do they prefer your competitors, or other brands?
What if?
- What would happen if you delivered a different piece of content?
- What if your content didn’t exist? Would your audience miss it?
- What if you could only give your audience a single piece of content? What would it be?
What’s Next?
- Having answered the above, what’s next?
- What content types will you focus on next?
- What channels matter most next?
The importance of content marketing is going to continue to grow, and we must grow and change with it. This means taking the time to plan and produce quality content that is relevant to our audience.
If you are interested in learning more, you can read the original article here: https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2017/32578/five-methods-for-planning-better-b2b-content-experiences
¹ Questions from “Five Methods for Planning Better B2B Content Experiences” by Brody Dorland
