The content marketing business is fundamentally based on the premise that “content is king” and rightly so, but with multiple social media platforms to market to, you will need to keep posting content on a regular basis. This could be blog posts, podcasts, e-books, videos, or more to make sure you’re generating enough eyeballs. But more content may not be better or necessarily effective without a complete content marketing strategy. Content volume is just one of many things to consider when thinking about

Nick Westergaard shares with us how he shapes his content strategy by referring to and relating to Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 poem “The Elephant Boy.”

I have six honest servants (they taught me everything I knew);

Their names are what, why, when, how, where and who.

Questions: what, why, when, how, where and who

We can also use these six men to come up with our content marketing strategies. The five Ws (and the one H’s) can go a long way, especially in simplifying the content creation process. It’s important to focus on WHY, WHO, and WHAT to lay the foundation for business-focused content that is attractive to your target base.

WHY – “Start with why” is Simon Sinek’s now famous Mantra that makes so much sense today. Why is it your business goal? Why do it?

Content marketing can help you achieve specific business goals and your WHY needs to be answered by one of them in each of your real world scenarios.

Brand: Are you looking to establish a familiarity with your brand or create / recreate your brand image within your industry or market segment?

Community Building: Is your goal to build a community around your product or service that allows a free flow of information and feedback?

Public Relations: Looking to tailor your content for PR events and promotions?

Market Research: Are you looking to assess market feedback on a particular topic, analyze the data, and use it to your advantage?

Customer service: Do you want to offer service-related content to interact and connect with your existing customer base?

Lead Generation: Want to create query-based traffic and generate leads for new sales?

Which then brings us to Who (m) or WHO, which refers to the audience you are targeting or already serving. Your content has to offer some kind of solution – it has to satisfy a need in your customers’ lives. This would mean that you have to find out the preferences of your customers and find out what is really important to them. This can be achieved by reviewing quantitative demographic and qualitative psychographic data.

Finally, based on your business objective (the why) and figuring out your target audience (who), you are in a better position to decide WHAT type of content you need in that scenario. It’s about creating content that follows a simple strategy: what’s best for your brand?

Kipling’s first three service men – the why, who and what – provide a simplified foundation for a strategic framework that you can use to come up with the right content that meets the needs of both your audience and your business. Now we can dig into the details with the rest of the servants – WHEN (period and frequency) – WHERE (internally or externally, which platform) and finally HOW (action plan, how will you measure success)

It would help to have an innovative mindset to ensure that your content not only grabs attention, but also maintains it. It is not only about arousing curiosity, but also about engaging your customer in an action or reaction that they would like. Of course, you will have a variety of metrics to evaluate your posts: page views, video views, watch time, social media sharing, etc. but remember to optimize for your mission rather than metrics.

B2B content marketing mistakes

Now that we’ve gotten down to the nitty-gritty, let’s look at some common B2B content marketing mistakes so we can steer clear of them. According to research involving more than 5,000 B2B purchasing participants across 12 industries, the three mistakes that undermine a company’s content marketing strategy are …

Too much “thought leadership” in content.

Most marketers use their content strategy in B2B marketing scenarios to demonstrate their levels of expertise and “thought leadership” in their industry. While they may believe they are perceived as “experts,” research from CEB shows that simply representing a “smart perspective” does not have a significant impact on customer decision-making. Rather, it is good content that enlightens clients on new developments in your industry and opens up new ways of looking at your business. You should give them a compelling reason to consider a change and take urgent action.

Too much “personalization” of the content

While there is a school of thought that customizing content to follow every stakeholder in your buying group is the way to go, this strategy has been shown to be counterproductive, especially with multiple stakeholders having a say in the decision. shopping. In fact, trying to personalize content for each member generally affects the likelihood of a higher quality sale, and this is because various stakeholders have different priorities and see solutions from their perspective. This leads them to opt for a “lower priced” solution than would be ideal for their business. Therefore, an effective content strategy must focus on the bigger picture and offer a more collective solution that points in your direction.

Content that does not allow you to measure the purchase process.

Marketers use content to attract customers and encourage a purchase from them. Very often, however, when they see engagement with their content, they assume that there is an interest and see such interaction as a step in the right direction: “the path of purchase progress” and as a result, pass the opportunity to the sales team, but to no avail. Instead, it will be better to design content that can chart the levels and timing of engagement in the purchase path. This can be done by including questions that customers are most likely to ask throughout each step, and then creating marketing content that answers each question along the way.

These mistakes above are quite common and it’s time to pay attention and break away from the standardized content that seems to focus on “thought leadership”, “personalization” and “consumption metrics” but may not get you the results. what are you looking for.

So, looking back at what we found out, the ideal content marketing strategy would be to enlist the help of Kipling’s six service men to lay down a simple yet smart foundation for developing your content, and then consciously walk away from some common mistakes. what content marketers are doing today.

Content marketing in today’s world is not only about creating a mechanized funnel to drive business, but also about creating opportunities to aggregate informed information while encouraging and urging your customers to walk their income path with a eventual purchase or sale.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *