Content Marketing is the new shiny object in the marketing world. It seems like it all started with the term, “content is king”, coined by Bill Gates in 1996 – 21 years ago. In the last few years, the marketing industry has finally started to put some methodology behind “content marketing” as a discipline.  According to Deloitte, we are about 3 years into using “content marketing” as a tool to reach potential customers. Not everyone has figured out how to be successful with their content marketing efforts yet. In fact, at this point, many companies are flooding the marketing with their “content” without a plan. This is causing their customers to get distracted and affecting sales goals. Therefore, a “content strategy” is needed to guide customers through their journey also known as the sales funnel.
 
So what is the difference between Content Strategy and Content Marketing?  

Content Strategy – “the plan”
The plan for how a company will use content to fulfill a need, or solve a problem for its customer, while simultaneously helping it achieve a business goal. This plan should span brand and all product lines within the company. When companies don’t have a strategy in place companies often produce too much content that is disparate, depletes resources and becomes ineffective due to lack of direction.
 
Content Marketing – “the action”
Development of assets throughout the funnel that target specific personas with the purpose of inspiration and education. Providing this kind of information to customers and potential customers reinforces brand, delights our customers, gives us credibility as an expert in the field and creates advocates.

The key is 3 fold:

1. The content story and themes relate back to the brand and product messaging
2. The placement of the assets are integrated throughout all marketing programs.
3. Assets are delivered where your target audience would normally consume the info, in the FORMAT they like, written in an inspiring and educational tone, guiding the audience on the buyer’s journey.

Themes must ladder back to the brand and product messages, addressing each target audience need at each level of the funnel. It is a lot to sift through and still come up with a set of always-on unique and inspiring content. Organizations must agree cross-functionally on the message, the stories, the themes and the tactics. This agreement, in and of itself, can be a major time suck. It takes a special person to align several organizations on a plan that can consume 30%-50% of their budget.
 
Infiltrating your content throughout all your marketing programs is incredibly important. Writing a blog that links to a whitepaper or some educational content is ideal but, simply placing it on your company website will not drive traffic and will be an expensive disappointment. Driving readers to the blog from your brand and product webpages, demand generation, 3rd party platforms, email, social media (internal and external), IB newsletters and leveraging channel partner will yield views and downloads you will get excited about.
 
There is a big difference in throwing knowledge out in the world randomly vs. building a relationship with your customers by giving them the information they need and at the right moment. Building a content strategy that aligns with the brand and product messages and leads the customer through the sales funnel by telling the right stories, at the right place in the customer journey with content that is relevant and in the right format takes time and thought.
 
In the customer journey, make it easy for your customer to:

• Follow your lead through the sales funnel – from awareness to consideration to engagement
• Self-select his/her next interest in your product – allow them to jump from a Thought Leadership Video to a Sales Enablement asset. You don’t want to make them follow your exact journey, everyone needs the flexibility of taking their own unique path to your sales team.

 
Last,  make your content relevant to your target audience and ensure you are writing content that will help your customer succeed. You really don’t want to talk about yourself the whole time. In fact, you don’t want to talk about the benefits of your product until you get to the education level of the funnel. Consider relationships, when you meet someone you don’t talk about yourself the whole time. If you do, that person will likely not want to talk to you again. In the beginning of a relationship, we should be focusing on each other, what makes the other tick, what inspires or drives them.  Ascendiosa can help your organization disrupt with content strategy and execution of marketing programs.

Author:  Joanna Coburn drives integrated marketing strategies and best practices to improve marketing effectiveness, sales, and bottom line results.

Sellers were not achieving their goals. Industry guidelines and peer group comparison indicated that 60% of the sales team should be attaining quota, yet in this case the inverse was true. Overall sales were trending down 6% a year while the market was growing.  Sales leadership had been transitioned, turned over that is; yet the trend continued.  Was it time for another shave of the sales leadership? That was the simplest answer, the CEO cited Occam’s Razor 1.

Digging into the data, some disturbing trends emerged, top performers were leaving the company. The same people who appeared in the top 60th percentile of quota attainment were leaving, year over year.  When exit interviews had been conducted, the common reason for leaving was “better opportunity.”  We put more research into the top performers who jettisoned over the past year. Forty-one percent had moved to competitive upstarts and related how they were continuing their success.  Unanimously, all the exited top performers pointed to the enhanced or improved product they were now selling. 

At the same time we were digging into win-loss details, this was a new concept for the organization.  During the thirty plus interviews, we discovered buyers had a higher perception of competitive offers, service and value. 

The findings were met with disbelief, denial by the executive team; this was a market leading firm, with superior products and services.

Our assessment continued to shave away at the executive hypothesis that sales needed a refresh. Marketing leads converted to 9% revenue, well below industry standards of 19-25%.  Fewer prospects were evaluating products on this organisation's website versus others, and the numbers showed gradual erosion.    Price compression, measured by average selling price, was 8% per annum.  While the number of support calls remained flat, the number of escalations was rising monthly. We continued to accumulate evidence until we had shaved the executive hypothesis clean, exposing which product strategies needed refreshed.

Organisations often misdiagnose growth challenges as shortfalls of strategy or execution in marketing and sales.  Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees, when you’re standing in the forest.  People often forget, William of Ockham’s original inductive razor referred to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions; it is not “the simplest explanation is usually correct.”

Want to know if your product strategy is keeping up with market conditions?  Before your top talent jettisons?  Ascendiosa can help.

1. Occam’s Razor, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor
   
   

Author:  Mark Miller is Ascendiosa’s Chief Commercial Officer