Know your current and ideal customers and what they need and want. Remember that your ideal customers are not the blue-sky early adopter types who just love your product. They’re good for PR and proof of concept but they will never be your customer base because they’re always on to the Next Big Thing. Your ideal customers may be SMB owners, IT organizations, records managers, compliance directors, C-suite executives, service providers or MSPs: these are the businesses that will make you a success if you can reach out and convince them.
Know how your ideal customers consume content. IT consumes information differently from the C-Suite and you are probably marketing to them both. Understand what they want to know when they are researching, their motivations, and what convinces them to take action.
Identify your top 1-3 current marketing initiatives. Examples include brand awareness, positioning, lead generation, reference customers, or shortened sales cycles. A larger company might have three to a dozen or more marketing initiatives going on at the same time, and must decide which initiative will have the best return on investment from creating content assets. A smaller company may have just 1 or 2 survival initiatives, and will need content assets to support them.
Identify the content that your major customers prefer. Examples abound including white papers, executive summaries, case studies, press releases, video, audio, ebooks, websites, how-to manuals, and more. Compare the lists. When all of your ideal buyer communities prefer to consume the same type of asset, then offering that asset should be at or near the top of the creation priority list. Another priority is marketing to a sweet spot or ideal customer community and creating your first few assets with them in mind. Most content types can be leveraged to several customer groups but some of these take finessing. Be aware of who you are targeting before you create the assets.
Create the content. If you have existing content then great, update it as needed and start it working for you. If you need to create new assets, prioritize content creation by need, cost, time to create, and expected ROI. Do not automatically go with the cheapest or easiest option. If you can quickly create a podcast and get it out there while you create more in-depth assets, then fine. But do not spend a year recording throw-away podcasts when what your customers really want is a strong white paper.
Work with your designer to develop a landing page specifically for the content’s link. If your content is digital as most of them will be, do not promote a link to your home page. Send them to a landing page that your designer has created specifically for the asset. For in-depth content such as white papers or research reports you may safely include an information form with minimal questions. Most readers expect this with downloads. If the content asset is short like an infographic, you probably will not want to capture information but you should include a strong call to action on its landing page.
Promote the asset. Content works well for outbound marketing when you are actively pushing prospects to the asset. And content is particularly attractive with inbound marketing, the process of getting your customers to come to you because of the quantity and quality of your content. This is why it is vital to promote new content using search engine optimization and multiple media channels. Be certain to track your results.
Repeat the above process with the next content asset. Keep tracking, modifying and creating as your leads grow.
