In a recent study by Content Marketing Institute, it was reported that54% of B2B marketers will increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months. Pouring more money into content doesn’t automatically result in success.
As with wise investing for financial success, marketers need to back up their content investments with a plan, resources, goals, measurement and many other answers to questions their competition aren’t bothering with.
This doesn’t mean you need some grand, perfect strategy to see a return on content development spend. But it does mean having a clear vision and approach. To help guide you in this content marketing journey, here’s advice from some of the top content marketers in the industry including pros fromIntel, SAP, Kraft, and the Content Marketing Institute.
Joe Pulizzi – Content Marketing Institute
@juntajoe
Tip #1 – Understand the Why
Why are your creating content in the first place? What impact can you have on the customer that doesn’t involve your product or service? What is your higher purpose? This creates your content marketing mission statement.
Tip #2 – Find Alternate Resources
Don’t be afraid to outsource. Most companies outsource some part of their content marketing.
Tip #3 – Find Your Niche
You can’t be everything to everybody. Focus on your content area that you can be the leading expert in the world, and focus on a specific buying group when you do it.
Pam Didner – Intel
@pamdidner
Tip #4 – Plan Ahead
An editorial calendar is essential.
Tip #5 – Stories Resonate
As long as you can find stories that resonate with your audiences, then you can create content. Stories are everywhere, the key thing is to listen and observe. Be open-minded.
Tip #6 – Communication is Key
Reach out to different groups (internal) and customers (external), or even your management. For examples, challenges on product development, customer testimonials and founding father’s stories, even company values. Frankly, there is a lot to talk about.
Michael Brenner – SAP
@brennermichael
Tip #7 – Be Inspirational
Companies have to inspire their existing experts to start building their personal brands and becoming content creators.
Tip #8 – Distribute in Multiple Channels
Businesses need to build dynamic content destinations. Become like a publisher and think like a digital news site.
Tip #9 – Curate Content When Appropriate
You eventually realize that using your own resources is not enough. You don’t know everything and will never have enough budget to create all the content your audience seeks. So content curation is a core component of effective marketing and content strategy.
Julie Fleischer – Kraft Foods
@jfly
Tip #10 – Budget for Content
Great content doesn’t just happen. It takes copywriters, designers, photographers, directors, editors…and in our case, culinary professionals. There are absolutely ways to be cost-efficient in the development of content, but don’t underestimate the need to invest
Tip #11 – Engage Your Followers
20,000 recipes onKraftRecipes.comhave been contributed by our member community. Engaged, passionate consumers can be your best source of content. So long as you have a content management system in place that enables smart curation and you have business rules around that curation, your consumers can be more than your best advocates, they can be your best creators.
Tip #12 – Follow Up Regularly
Remember that you can’t just drop a piece of content into cyberspace and forget it. Leverage SEO and integrated support to get the most possible out of each piece of content you promote.
After evaluating many, many different content marketing case studies and examples over the past year, it’s remarkable how few companies coordinate their efforts or follow a plan. Hopefully these tips from some of the top voices in the content marketing world will help inspire you to get some of the important questions answered about your content marketing investments.
What advice would you give to other readers for more successful content marketing planning, execution and measurement?
About the author
Lee Odden has been recognized as a top B2B Marketing professional by Forbes, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. For over 20 years he's worked with his team at TopRank Marketing to help elevate the B2B marketing industry through creative marketing programs that deliver more authentic, experiential and inclusive content for brands like LinkedIn, Dell and Adobe. Lee is the author of Optimize and has published over 1.4 million words on his agency's B2B marketing blog. As a trusted marketing thought leader, he has given nearly 300 presentations in 20 different countries on B2B content, search and influencer marketing. When not marketing, Lee is probably running, cooking or traveling.
