Tag Archives: content strategy

How to crack the ‘content’ in content marketing

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For almost all the marketers I speak to the single biggest obstacle to maximising the opportunity that content marketing presents is the content bit.

It’s not that we don’t have the content ideas or that we don’t understand the principles of a good content marketing strategy. It’s quite simply finding the time to produce all of the new content that you believe prospects and existing customers will find interesting and / or useful.

Producing this valuable, helpful and informative content takes time. Before we go any further it’s important that I point out that I haven’t found a magic formula for producing new content at the speed we would all like to.

Instead, I have concluded that there is a far easier way to get the content in your content marketing strategy to work harder for you.

Sound like a plan? Let me explain:

As I’ve already said – producing good content takes time. After spending this time we unfortunately don’t maximise the benefit to be extracted from all that hard work.

I’m sure that you have on many occasions (as I have) upon completing your latest content project simply posted it on your chosen social channels, added it to your website and targeted relevant online discussion groups only to swiftly move on to the development of your next content project.

By doing this you are not maximising the potential for your content to generate leads, encourage attendance at your event, secure downloads for your white paper – whatever your specific objectives may be.

You worked really hard developing that content – so make the most of the opportunity it presents.

Only a very small proportion of your social audience will see your content if you only post it once. By using one of the many social scheduling tools and re-posting across different channels at different times you will greatly increase the exposure that your content gets.

It’s only then that you can be sure that you are extracting maximum value from the hard work you put in to developing the content in the first place.

It’s also a great way to conduct some live research – change the headlines, choose different images, post at different times of the day.

By doing this and studying your analytics you’ll develop a new awareness of what content works best, in what place and at what time.

You’ll then be in a position to decide which of your many ideas for new content will best help you to achieve your goals.

You’ll then find that all the content you develop starts working harder for you.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that loads of content is all you need for a successful content marketing strategy.

What you really need is useful, helpful and informative content from which you extract maximum value.

I’m as guilty as anyone of being tempted by the exciting distraction of shiny new content – just remember that a lot of your existing content is new to an awful lot of people who haven’t yet been exposed to it.

Dealing with the Digital Skills Gap

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Digital Marketing Strategy Petrac Marketing

Digital marketing is an essential part of the modern marketing mix

With the amount of technology now available and the pace of change it’s never been as challenging for anyone working in marketing to understand all of the channels that are available when trying to get your product or service to market.

This has led to the creation of new Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing roles  – but I can’t help feeling that this is just an abdication of responsibility by those in charge.

Digital is simply a delivery mechanism for all your marketing efforts. There is no digital marketing – it’s just modern marketing.

In an increasing number of organisations there is a recognition that there is a skills gap in relation to digital marketing. However, it’s the response to this problem that I think is focused in the wrong place.

For too many companies and organisations this skills gap is addressed by the creation of a new role within the marketing team – Digital Marketing Executive, Social Media Marketing Executive being two such positions.

I don’t think anyone would argue that digital marketing represents a huge part of the modern marketing mix – so surely there is a requirement that every member of your marketing team is a digital marketer?

When creating the person specifications for all members of your marketing team surely some sort of digital capability must be included in the ‘essential skills’ box?

You wouldn’t employ a software engineer without the relevant qualifications. You wouldn’t employ a engineer without knowing that they had training in the relevant engineering discipline. You wouldn’t employ an accountant who hadn’t had the appropriate training.

The same should apply with your marketing team. Creating separate digital marketing roles is simply abdicating responsibility for digital to a single person in order to avoid having to learn about it yourself.

Digital marketing is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for anyone working in marketing. It’s essential that you have these skills or you will end up being surplus to requirements.

The other side of the same coin is that by skilling yourself up in all things digital you are giving yourself a serious competitive advantage over a lot of other people.

There’s simply no excuse any more – there are shed loads of formal digital qualifications out there and as much online content as you can cope with.

As with anything though the only way to really get it and understand how you can use it to improve your business results is to get involved.

So stop passing the responsibility on to others and embrace the challenge and the opportunity that digital marketing presents.

Get started now – Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Institute (Ireland and UK)

If you would like some help working out how you can take advantage of digital within your marketing strategy then get in touch.

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Consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness

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Chess board represents marketing strategy

Random moves lead to defeat – strategy is what is required to win

I love this line – the title of a book by Scott Ginsberg from 2012.

For me it sums up what marketing is all about. While others may judge us on the impact of an individual event, video etc we should be judged on consistently delivering results that will allow our businesses to achieve their goals.

It is far too often the case that marketing is judged on the tactics employed rather than the overall results – and this is because of a disconnect between the overall business strategy and the marketing activities that we are engaged in.

Rare moments of greatness happen by accident rather than design. They happen because we’re just trying to do a lot of different stuff with the digital channels available to us without proper consideration for what we’re trying to achieve or what success looks like. It’s inevitable that the more we do of this stuff, the more we learn about what works and the better we get at spotting content that is likely to get a good reaction online.

And this is part of the problem – an endless pursuit of Facebook likes does not constitute a strategy. It is merely a tactic to help you deliver something valuable. So what is it that you’re trying to deliver? The problem is that a lot of people just don’t know.

To move from rare moments of greatness to the consistency that will deliver real business value you need to take a step back – ignore all the tools you have available to you and focus on what it is you are trying to achieve.

The first step is to understand what your goals are – this is derived from your overall business strategy. This could be to win a certain amount of new sales / donations within a new sector or market or increase market share to give some examples.

From this we are then able to define what the goals of our marketing efforts are:

Are we trying to drive traffic to our website or blog because we know this generates more leads?

Are we trying to provide resources and information to assist our customers with their buying decision?

Are we trying to build a social following to build our reputation in the industry?

Once you know what it is that you’re trying to achieve you then need to know how you’re going to measure success.

If we’re trying to drive traffic to the website to generate more leads – how much traffic do we need and how many leads should this convert to?

If we’re trying to provide resources and information to assist customers with their buying decision – how many downloads of the whitepapers, brochures and case studies are we looking for?

If we’re trying to build a social following – how many new likes or followers are we trying to win? Or maybe focus on the engagement metrics instead – the conversations that begin because we started them, the number of times our content was shared?

When you have these things in place you can then start thinking about the tactics that you’re going to employ to help you achieve your goals. It’s only now that the channels come into the equation – where do your target audience hang out, what is the best way to connect with them when they are there and what content will they find either useful or interesting? This should include both online and offline channels to deliver the best results.

A well considered digital strategy will yield results for your business – simply because you now know what you are trying to achieve.

This will allow you to quickly and easily report on progress internally and demonstrate to the cynics in your organisation the value you are adding through your digital content marketing activity. This focus on performance is what is all too often missing from the marketing function.

Too many KPI documents for the marketing department are littered full of tactics that shift and change depending on the latest requests from the board or the sales team. All this does is measure activity – and just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re adding any value.

By stepping back and considering what it is that we are trying to deliver we can shift the focus from the activity to the value that we are adding and this is when we will achieve consistency.

Because consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness.

If you would like some help either developing your digital marketing strategy or deploying the tactics to ensure success then get in touch.

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The Top 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015

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It’s that time of year when all the ‘top for 2015’ lists start coming out.

This one caught my eye – and in particular the first point that Jason DeMers makes in his post.

Publication is only the small first step – value comes from distribution.

I’m reminded of the old ‘build it and they will come’ line – it must have been nice to live in these times. Now we’ve all got to work so march harder to earn the right to be considered by our potential customers.

It’s something I see too much of in marketing – all the effort goes into producing great content with very little thought given to the distribution of this content.

I couldn’t agree with Jason more strongly on this one – it’s not the content that’s king. It’s the distribution of that content that will make you king.

If you can get the balance right between identifying the opportunity for great content, developing that content and building a network that will perceive your content as valuable then you’re well on your way to a winning content marketing strategy.

Have a read of Jason’s post for some other very interesting observations on where content marketing will take us in 2015.

The Top 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015.

If you would like some help building your content marketing strategy or even just producing some more great content then get in touch:

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