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August 31, 2020 Content Chat Recap: How To Create A Foundation For Sustained Marketing Success

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Effective marketing is almost never a one-and-done deal, instead relying on a series of activities targeted at the right time, channel, and audience to gradually help your marketing team achieve your goals. This intricate process requires a calculated approach, meaning that your team’s planning (or lack thereof) will directly impact your likelihood of success.

In this #ContentChat, we are joined by Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski), director of marketing and business development at Idea Marketing Group, to learn about the essential elements of a successful content marketing plan and how to set your marketing team up for sustained success. Read the full conversation below, where we discuss the best practices for creating a marketing plan, ways to identify and understand your target audience, how to differentiate your brand messaging, and more.

Q1: How often does your team have content marketing planning discussions?

Content marketing planning discussions should happen at least quarterly, with monthly or weekly meetings to discuss specific activities or campaigns, review KPIs, and adjust course as necessary. The goal is to find a cadence that keeps your team aligned and able to pivot without deterring from their ability to actually execute on your plan.

Q2: What does your content marketing planning process look like? Do you have any example templates or frameworks you can share?

Bill shares his 5-step process below, which starts by looking at your organizational goals (revenue, lead generation, etc.).

Megan and RB also start their planning by identifying the content marketing goals:

Once your goals are identified, focus on your audience to ensure you’re providing content throughout their buyer’s journey.

Document your plan in whatever way will be easiest for your team. Word or Google documents, grids, or calendars can all be used.

Review the success of your past campaigns when starting a new plan.

And don’t be surprised if your goals shift as you continue planning (which means you may need to re-adjust your plan as necessary).

Q3: What are the best ways to identify your audience and understand their unique pain points, and how do you document this information?

To identify your audience, think through the titles/roles of your ideal buyers and the people that most benefit from your product or service.

Conduct keyword research and use social listening tools to better understand the needs of your audience and the topics they’re most interested in. Use this information to bolster your target personas.

Crayon is one tool you can use to monitor content from your competitors and key analysts (thanks for the tip, Shelly!).

Your sales team can likely also provide a wealth of knowledge about your target audience.

And surveying your audience or directly asking them questions is an effective way to get to know them and how your brand can help them.

Q4: Goals are an essential part of any marketing campaign. How do you balance your organization-centric goals (i.e. sales, revenue, lead gen) with audience/customer-focused goals (i.e. solving a problem, filling a need)?

The primary focus should always be on how you can provide value to your audience at each step of their customer journey. Without addressing their needs, your content will almost certainly fail.

Break down internal silos—especially any barriers between sales and marketing—to ensure a fully inclusive and cohesive approach.

Q5: With so many channels to choose from to reach your audience, how do you know which channels to invest in and which to ignore?

Bill’s team prioritizes its owned channels like website and email, and uses third-party channels to promote content.

When first getting started, pick just a few (no more than three) channels to explore. Prioritize the channels that your community is most active on, as opposed to chasing whatever the latest platform is.

Regularly review your performance on the channel to assess how you can adjust your strategy and decide whether you should move on to different channels.

Once you find a channel that your audience is active and engaged with your brand on, use that as a control group to compare with the success of your other channels. The goal is to be providing value on the channels that are of most interest to your audience/customers, without spreading your resources too thin by trying to be everywhere.

Q6: How do you differentiate your brand messaging to get your audience to pay attention to you, not your competitors (who are likely saying similar things)?

Focus your messaging on how you make life easier for your customers.

Talk like your customers, not an out-of-touch brand.

As part of your initial planning conversations, have a value prop exercise to develop your key messages and value propositions.

Q7: Once you’ve started acting on your strategy, how do you measure or analyze the success of your efforts? What tools do you use in this process?

Use the goals you initially set to identify supporting metrics you can track.

Most platforms give data on the content you post there, which is an easy way to quickly gauge whether your strategy is working.

And Megan shares a few tools you can try:

Q8: What is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to sticking to a long-term content marketing plan?

Challenge 1: Feeling like you’re failing because you’ve yet to see significant traction from your efforts.

Remember that the ROI of marketing is rarely immediate, and you need a plan to work toward achieving your goals. Regularly review your KPIs and adjust course where necessary.

Challenge 2: Overestimating your resources.

Don’t rush your planning, and think realistically about your resource constraints. Executive buy-in is crucial to increase the likelihood of your team’s success.

Challenge 3: Keeping content relevant and interesting.

This is why monthly or bi-weekly meetings are important. Monitor your content KPIs to see what performs best with your audience, and use social listening tools or surveys to identify the topics that are most of interest to them.

There may be extreme cases where your entire plan needs to be redone mid-course. While this can be frustrating and disheartening, it is better to redo a plan than waste resources to push out irrelevant content that your audience will not consume.

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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