Content Marketing: Ways to Build Your Content Marketing Library
By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
It goes without saying that content marketing is the cornerstone of success in today’s marketing environment. The Content Marketing Institute points out…
“Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.”
Content Marketing: Four Ways to Obtain Content
As noted in the definition above, consistent “relevant and valuable” content is key but that’s a tall order. How do you create and curate enough content for prospects, for customers, for manufacturing prospects, for non-profit customers, for roles (CEO, CFO, BDM, TDM, etc.), and others on a week-by-week basis? Here are four ways…
- Outsource all or a portion of your content creation needs. For example, let’s say in the coming year your company will have a primary focus on marketing and selling to nonprofits. To enable that strategy, it’s been determined that to drive to and convert leads on the landing page you will need…
- Invest in an internal team to create and distribute content. Your internal team knows your audience(s) thoroughly and can write, design, and publish original content specific to their needs as well as monitor the results of those efforts. They will ensure your social properties are up-to-date as well as your blog. In addition to the cost of the content (writing, design, and management time), don’t forget to add the cost of headcount – salaries, benefits, office space, equipment, etc.
- Curate business and industry content. No shortage of general business content everywhere you look! Whether its articles from http://www.entrepreneur.com/, www.cfo.com, or www.accountingtoday.com, there’s a wealth of information you can share with prospects and customers as you nurture them. And don’t forget industry-specific information from sites such as Modern Materials Handling and APICS for supply chain. They all publish information that you can analyze, comment on, blog about, and pass along (if you have time!).
- Curate content from the publisher. Most ERP, CRM, and ISV publishers create content that their reselling channel can use. It may be on a portal or on their public websites and you can often find eBooks, videos, whitepapers, product briefs, and brochures. Also, many publishers distribute content via tools such as ContentMX (Microsoft) and Zift (Sage and Epicor).
- 4 original thought leadership offers (1 per quarter),
- 24 emails promoting the offers (2 per month),
- 104 social media posts (2 per week),
- 24 blog posts (minimum of 2 per month),
- and Time to sponsor one local nonprofit event.
Does the internal marketing team have the time and skills to create all of the deliverables listed above in addition to the “usual” marketing that must take place to other prospects as well as existing customers? If not, you may want to consider outsourcing the nonprofit content creation in this example to a firm with domain expertise while using your internal resources to distribute it and track the results.
If outsourcing is on your radar, read this article titled “Should You Outsource Content Marketing? 11 Questions to Consider”. It has good questions to ask yourself such as whether to use freelancers or agencies, do they have domain expertise, what’s the budget, and more.
Use All Your Content!
Before you get the idea that the four ways listed above are exclusive, let me say that you should use them all. The publishers often invest heavily in creating videos, infographics, and other thought leadership offers you can easily incorporate into your content plan. Internal teams can create, curate, manage, distribute, and monitor the execution of the marketing strategies. Outsourcing can bring new ideas and fresh ORIGINAL content to your prospects and customers if need be. Using them all is the quickest way to building a robust, relevant content library to fuel a successful marketing effort.
